The Running Man
Paperback original, 1982
The Running Man was first published in 1982 as a Signet paperback original, one of five novels King released under the pseudonym Richard Bachman in quick succession. Written in ten days while King was still a struggling unknown, it is set in 2025 America, where a rigid class divide separates the employed from the permanently poor. Ben Richards lives in Co-Op City, south of the canal, a zone of stripped cars, cycle gangs, and government-mandated Free-Vee screens that pipe network programming into every apartment by law. Desperate for money to treat his sick infant daughter, Richards enters the Games Network's most extreme program: The Running Man, in which contestants are hunted across the country by professional killers while the public watches and collects bounties. The novel's dystopian machinery is economic as much as political. The game show is not merely spectacle; it is the logical endpoint of a society that has nothing to offer its underclass except the chance to die entertainingly. The Bachman pseudonym was eventually exposed in 1985, after which the books were reissued under King's name. The novel has been adapted to film twice: the 1987 version with Arnold Schwarzenegger borrowed the premise but discarded nearly everything else, while a 2025 adaptation directed by Edgar Wright and starring Glen Powell stays considerably closer to the source material.
Softcover. First Edition, Paperback Original. New York: Signet / New American Library, 1982. ISBN: 0451115082. #10744.
Binding is slightly warped and there is some slight wear to covers, but otherwise a near fine, unread copy.
Softcover. First Edition, Paperback Original. New York: Signet / New American Library, 1982. ISBN: 0451115082. #10744.
Binding is slightly warped and there is some slight wear to covers, but otherwise a near fine, unread copy.