Did Stephen King predict the future in "the running man"
Did Stephen King predict the future in "the running man"
Did he? Or was it like that even back then? I'm reading this book, and it's like a carbon copy of our world in the US nowadays. I keep yelling "oh my god, this is basically happening right now!!!" Not as blatant and (I don't know the word) as in the book, but essentially the same. The book is like now, but on steroids (to explain the word I'm missing). The divide/polarization, the police brutality, the pollution, corporations and exploitation, the government's overreach..... Etc, it's all here now.
More a student of history than a predictor of the future. What's happening in the world at the moment is nothing new, human societies are pretty predictable, at a broad scale.
One man is born with immense wealth, grows up to gain even more wealth and total control of an entire geographic region and wants to control more land, wealth and people ... his thirst for power is insatiable and costing the lives of hundreds, thousands and even millions of people.
Guess the century.
All of them
Umpteenth.
Rome?
My stoned ass was a prophet in the back of a Chevy Cavalier. My history teacher was pretty adamant about the importance of the field but tried to make it as interesting as possible. Even just watching hotel Rwanda spurred a week of curiosity and lessons
If you think that’s prescient, try King’s “The Dead Zone”. It’s about a president who makes insane campaign promises (“put pollution in garbage bags and send it to space”), has rallies with mixture of party vibes and violent populism, and who has a signature hat.
God damn. Definitely reading that next.
Same as it ever was.
That divide/polarization, the police brutality, pollution ... All of it... It has been going on for a long time.
It is all here now. But it was all there then too.
That's just sad. I didn't grow up in the US, so I don't know much about its recent history, aside from what I've read/watched on TV.
Haven't read it yet, but a lot of Stephen King books can feel that way. Stephen is more political then you think, so no shock he could see the direction we were heading.
That or someone high up in our political system read as a to do book. How I feel about 1984, scary watching parts of that book become reality now.
Sci Fi is about the time it was written in, with a veneer of futurism to distance it enough to make it not a politicial polemic.
Hitchhikers Guide is about 70s Britain
Foundation is about 50's Europe
Handmaids Tale is about post-WW2 thru 80s colonialism in Africa
F 451 is about 50s America...
Oh, new movie coming out this year! Not a remake, but closer to the book.
I saw some videos about it on YouTube.
With thousands of sci-fi books being written every year, one of them is bound to be an accurate prediction.
And "like now, but on steroids" is basically the definition of the sci-fi genre.You know what they say: the 80's are back, baby!
If you like this type of science fiction, could I interest you in The Space Merchants and Gladiator At Law by Frederik Pohl and CM Kornbluth? More prescient and much more biting, in my opinion. Also much earlier, having been written in the 1950s.
You absolutely could. And thank you. Put them on the list. I've been reading nonfiction my whole life and I just picked up fiction recently and I kinda like it.
I didn’t know he wrote that. Apparently I got to the book before he was outed.
You could take elements of any novel set in a dystopian future and find commonalities. Like the other commenter said, it’s likely that shitty people were given ideas by these books instead of being warned off.
thats how I feel when playing cyberpunk accept like just over the horizon.
Try DeadZone next!!!
I didn't even know he had written such book. It's next. Thank you
No. A can of coke does not cost 6 dollars.
Hoping that image worked.
Well, he predicted that us would have fully online elections in The Running Man, meanwhile the us 🤡