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The Running Man
[Front Cover]"No One Was Safe From The Powerful Force That Reached From The Stars To Invade Men's Minds."[Back Cover]" 'Jeffrey Munro! Munro!'The shout cut through the night, punctuated with the slap of running feet on cement. Before Jeff could turn, he was jerked off his feet and whirled around by the clutch of two hands on his shoulders. He found himself staring into the frantic eyes of a stranger. 'Who are you?' he asked, startled.'I can't tell you my name,' the man said. 'I'm simply a man, Mr. Munro---a man running for his life!''And why did you run to me?''Because you're my only help in the world. Because whether or not I stay alive, someone else must know what I know...'And what The Running Man knew was incredible and horrifying. But before the night was over, the man was dead, and Jeff had to believe. And he had to find a way to destroy the evil power that was loose in the world, a power capable of ruling the entire universe."
- GenresScience FictionFiction
142 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1963
1 person is currently reading
35 people want to read
About the author
J. Hunter Holly
21 books17 followersJoan Carol Holly was a science fiction author who wrote under the pseudonym J. Hunter Holly in the late 1950s until the mid-1970s. Joan Holly also contributed stories for Roger Elwood's series of books and sci-fi magazines, under both her real name(Joan C. Holly) and her pseudonym (Joan Hunter Holly).
Joan died of lung cancer in 1982.
Joan died of lung cancer in 1982.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 28, 2016
This is a fun read. There is a religious movement called Heralds for Peace, or the HFP for short. No one is quite nutral about it. Everyone either hates it or loves it and those who love it are all part of it. It is also growing. That, of course, means that people who hate it are somehow being won over. A professor of political science takes it upon himself to investigate the movement and soon finds out that the leaders are in contact with space aliens. It is also found out that there is a plot afoot to enslave the people of the Earth. The question is just who is actually trying to bring about that enslavement. Is it the space aliens? Is it the HFP? Is it the forces opposed to the HFP? So as not to introduce a spoiler here I will let you read it and find out for yourself. You just might be surprised.
By the way, I wish the author would realize that calling someone a communist is not necessarily an insult. Some people are proud to be called communist.
By the way, I wish the author would realize that calling someone a communist is not necessarily an insult. Some people are proud to be called communist.
August 24, 2025
J. Hunter Holly's 1963 The Running Man is an entertaining science fiction novel of paranoid intensity, with the walls closing in tighter and tighter, frustratingly, eerily, paralyzingly.
The piece starts with a bang as Jeff Munro, associate professor of political science at Union College, a man whose classes and the student clubs he advises are popular, and to whom "[p]eople listened because he was willing to put his reputation and emotions on the line" (1963 Monarch paperback, page 5), coming across a literally murderous riot. The road through the town of Bolin is blocked by "a huge mass of people, milling about, surging one way and then another," while overhead hangs a banner advertising a lecture by the group Jeff considers "lunatics," the Heralds for Peace (page 6).
Soon the enraged crowd begins, quaintly and to my taste rather unbelievably for the Western world, actually stoning the unwelcome speaker, so Munro with due heroics, fisticuffs, and luck manages to save the "stiff and unyielding" woman haranguing the townsfolk, "Painted women are the devil's tools... And they raise the devil's children. You're wicked, all of you, and infiltrated with Communists. There are only two choices--HFP or Communism. If you're against HFP, then--" (page 9).
At this eloquent sample of the master rhetorician's art, though, I should pause to mention the single, or perhaps double-sided, weakness at the center of the book. First, who exactly are HFP supposed to be, publicly? That is, their name to me suggests Commies, Reds, or at least Pinkos--you know, people who want to ban the Bomb, ignore the repression and gulags of the Soviet Union and the virulence of Mao, and cheer on any so-called people's revolution anywhere, even if it leads to merely a different kind of dictatorship--except the speaker specifically says HFP opposes Communism, too. And then the religious stuff like no makeup (pages 9, 11), no girdles or bras (page 33), and wanting to minister to the presumed heathens of Iran (page 33) or Denver (page 38) or Africa (page 74)-- Well, what do these have to do with peace? Strange.
And equally strange is the response of the mainstream world to these ill-defined kooks. After rescuing the HFP speaker from the stoning mob in the town whose very "sheriff was leading them" (page 9), Jeff tells the woman's daughter that it was their "[r]eligious fanaticism" that "cause[d] decent people to stand in the street and throw stones at another human being" (page 13). One actually could wonder whether the members of such a lynch--or stoning--mob are decent people at all, and in fact likely would conclude they are not, or else they wouldn't have done such things after merely being hectored by oddballs, but even when the daughter protests, still Jeff insists the attack was "A result you caused" (page 13; emphasis original).
As if this sentiment coming from a supposedly open-minded academic isn't strange enough, we also discover that "[h]is Political Science Club [meeting] on Tuesday nights" (page 94) already has "voted not to allow HFP speakers on campus," and at the beginning of any HFP sentiment being voiced, a student reminds Munro indignantly, "You voted with us!" (page 100). Apparently Jeff's own poly sci students haven't been taught to debate and or to evaluate what makes sense and what doesn't, and if any sympathetic talk of HFP continues, "[t]he boys" in the tiered room will stomp "down the aisle, two abreast, their jaws set, their eyes leveled," "chant[ing]" loud enough to drown out the unwanted speaker, "HFP is on the march,...but we will save the world! HFP is on the march, but we will save the world!" (page 101; emphasis original). "It's what they've been chanting all over the world," explains Cory, Jeff's friend. "It's the prelude to violence!" (page 101)...and then, yes, these college students start to riot (pages 101-102) as easily as the unlettered bumpkins of Bolin. Again, this isn't some mid-'50s McCarthyism against a worldwide Communist menace but college-educated people against...well, what, no one exactly seems to know.
Although these flaws needed to be mentioned, because they ring so peculiarly to any discerning reader, I actually don't wish to stress them over-much, for this truly is otherwise a very good book. The author hypes up the powderkeg atmosphere with these weird contradictions, but then she mercifully sweeps them away and focuses instead on the true threat.
Shortly after Jeff's rescue of the woman from the deadly mob, and his resultant anti-HFP article in the paper that makes the "tall and blond" (page 15) Cory warn his friend "angrily" (page 15) that he's "chipping away at a lion's den" (page 16), Jeff is literally grabbed on the street by a man with "frantic eyes" and a "breath that smell[s] of panic" (page 16), "shivering, his clothes disheveled, wrinkled and splotched with mud stains," and with "the face of a wild man" and "eyes rak[ing] Jeff's frantically" (page 17): the Running Man. The teaser on page 1 already tells us that this fellow is going to die soon, but before he does, he tells Munro a story about "the HFP cult," and "something more sinister" than simply its followers "tak[ing] up" its "dogma" (page 19).
According to the man who had "read their pamphlets" and once "thought maybe they had the answer to the world situation" but who then "held back" because "[s]omething struck [him] wrong" (page 19), one time at night out in the woods he saw "this glow," but the head goon of the compound "wouldn't hear of" him investigating further, and with a "threatening" tone sent him back to bed (page 20). And another time he "saw little men--little, short men--two of them--and they didn't like [his] seeing them and they ran off, and [he] lost track of them" (page 20). Then at "the initiation ceremony" in his cubicle with "this one lighted word, 'Meditate,'" on the wall, he "felt eyes on [him] and knew that something was going to happen to [him] because [he] had pried too deeply, and [he] knew that the initiation is what changes people and--" (page 20). OK. Secretive compound, creepy glow in the woods, enigmatic "little men"-- Yeah, now we're gettin' into some '60s science fiction!
The Running Man seemed like a nut, but after he is run down in the street--by "a big blue car" (page 25), exactly what he predicted would be following them (page 22)--the "chill[ed]" (page 27) Jeff realizes it wasn't just some crazy story. Heralds for Peace may be, as he tells the handsome Cory, the staunch sidekick with "tailored suits, Italian shoes, [and] sports cars" (page 31), some sort of "sham cult with sham members" (page 34)...but it is deeper than that, too. There is murder, there is the subtle hint of saucer-ism, and there are unknown plots and the unseen tendrils of an organization that already boasts "ten United States Senators," along with the hope for "gain[ing] eighteen more in the fall elections," "[a]nd governors--[they] have those, too" (page 44). But I'll say no more, because the enjoyable revelations should be for the reader to encounter in due time.
J. Hunter Holly's The Running Man is a thoroughly enjoyable piece of cloying, creepy '60s SF, and once I deduct for the contradiction of the political science professor who blames the victims of a riot and voted to prohibit debating certain viewpoints, it still is a solid read of 4.5 stars, which of course round right up to 5.
The piece starts with a bang as Jeff Munro, associate professor of political science at Union College, a man whose classes and the student clubs he advises are popular, and to whom "[p]eople listened because he was willing to put his reputation and emotions on the line" (1963 Monarch paperback, page 5), coming across a literally murderous riot. The road through the town of Bolin is blocked by "a huge mass of people, milling about, surging one way and then another," while overhead hangs a banner advertising a lecture by the group Jeff considers "lunatics," the Heralds for Peace (page 6).
Soon the enraged crowd begins, quaintly and to my taste rather unbelievably for the Western world, actually stoning the unwelcome speaker, so Munro with due heroics, fisticuffs, and luck manages to save the "stiff and unyielding" woman haranguing the townsfolk, "Painted women are the devil's tools... And they raise the devil's children. You're wicked, all of you, and infiltrated with Communists. There are only two choices--HFP or Communism. If you're against HFP, then--" (page 9).
At this eloquent sample of the master rhetorician's art, though, I should pause to mention the single, or perhaps double-sided, weakness at the center of the book. First, who exactly are HFP supposed to be, publicly? That is, their name to me suggests Commies, Reds, or at least Pinkos--you know, people who want to ban the Bomb, ignore the repression and gulags of the Soviet Union and the virulence of Mao, and cheer on any so-called people's revolution anywhere, even if it leads to merely a different kind of dictatorship--except the speaker specifically says HFP opposes Communism, too. And then the religious stuff like no makeup (pages 9, 11), no girdles or bras (page 33), and wanting to minister to the presumed heathens of Iran (page 33) or Denver (page 38) or Africa (page 74)-- Well, what do these have to do with peace? Strange.
And equally strange is the response of the mainstream world to these ill-defined kooks. After rescuing the HFP speaker from the stoning mob in the town whose very "sheriff was leading them" (page 9), Jeff tells the woman's daughter that it was their "[r]eligious fanaticism" that "cause[d] decent people to stand in the street and throw stones at another human being" (page 13). One actually could wonder whether the members of such a lynch--or stoning--mob are decent people at all, and in fact likely would conclude they are not, or else they wouldn't have done such things after merely being hectored by oddballs, but even when the daughter protests, still Jeff insists the attack was "A result you caused" (page 13; emphasis original).
As if this sentiment coming from a supposedly open-minded academic isn't strange enough, we also discover that "[h]is Political Science Club [meeting] on Tuesday nights" (page 94) already has "voted not to allow HFP speakers on campus," and at the beginning of any HFP sentiment being voiced, a student reminds Munro indignantly, "You voted with us!" (page 100). Apparently Jeff's own poly sci students haven't been taught to debate and or to evaluate what makes sense and what doesn't, and if any sympathetic talk of HFP continues, "[t]he boys" in the tiered room will stomp "down the aisle, two abreast, their jaws set, their eyes leveled," "chant[ing]" loud enough to drown out the unwanted speaker, "HFP is on the march,...but we will save the world! HFP is on the march, but we will save the world!" (page 101; emphasis original). "It's what they've been chanting all over the world," explains Cory, Jeff's friend. "It's the prelude to violence!" (page 101)...and then, yes, these college students start to riot (pages 101-102) as easily as the unlettered bumpkins of Bolin. Again, this isn't some mid-'50s McCarthyism against a worldwide Communist menace but college-educated people against...well, what, no one exactly seems to know.
Although these flaws needed to be mentioned, because they ring so peculiarly to any discerning reader, I actually don't wish to stress them over-much, for this truly is otherwise a very good book. The author hypes up the powderkeg atmosphere with these weird contradictions, but then she mercifully sweeps them away and focuses instead on the true threat.
Shortly after Jeff's rescue of the woman from the deadly mob, and his resultant anti-HFP article in the paper that makes the "tall and blond" (page 15) Cory warn his friend "angrily" (page 15) that he's "chipping away at a lion's den" (page 16), Jeff is literally grabbed on the street by a man with "frantic eyes" and a "breath that smell[s] of panic" (page 16), "shivering, his clothes disheveled, wrinkled and splotched with mud stains," and with "the face of a wild man" and "eyes rak[ing] Jeff's frantically" (page 17): the Running Man. The teaser on page 1 already tells us that this fellow is going to die soon, but before he does, he tells Munro a story about "the HFP cult," and "something more sinister" than simply its followers "tak[ing] up" its "dogma" (page 19).
According to the man who had "read their pamphlets" and once "thought maybe they had the answer to the world situation" but who then "held back" because "[s]omething struck [him] wrong" (page 19), one time at night out in the woods he saw "this glow," but the head goon of the compound "wouldn't hear of" him investigating further, and with a "threatening" tone sent him back to bed (page 20). And another time he "saw little men--little, short men--two of them--and they didn't like [his] seeing them and they ran off, and [he] lost track of them" (page 20). Then at "the initiation ceremony" in his cubicle with "this one lighted word, 'Meditate,'" on the wall, he "felt eyes on [him] and knew that something was going to happen to [him] because [he] had pried too deeply, and [he] knew that the initiation is what changes people and--" (page 20). OK. Secretive compound, creepy glow in the woods, enigmatic "little men"-- Yeah, now we're gettin' into some '60s science fiction!
The Running Man seemed like a nut, but after he is run down in the street--by "a big blue car" (page 25), exactly what he predicted would be following them (page 22)--the "chill[ed]" (page 27) Jeff realizes it wasn't just some crazy story. Heralds for Peace may be, as he tells the handsome Cory, the staunch sidekick with "tailored suits, Italian shoes, [and] sports cars" (page 31), some sort of "sham cult with sham members" (page 34)...but it is deeper than that, too. There is murder, there is the subtle hint of saucer-ism, and there are unknown plots and the unseen tendrils of an organization that already boasts "ten United States Senators," along with the hope for "gain[ing] eighteen more in the fall elections," "[a]nd governors--[they] have those, too" (page 44). But I'll say no more, because the enjoyable revelations should be for the reader to encounter in due time.
J. Hunter Holly's The Running Man is a thoroughly enjoyable piece of cloying, creepy '60s SF, and once I deduct for the contradiction of the political science professor who blames the victims of a riot and voted to prohibit debating certain viewpoints, it still is a solid read of 4.5 stars, which of course round right up to 5.
March 12, 2022
What a great book! I recall having this book when I was around 12 or 13 years old (many, many years ago) and it was the cover that stayed with me over the years as well as the red edged pages. I was thrilled to bits when I spotted it on eBay as I've been trying to find a copy for years.
A great fast paced story about Jeff Munro, who encounters a frightened man running for his very life from a cult of sorts called Herald for Peace. But all is not what it seems and as Munro investigates Herald for Peace, he too becomes The Running Man. Even his best friend turns against him. His only hope, his associate from the FBI.
A taught and gripping sci-fi thriller, which I'm now pleased to own. Fantastic!
A great fast paced story about Jeff Munro, who encounters a frightened man running for his very life from a cult of sorts called Herald for Peace. But all is not what it seems and as Munro investigates Herald for Peace, he too becomes The Running Man. Even his best friend turns against him. His only hope, his associate from the FBI.
A taught and gripping sci-fi thriller, which I'm now pleased to own. Fantastic!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 17, 2020
Romanzo leggero e divertente, forse a tratti un po' troppo semplice, ma che si lascia leggere.
December 30, 2020
would give a 3.5 actually
Decent, average 1950s-style science fiction story plot-line.
Decent, average 1950s-style science fiction story plot-line.
November 27, 2014
1986 Grade A-
2012 grade B+
2012 grade B+
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews