The rules are simple: stay alive and stay ahead of Evan McCone and his Hunters for 30 days.

Ben Richards, out of work, can’t stand the sight of his little girl’s battle to stay alive and his wife’s desperation. The biggest of them all is The Running Man. It’s the day of the ultimate reality game show and the poor line up eagerly at the Games Headquarters, hoping to get accepted as contestants on the big money games. In the eyes of the rich, the working class are a disposable commodity. The action is also fast paced and, though the novel differs from much of King's other work, the sardonic social commentary reveals a pleasing glimmer of King's characteristically twisted sense of humor.America, 2025: In the eyes of the Government, the poor, the working class are a nuisance, easy to keep controlled with free cigarettes and free television. The future world it depicts is vividly captured with a few essential details. The Running Man is a short book, tightly written to be read and enjoyed quickly. Unfortunately, few ever win the game in fact, as the producer tells Richards, in six years no one has survived. In this game, the stakes and the prizes are raised. After a rigorous battery of physical and mental examinations, Richards is assigned 'Elevator Six'-the path of a chosen few-that leads to The Running Man game. The games include Treadmill to Bucks, in which heart-attack prone contestants struggle to outlast a progressively demanding treadmill, or the accurately named Swim the Crocodiles. Not able to afford medicine, Richards enters himself in the last-chance money-making scheme of the Free-Vee games. King establishes characters quickly, creating sympathy in the first few pages for Ben Richards-whose 18-month-old baby girl is suffering from a horrible cough, perhaps pneumonia. A bit of a departure from the supernatural horror that is most frequently associated with his work, the novel describes a science fiction dystopia where market capitalism and television game shows have spiraled out of control, and the separation between the haves and the have-nots has been formalized with separate currencies.

Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman) crafted The Running Man early in his career, though after such mega-hits as Carrie and The Shining.

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