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AUTHOR-RIchard Bachman AKA Stephen King
FORMAT-Paperback
FIRST TIME READING-No
COST-$2
This was one of the first 5 Stephen King books I read.What drew me to it at first was not only did it contain 4 complete novels,it also had The Running Man. I had recently seen the movie. So wanted to read the novel.
I am sure people reading this know why King wrote books under the Bachman pen name. And why he revealed this secret.The four novels this collection reprints were pretty hard to find before it was known King was Bachman. Once that piece of knowledge got out they became super hard to find. So this collection was published to not only give the fans a way to read these stories. But there was so much demand the publishing company knew they would make a nice profit.
Well onto the stories in the collection. Gonna do them from worst to best.
Roadwork-A already slightly deranged man finds out his house is being demolished to make way for a road. And we get to see his mental state goto shit. As he plans out a way to prevent this road. What makes this the worst novel in the collection to me is that it is way to long. The idea is decent. But it would work much better as a short story.
The Running Man-Set in a dsytopic future. We get the story of a man who is trying to keep his family living. His son is deathly ill.Mostly because of all the pollution in the air. He ends up on The Running Man gameshow. Where he hopes to make enough money to provide for his family's well being. As you can see already the story is very different from the film. The film just takes a few ideas from this story and changes so much. There is no arena in the book. Instead our hero is hiding in the cities and countryside. I enjoy the film. With it being one of the few Arnold action films I can still watch and enjoy. The book though is so much better. I would love to see a proper adaptation of the book. But I doubt that will happen.
Rage-This story is the reason why this collection is now out of print. And according to Mr King this story will never be reprinted. Thankfully it is really easy to find this collection in used bookstores for cheap. The store I got it from usually has at least 5 copies on the shelf. This is a tale of a high school student. He has some emotional issues. And is about to be kicked out of school. So he shows up to school with a pistol. And takes his morning class hostage. I know of at least two incidents where someone who had read this story tried to take a high school class hostage. Because of that and various school shootings Mr King asked that this collection be taken out of print. I understand why he felt he should do this.
The Long Walk-It is somewhat uncommon for King to write science fiction. This story set in the near future is one of my favorite non-Dark Tower books from King. Every year 100 young men start on the long walk. You have to walk a non-stop. And keep up at least a minimum speed. If you break any of the rules you get a warning. Three warnings and you are killed. The walk keeps going until there is only one person left.I am really surprised that so far this hasn't been adapted into a film or an episode of a TV show.
Even the worst novel in this collection is worth and read. With the best two being 2 of my favorite Stephen King books.
The Bachman Books gets a 4.15 outta 5.
