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
Rome?
Tale as old as time
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.
Let’s hope “The Stand” isn’t next.
That one is in my digital library literally staring at me everyday. I don’t know why I keep putting it off. I think I’ll read it after I read the deadzone then.
I highly recommend it. The stand is one of those novels I reread every few years.
Which one do you think is better deadzone of the stand?
The stand, just because it’s a much bigger scale novel with lots of interesting characters, world building, and a lot of story.
The dead zone is one I probably won’t reread. But it’s definitely worth it once, like most of King’s work. And the fact that it has uncomfortable parallels to Trump and the MAGA movement adds another element.
Damn. I’ll put it on the list for next
God damn. Definitely reading that next.
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…
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.
Oh, new movie coming out this year! Not a remake, but closer to the book.
Looking forward to something more true to the source, but that being said, the original Running Man film scratches the '80s action thriller itch for sure. I have a soft spot for those movies.
Considering how the book ends, I am not hopeful for an overly faithful retelling.
Ha, I think it would be therapeutic.
I saw some videos about it on YouTube.
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.
That is right guy up my alley, I love finding old sci-fi.
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.
Well, he predicted that us would have fully online elections in The Running Man, meanwhile the us 🤡
