If Ben Richards’ do-or-die objective hooked you—the way he signs onto the Games to save Cathy, outwits Hunters like Evan McCone, and ultimately hijacks a jet to ram the Games Building—then you’ll click with Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games. She volunteers to protect her sister, navigates a booby-trapped arena designed for ratings, and uses the spectacle itself as a weapon. Like Richards facing Killian’s rigged network, Katniss learns to play to the cameras while refusing to be owned by them.

You liked the survival calculus of The Running Man: Richards mailing tapes from safe houses, disguising himself on the run, and weighing every alley or elevator against a bullet. In Battle Royale, a class of students is forced into a government program with shock collars, limited supplies, and a shrinking safe zone. Characters like Shuya, Noriko, and the battle-scarred Kawada constantly improvise tactics and alliances—echoing Richards’ desperate, hour-by-hour fight to live one more day.

If the Games Network’s ratings machine and Killian’s slick exploitation resonated—with Richards’ poverty in Co-Op City and televised manhunt packaged as prime-time fun—then The Space Merchants will hit the same nerve. Ad executives engineer reality itself, selling a colonization scheme while grinding down consumers and laborers. Like Richards exposing the Network’s lie by crashing their own plane into their tower, this novel skewers how corporate spectacle devours truth and people alike.

If you felt the pinch of class cruelty driving Richards—unemployment lines, his daughter’s illness, and a system that leaves him only the Games—Parable of the Sower digs even deeper. Lauren Olamina flees a collapsing neighborhood, confronts company towns and debt slavery, and builds Earthseed from scraps of safety and hope. Where Richards weaponizes a hijacked jet to strike back at the elite, Lauren uses vision, community, and relentless pragmatism to carve a path through a rigged world.

If the breathless momentum of The Running Man thrilled you—Richards’ sprints between safe houses, the airport gauntlet, and the final kamikaze strike on the Games Building—then Altered Carbon delivers that same throttle. Ex-Envoy Takeshi Kovacs is resleeved into a corrupt future and is soon neck-deep in ambushes, ultra-violent set pieces, and conspiracies. Like Richards dodging McCone’s Hunters through a city that wants him dead, Kovacs fights a system that’s designed to erase people like him.