The Long Walk

Early in the writing career of Stephen King, he published a series of books under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. At the time, nobody knew that Bachman was King, but years later the cat was let out of the bag. One of the novels, The Running Man, I read a few months ago. It's a story about a government-sponsored contest where a participant is hunted down by the military. The longer he stays alive, the more money he earns, and after a certain point he "wins" and the hunt stops. The character in this story doesn't win. More recently, I read a Bachman novel called The Long Walk. It is similar to The Running Man in that it takes place in an alternate, more disturbing, version of the U.S. It's about a voluntary walking competition among 100 teenage boys. They start walking and must maintain a pace of at least four miles per hour, or 15-minute miles. If anyone falls off the pace for 30 seconds, he gets a warning. After three warnings, he gets a ticket. Here's the catch: "getting a ticket" means being shot dead. Soldiers ride alongside the walkers in half-tracks, monitoring the pace and preparing to kill anyone who gets a ticket. The winner gets a prize of whatever he wants for the rest of his life. The remaining 99 die. The novel focuses on a select few of the walkers and explores why they entered the contest and how their mindsets change as time progresses.