Lets just summarise the plot of this 1982 novel with an eye motif on the cover:
1. The story's protagonist, Ben Richards, is a citizen of Co-Op City in the year 2025
2. The world's economy is in a shambles, and America has become a totalitarian dystopia
3. Richards is unable to find work, having been blacklisted from his trade. In desperation, Richards turns to the Games Network, a government-operated television station that runs violent game shows. After rigorous physical and mental testing, Richards is selected to appear on The Running Man, the Games Network's most popular program.
4. The contestant is declared an enemy of the state and released with a 12-hour head start before the Hunters, an elite team of Games Network-employed hitmen, are sent out to kill him.
5. Viewers can receive cash rewards for informing the Games Network of the runner's whereabouts.
6. The runner is given $4,800 and a pocket video camera before he leaves the studio. He can travel anywhere in the world, and each day he must videotape two messages and mail them back to the studio for broadcasting.
7. In Boston, he is tracked down by the Hunters and only manages to escape by setting off an explosion
8. He narrowly escapes through a sewer pipe and emerges in the city's impoverished ghetto, where he takes shelter with gang member Bradley Throckmorton and his family. Richards learns from Bradley that the air is severely polluted and that the poor are kept down as a permanent underclass. Bradley also says that the Games Network exists only as a propaganda machine to pacify and distract the public.
9. Richards tries to incorporate this information into his video messages, but finds that the Network dubs over his voice with obscenities and threats during the broadcast.
10. Bradley smuggles Richards past a government checkpoint to Manchester, New Hampshire.
11. Richards makes his way to an airport in Derry, Maine. Richards has a standoff at the airport and manages to bluff his way past Evan McCone, the lead Hunter, onto a plane by pretending he is carrying high-quality plastic explosives.
12. He has the plane fly low over populated areas. He overpowers the flight crew and kills McCone, who mortally wounds him, Richards uses his last strength to override the plane's autopilot and fly the plane toward the skyscraper housing the Games Network.
13. The book ends with the plane crashing into the tower, resulting in the deaths of Richards and Killian. The novel comes to a close with the description, "...and it rained fire twenty blocks away."
Pretty prophetic!
