tiny pink books

The Running Man by Stephen King/Richard Bachman

So after The Long Walk, I thought I’d try giving another book by Stephen King, once again written under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman (I’ve got an old, falling apart paperback with them both included).  The Running Man is another science fiction novel set in a bleak, but not too distant, future in the US where Ben Richards enters a deadly game show contest to try and make money to care for his sick daughter.  “The Running Man” is a televised game show where the contestant, Ben Richards, is proclaimed to be a deadly enemy of the government and the public.  He is given a lump of money and is sent running.  His goal is to evade capture and execution by the law enforcement, civilians, and a team of professional hunters.  He also must produce and mail in two video clips of himself every 24 hours.  Every night, his clips are broadcast to the public, where he is slandered as a murderer and scoundrel to incite the public into killing or turning him in for monetary reward.  Basically, he doesn’t stand a chance.  For every hour that he survives, he wins a certain amount of money (which is to go to his family in the inevitable event that he is caught and killed).  If he is caught, he will be killed.  Basically, King has created another live or die game that focuses on the human fascination on the spectacle of violence.

The world in The Running Man echos the same dystopian US that King wrote in The Long Walk, except the world of The Running Man is somehow a little more bleakly hopeless and more divided between rich and poor.  I don’t know why, because The Long Walk was certainly desperately hopeless, but there is absolutely no glimmer of happiness or hope in The Running Man.  From the very first chapter of the book, it’s somehow evident that Ben Richards, his family, and the entire human race is doomed to failure.  The pace of The Running Man is much faster, but there’s something about the hopelessness that nullifies the exciting race of the game.  As the number of pages left in the book dwindled and the plot grew ever more dire, I became annoyed with the book.  As exciting and intriguing as the concept is, The Running Man just doesn’t go anywhere.  Although parts of it are fun and, on a whole, the book is very much readable, I found the book to be a little disappointing.  I’d recommend it to die hard Stephen King fans or to readers needing more after the more interesting and faster page turning Long Walk…

The Long Walk
by Stephen King/Richard Bachman

Brutal is the word for this book.  Written by Stephen King under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman, The Long Walk is a quick read about a violent and horrific walking contest in an alternate reality United States.  In The Long Walk, one hundred teenager boys are chosen to participate in the annual contest.  The rules of the contest are simple; you walk or you die.  When a walker fails to keep up with the walking pace of 4 miles per hour, they are given three, thirty second warnings before they are shot dead by the military troops who referee the contest.  The boys walk with no rest until there is only one survivor.  If a walker tries to leave the road or quit the contest, they are shot.  Walkers are given water and tubes of concentrated food, but they are never allowed to rest.  The march to the death spans hundreds of miles and several days of brutality and death.
The characters of The Long Walk are an interesting bunch, though they sort of blend together (even the main character, Ray Garraty, fails to stand out much as an individual).  It’s hard to understand why anyone would want to participate in such a challenge (despite the fabled prize–anything the winner wants for the rest of their life).  King’s use of teenage boys seems to help alleviate this issue.  The boys, at first, seem to lack a real understanding of the fragile position of their mortality.  Entered into the contest for a variety of reasons, but mostly for the glory that comes along with being a walker, the boys have an almost immature attitude of the fate that awaits 99 of them in this walk.  As the walk moves forward and the body count rises, the boys confront death in their own ways.

Also interesting is the fascination that the general population in King’s US have with death and the walk itself.  Crowds line the roads, growing more and more dense as the walk grows more and more bloody, cheering on walkers and celebrating the spectacle and entertainment of their deaths.  In some ways, this was a tough book to read.  It peaked my curiosity and, although the plot lagged at points (it’s a fairly simple concept), it read quickly.  The characters sort of blur together throughout the book, but the battling forces of antagonism and friendship makes for interesting, though dated, dialog and a pretty gripping concept.  I’d recommend this to teenagers, especially boys, who are looking for a fast and gripping read.  I warn readers though, this is a brutal concept and, if you’re at all squeamish about the concept, it can be quite sickening.  You can probably guess from the concept, but this book has a fair share of gore, violence, and more violence.