The Running Man+

by Richard Bachman (Pseudonym), Stephen King

Alternate cover for ISBN 0451115082.

It's not just a game when you're running for your life.

Every night they tuned in to the nation's favorite prime-time TV game show.

They all watched, from the sprawling polluted slums to the security-obsessed enclaves of the rich. They all watched the ultimate live death game as the contestants tried to beat not the clock, but annihilation at the hands of the Hunters. Survive thirty days and win a billion dollar jackpot—that was the promise. But the odds were brutal and the game rigged. Best score so far was eight days.

And now there was a new contestant, the latest Running Man, staking his life while a nation watched.

Genres: Science Fiction

219 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 1982

About the author

This is a Stephen King pseudonym.

At the beginning of Stephen King's career, the general view among publishers was that an author was limited to one book per year, since publishing more would be unacceptable to the public. King therefore wanted to write under another name, in order to increase his publication without over-saturating the market for the King "brand". He convinced his publisher, Signet Books, to print these novels under a pseudonym.

In his introduction to The Bachman Books, King states that adopting the nom de plume Bachman was also an attempt to make sense out of his career and try to answer the question of whether his success was due to talent or luck. He says he deliberately released the Bachman novels with as little marketing presence as possible and did his best to "load the dice against" Bachman. King concludes that he has yet to find an answer to the "talent versus luck" question, as he felt he was outed as Bachman too early to know. The Bachman book Thinner (1984) sold 28,000 copies during its initial run—and then ten times as many when it was revealed that Bachman was, in fact, King.

The pseudonym King originally selected (Gus Pillsbury) is King's maternal grandfather's name, but at the last moment King changed it to Richard Bachman. Richard is a tribute to crime author Donald E. Westlake's long-running pseudonym Richard Stark. (The surname Stark was later used in King's novel The Dark Half, in which an author's malevolent pseudonym, "George Stark", comes to life.) Bachman was inspired by Bachman–Turner Overdrive, a rock and roll band King was listening to at the time his publisher asked him to choose a pseudonym on the spot.

King provided biographical details for Bachman, initially in the "about the author" blurbs in the early novels. Known "facts" about Bachman were that he was born in New York, served a four-year stint in the Coast Guard, which he then followed with ten years in the merchant marine. Bachman finally settled down in rural central New Hampshire, where he ran a medium-sized dairy farm, writing at night. His fifth novel was dedicated to his wife, Claudia Inez Bachman, who also received credit for the bogus author photo on the book jacket. Other "facts" about the author were revealed in publicity dispatches from Bachman's publishers: the Bachmans had one child, a boy, who died in an unfortunate, Stephen King-ish type accident at the age of six, when he fell through a well and drowned. In 1982, a brain tumour was discovered near the base of Bachman's brain; tricky surgery removed it. After Bachman's true identity was revealed, later publicity dispatches (and about the author blurbs) revealed that Bachman died suddenly in late 1985 of "cancer of the pseudonym, a rare form of schizonomia".

King dedicated Bachman's early books—Rage (1977), The Long Walk (1979), Roadwork (1981), and The Running Man (1982)—to people close to him. The link between King and his shadow writer was exposed after a Washington, D.C. bookstore clerk, Steve Brown, noted similarities between the writing styles of King and Bachman. Brown located publisher's records at the Library of Congress which included a document naming King as the author of one of Bachman's novels. Brown wrote to King's publishers with a copy of the documents he had uncovered, and asked them what to do. Two weeks later, King telephoned Brown personally and suggested he write an article about how he discovered the truth, allowing himself to be interviewed. King has taken full ownership of the Bachman name on numerous occasions, as with the republication of the first four Bachman titles as The Bachman Books: Four Early Novels by Stephen King in 1985. The introduction, titled "Why I Was Bachman," details the whole Bachman/King story.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard...

Reviews

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this Bachman Book years ago when it was released in a compilation edition called The Bachman Books (along with Rage, The Long Walk and Roadwork). I have never seen the movie version starring Arnold Schwarzenegger made in the 80s. But after finding a copy of this book with a movie tie-in cover, I've arranged to borrow a DVD of The Running Man. Before watching the movie, I decided to re-read the short book. I'm glad I did.

The Running Man is basically the story of a man desperate to bring in some serious money for his family. His daughter is sick, and they live in squalor. The working class is kept poor and downtrodden in one area of the city....while others live in relative comfort. But, in return for competing in dangerous games that will be televised, they can bring in some cash. Unfortunately, many of the contestants die. Ben Richards decides the best way to help his wife and sick daughter is to go through the screening process and join a game. He competes as The Running Man, chased across the country by law enforcement, mercenaries and the general public. He is required to send in daily videos and will be paid for each day he survives. A lot of money is promised if he can last 30 days. But.....nobody has ever lasted that long. The record is 8 days and 5 hours. Killer Capitalism.

This book came out in the 80s, but it's set in 2024. I couldn't help but notice the uncanny resemblance to modern reality television. People aren't paid to run from law enforcement with extra money paid for each person they kill while running.....but there have been people injured and killed during publicity stunts for views on YouTube and while filming shows or stunts for reality television. One game in the book has infirm, ill or crippled people competing for money by running on a treadmill. They are asked trivia questions...if they answer wrong, it costs them money and the treadmill speed is increased. They are paid by the minute, with the game often killing contestants. Nobody died....but lots of people tuned in to Biggest Loser for years, watching overweight, ill people endure exercise and starvation to lose weight. Contestants later talked about peeing blood from dehydration, collapsing after hours of forced exercise and being ill afterwards all in an effort to win the $250,000 prize.....pretty close to Treadmills To Bucks. It's not that far a jump to think the trend could jump up a few notches to more dangerous games.....all for money and a magical chance for a better life.

I had forgotten a lot of this story over the years. I was still basically a kid when I read it. I read it Before. Before marriage, before kids, before a lot of things. Re-reading it at 50 years old brought a new perspective. Great action story....but also a cautionary tale. We can't allow ourselves to become so engrossed in cheap, violent entertainment that we lose sight of other more important issues -- unsafe work environments, unfair treatment of the working class, and growing belief that some lives are worth more than others. Killer capitalism isn't that big a jump from where we are today.

I enjoyed re-visiting this book! It's a great action story with a bit of moralizing added in the mix. I'm going to re-read more of the Bachman books this year. They are shorter than the novels the author published as Stephen King, and have a different vibe to them. Less horror....more darkness.

Now that I have read the book and have the story fresh in my mind, I'm going to watch the 80's movie. I wonder how badly they butchered the story? My husband says the movie has very little resemblance to the book. Not surprised.

[itchy · Rating 4 out of 5]

20october2019

read most probably back in 2008, past 8june.

[Amity · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oof, the story is good but this is definitely dated and it's hard to read all the slurs. I'll give it a 2.5 Free-Vee shows out of 5, rounded up.

Note: I ordered a copy of this from Thriftbooks and they sent me the one with the Arnie cover. Someone defaced the cover with the classics: twiddly mustache, a monocle, a bowtie, and a "Kick Me" sign on his shirt, which made me smile.

[PAR · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 Stars. Pretty good overall. I liked the format it was written in so you could read however much you wanted to in a sitting. Started out not that great and I didn’t care for the racism or the characters much at all. But it kept getting better and better throughout. I hadn’t seen the movie in a long time but I feel like this was very different. I’ll have to give the movie another watch to see.

[Ashton Beechler · Rating 5 out of 5]

amazing. had me hooked from the start, with the dystopian shit and everything. a quick little read where so much happens, and you get attached to the character and his family, and of course no one has a happy ending. i think it was done wonderfully, and man did it really have my stomach hurting there at the end. one of stephen’s best depictions of dying

[Mindy Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprisingly short for a Stephen King novel, but just as captivating. It's set in a dystopian future, making it a good introduction to Stephen King if you're coming from the YA dystopian genre and have no idea where to start. The ending took me by surprise, but it wrapped the book up perfectly.

[Ana Dordevic · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the story, but the writing was so tiring, except the last 50-ish pages which I finished in a day.

[AidanJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Doing a review of a Stephen King book? Very wise, Billy, very wise indeed!

Stephen King is one of those authors that just won’t go away, everywhere you look he has a book or a movie or something with his name written all over it.

Shawshank, It, Stand by Me, Stupid people in a Hotel in the Winter (The Shining), Stupid people in a House in the Winter (Misery). A lot of which have been made into movies, for better or for worse. On the good side you have Stanley Kubrick's version of “The Shining”, Shawshank Redemption, and The Dead Zone. On the worse side, you have the other “The Shining” movie, and The Running Man, or as its know by the kids today “I’M GONNA RAM MY FIST INTO YOUR STOMACH AND BREAK YOUR SPINE”.

It is not a good movie, it has nothing to do with the book besides the characters names. The quick and easiest movie adaptation. The book on the other hand is Stephen King at his “Meh”-est, but when it comes to writing books he holds himself to a pretty high standard so even something not great for him is something good.

The year is 2000 something or other and Tv has taken over America and the world, meh. People around the country are either filthy rich or living in poverty, heard it before. A big corporation controls everything from their immense wealth alone and have a stronger grip on society than the government, all you’re missing is aliens and you have the plot to Half-Life 2 or a giant talking head and you have the plot to 1984 or book burnings and you have Fahrenheit 451 or just one other changed detail and you can make a mad-libs science fiction story.

The main character is Ben Richards, an impoverished family man living in some city that totally isn’t Detroit whose year old daughter is sick with the flu . With no money and nothing to lose besides his family and his job and his house, Ben makes the decision to sell himself to the TV corporation to appear in a TV show that will (maybe) give him money and most likely kill him.

(I dare you to guess what show he appears on)

The rules of the game are that :
1: He must survive as an established international criminal for 30 consecutive days

2: He must everyday send in video tapes to the studio of 10 minute recordings of him doing anything.

3: A group of highly trained Tommy Lee Jones impersonators will hunt him for the extent of the game with the orders to kill him.

4: For every hour he is alive he earns money, killing a police officer earns him money, killing a hunter earns him money.

After going through 5 days of preparation, Ben is shipped out the door to compete with a 6 hour head start running with the whole world watching.

This story crosses the threshold from boring to worth reading from the beginning because its given in 3rd person but always focuses on Richards. For example, when after destroying a large building in Chicago and killing several police officers, Ben turns on a TV to see a news report showing pictures of the four dead officers. This causes him to, for the first time realize what he is doing and actually feel guilty for killing people, as corrupt as they may be.

The story really doesn't connect as well today compared to the year of writing because the best thing on television in 2014 is reruns of shows from the 1970’s-90’s and the annual things that everyone tunes into watch like the Super Bowl in the winter.

In the end the characters are all believable with conflicting origins and motives. The story, while not the most original, is still entertaining and not terribly long, so you could read this on a plane trip of you wanted. Presentation is done very well with the entire story being told in third person but still focusing on one character without shifting and the T-Minus XX counting down from 100 as the chapters was clever.

I would recommend this book if you have seen the movie and either really enjoyed it or really hated it. If you are a fan of Stephen King and his work, or if you are sitting in a library for 3 hours with nothing to do, like i was when I found this.

[lapetitesouris · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Hands pull with senile reflex for newsies to protect against the autumn cold, but the newsies ae no longer there, the Free-Vee has killed the last of them. Free-Vee is king of the world. Halleluiah."

Set in 2025 I read it because I finished watching the new Edgar Wright version (released in 2025, I see what you did there) which was supposedly more true to the book. So yes, yes it was, and is it wrong that I prefer the 1987 film version? "Here is Subzero - now PLAIN zero!" absolutely not, Arnold one liners forever. I don't even know what drugs the original filmmakers were on to call that film an adaptation of the book but again, those one liners.

The social commentary of the book is still relevant, the dated language not so much. Read it, don't read it, just watch the 1987 film instead.

[Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Running Man", a game show that the Americans of 2025 watch nightly with anticipation and enthusiasm. They watch because the free-vee and the Network tells them its entertainment! Ben Richards, a poor man living in the slums of Co-Op city, finds himself in a desperate situation of having no money to care for his wife and ill young daughter. To get the medicine his daughter needs, he decides all he can do is participate in this rigged game show for a chance to win the money he needs. The only thing he has to do is survive running and hiding constantly from the Gaming hunters and police for 30 days, and also avoid being recognized and ratted out by citizens (who are financially compensated for information leading to Richards capture). The record, however, is 8 days. I found some of the language a bit strange, but not so much that it distracted from the story. One part Hunger Games plus one part Schwarzenegger action movie (including the smart-ass one-liners) equals a good, short read from Richard Bachman.

[The Ether · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is better than a 3-star book, but not a 4-star one. Although it's pretty action-packed, my book is only 218 pages or so, but it took getting into 50-something pages before the game even started. There are also some weird references (both from HG Wells, one of the Morlocks (Time Machine) and the other of the aliens in War of the Worlds), passages that just plain don't belong, and some vocabulary used that's never explained. I feel Stephen King was in the midst of his alcoholism (and other drugs?) when he wrote this book. The ending was decently solid and a pleasant surprise, which (considering the plot of the book), was not easy to pull off.
PROS: Lots of action; mostly clearly defined good guys and bad guys; great and interesting plot; short, quick read; decent ending.
CONS: Weird inserts that were unnecessary and confusing; a number of items referenced multiple times that were never explained (a police "move-along", some items in the city); not alot of character development.

[Just Chad · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked this book a lot. It was fast paced, no messing around, it was straight to the story. I liked how the sections of the book were short and broken up because it made me feel like I was really reading a lot and progressing through the book quickly and it kept me at quite a pace. I liked the dystopian world King had put us in and I kinda wish I was able to explore the running man world more. King would drop little crumbs in the story that would unveil aspects of the dystopic world and I would always want to know more about it how twisted the place had become and why it had become that way.

Maybe I'm biased about the story because I am a big Stephen King fan, but if you like a fast book with exciting events, gruesome detail, and a heart pounding plot where the character you follow is literally being hunted then get this book because you'll love it.

[Sprite VT · Rating 4 out of 5]

I want to start off by saying there are so many trigger warnings if you are planning to read this I recommend looking them up prior to digging in. Blatant homophobia and racism in this book; I pushed through on a quest to read all of Stephen King’s works. Overall, Richards filled his role, but points deducted for not talking to more people about the truth of his daughter/wife. Dystopian society, maybe the first of the Hunger-Games-esque book trend. Writing style hard to read at times, points also deducted here for the racism/homophobia. Overall an interesting plot. Plot itself 10/10. Intrigue lost for the third quarter of the book. His logic seemed a tad flawed (highly intelligent, yet intentionally opening his wounds 5? Times). I did enjoy most all other aspects. Very dark read.

[K · Rating 3 out of 5]

Listened to the audiobook. I remember very little. It was ok, but I feel like nothing happened. I keep wondering if i skipped ahead in the audiobook by mistake, or if I got distracted and stopped listening, or if nothing actually happened. After the hour of listening today, I’m going with the last option. King is just long winded.

[Nathan Carbone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, I loved every thing about this book. Except maybe the weird sexual/racist comments. Gotta love Stephen King lol

A fast paced, political satire/dystopian novel about a poor man sticking it to the man. Running to rewatch the movie after this read. *UPDATE* Movie was much worse than I remember as a kid lol

[Joanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although this book picked up about 3/4 of the way through, I started it a month before I finished and read about 6 books in between. That is pretty unusual for me and says something about how much interest the book held for me.

[Sarah Goodner · Rating 4 out of 5]

It amazes me how ahead of his times Stephen King was with this story. Very Hunger Games-ish. There were a couple of scenes that absolutely terrified me, like when the main character is hiding in the sewer system. This was my first Bachman book, and I think I like King's later works better.

[Joel Barnhill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very fun, but kind of a weak ending. I liked the world building in this book, the freevee is so dystopian and something I could totally believe happening. I also really enjoyed the way the “on-the-run” was played out until the ending.

[Stacie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book! I am sad that it took me this long to get to it. It was a cross between Farenheit 451, 1984, and The Hunger Games- so great!

[Brett James · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not hard to believe Stephen King's claim that he wrote this book in a week. It was later adapted to a far smarter Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.

[KansasOVGirly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good but I like the movie better. I enjoy the books motivations for Richards more than the movie motivations but the movie is better overall

[Daniel Flores · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book

[Cory · Rating 4 out of 5]

Certainly enjoyable, quick read.

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exciting story with the momentum constantly ratcheting up and a satisfying ending, what a treat for a King book 😀 errr... Bachman book. These were the shoulders the Hunger Games stood on.

[Safwan Alvi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intense, thoughtful and action-packed, King is on top form as he proves that he can handle the action-thriller genre as well as horror. One of his best and most rereadable books.

[Lucy Lissy Lamar · Rating 2 out of 5]

i’ve read the most dangerous game too many times for me to have even enjoyed this book