The Long Walk
The Long Walk is a dystopian horror novel by American writer Stephen King, published in 1979, under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. It was collected in 1985 in the hardcover omnibus The Bachman Books, and has seen several reprints since, as both paperback and hardback. Set in a future dystopian America, ruled by a totalitarian and militaristic dictator, the plot revolves around the contestants of a grueling, annual walking contest. In 2000, the American Library Association listed The Long Walk as one of the 100 best books for teenage readers published between 1966 and 2000.
Stats for nerds
3recommend
10mentions
9people
2011–2025years
30% recommend70% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I think Orson Scott Card summed it up pretty well.
> Let me assure you that King's work most definitely is literature, because it was written to be published and is read with admiration. What Snyder really means is that it is not the literature preferred by the academic-literary elite.
Your post drips of some odd dislike for Stephen King. I can't speak to that, but just like many of us don't understand paying millions for a white canvas with 3 lines on it, we also don't understand calling someone who is as obviously talented as Stephen King a hack, or spending the time trying to denigrate him (his awards are purely political, but the awards he hasn't gotten somehow aren't?).
Either way I'm out. I think I'll go read The Long Walk again.
- It also has a completely predictable plot and many deux ex machinas to get our heroine out of a hopeless jam. Its plot is similar to Stephen King's "The Long Walk" which is a far better (and grimmer) book.
- I really enjoyed Stephen King's The Long Walk in addition to a few others already mentioned.
- And before that there was The Running Man and The Long Walk both by Stephen King (as Richard Bachman) that were about deadly game shows / contests in futuristic dystopias.
- IIRC, Stephen King's "The Running Man" and "The Long Walk" predate both Battle Royale and Hunger Games and deal with similar themes.
- Stephen King's "The Long Walk" was published in 1979
"Every year, on the first day of May, one hundred teenage boys meet for an event known through- out the country as "The Long Walk." Among this year's chosen crop is sixteen-year-old Ray Gar- raty. He knows the rules: that wamings are issued if you fall under speed, stumble, sit down. That after three wamings... you get your ticket. And what happens then serves as a chilling reminder that there can be only one winner in the Walk— the one that survives"
