February, 2016: "The Running Man" by Stephen King

	Author: Stephen King
	Genre: Science fiction
	Published: 1982
	Pages: 242
	Reading started: January 7th, 2016
	Current progress: Page 242 of 242 (100%)
	Reading ended: January 11th, 2016. This book was successfully finished in 4 days.
	Final review score: 4 of 5

Description

Wikipedia: The Running Man is a science fiction novel by Stephen King, first published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman in 1982 as a paperback original. It was collected in 1985 in the omnibus The Bachman Books. The novel is set in a dystopian United States during the year 2025, in which the nation’s economy is in ruins and world violence is rising.

The story follows protagonist Ben Richards as he participates in the game show The Running Man in which contestants, allowed to go anywhere in the world, are chased by "Hunters" employed to kill them.

The book has a total of 101 chapters, laid out in a "countdown" format. The first is titled "Minus 100 and Counting …" with the numbers decreasing, until the last chapter, "Minus 000 and Counting" (or, in some versions, merely "000").

The Running Man was loosely adapted into a film with the same name, which was released five years after the book in 1987. The film starred Arnold Schwarzenegger as Richards. The film was later made into a video game released on several home computer platforms.