My favorite fantasy worlds tend to be jam-packed with fascinating nuggets of worldbuilding, details that help to flesh out the setting and give us a better sense of the places and societies in which the story unfolds. Sports and games, in particular, can contribute to our understanding of the culture of a fantasy or sci-fi world, even if they aren’t central to the narrative. These pastimes—whether played for fun or for much higher stakes—bring the structure of competition into magical and futuristic worlds, and hell, I just wanna give them a go!
The Teeth Show — Gentleman Bastards Sequence by Scott Lynch
I’m starting things off with quite possibly the deadliest sport on the list. Sure, I would try it—but only if my safety was guaranteed, which admittedly sort of ruins the point. Never mind that I’m not proficient with any weapons whatsoever (I once had a rather unfortunate accident involving nunchucks; I’ll let you fill in the blanks).
The Berangias sisters of Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora are contrarequiallas—female-only warriors who battle wolf sharks in deadly gladiatorial combat. The twin sisters are the stars of this brutal sport, taking down their vicious shark opponents with remarkable grace and balance. Viewers flock to the spectacle in their lavish yachts, cheering on the competitors with a drunken gusto that would not be out of place at an NFL game. My admitted deficiency when it comes to weapons (and balance, and water while I’m at it) aside, I think it’d be a hell of an adrenaline rush to give it a try, despite the odds of my survival and commensurate glory being intensely low.
Racing — The Salvagers Trilogy by Alex White
Let’s throw another lethal game into the mix with the magic- and technology-fused racing from Alex White’s Salvagers series.
We first meet Nilah Brio in A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe. She’s among the Pan Galactic Racing Federation’s best racers, using her talents for magic and driving to nab victories—and the glory that accompanies them—on the track.
Meanwhile, I’m the guy who feels like he’s cruising the Autobahn when I ride my bike along Chicago’s lake shore path. There are moments in those rides when I crave speed, briefly imagining myself behind the wheel of one of Alex White’s high-tech racers, cruising along the track and zipping past my slower competitors. Then I come back to reality and realize the only ‘challengers’ I’ve managed to pass are an oblivious family of bikers happily enjoying their relaxing ride.
Racing in The Salvagers can prove rather dangerous, so I’d happily forgo the competition for a chance at simply test driving one of the vehicles, riding around the track at maybe half the speed of an actual racing event.
Waterball — Wayfarers Series by Becky Chambers
Of the sports on this list, Waterball is mentioned the fewest times in its source material. Becky Chambers works the game into conversations between characters from time to time, occasionally referencing team loyalties or rivalries.
Waterball happens in a zero-g arena with two teams of six players. Three people per team play at any given time. It’s similar to basketball in that the teams compete to put a ball (made of actual water) into a bucket.
Put me in, coach! Navigating a zero-g environment sounds incredibly fun, if slightly nauseating. The rules are still murky, but the game doesn’t need too many complex rules to be playable. And who knows? Maybe Waterball, or some version of it, is in our distant future once we take to the stars. I’d be happy to be among the first to give it a go.
Pro-Bending — The Legend of Korra
First off, I have to settle the most pressing question: which type of bender would I be?
Earth seems a solid option… I’m a tad stubborn and rigid. But I think fire fits me better—I’d be the Mako of our squad.
When The Legend of Korra originally premiered, I watched the first couple of episodes five times in a day. I was fascinated by this professional sport and how it had been worked into the already-complex world of Avatar: The Last Airbender. In many ways it’s the ultimate fantasy sport. Pro-bending fuses the series’ unique magic system with the culture of the evolving setting. It has simple rules that make the sport easy to understand. Most importantly of all, it looks like so much fun. Never mind the walloping bruises players can suffer from falling into that water—I’m in. I’d be so excited to give pro-bending a go.
Welters — The Magicians Trilogy by Lev Grossman
In the world of Lev Grossman’s trilogy as well as the show based on the books, welters is more akin to chess than it is a full athletic sport, and originated as an alternative to magical dueling. Still, it requires a firm grasp of the series’ magic system and on-the-spot problem-solving, much like any real-life sport would.
The Welters board continues the chess comparisons, containing many squares that help define the strategy of the game. The squares are made of different materials: water, stone, grass, sand, and metal. Players choose a square by throwing a globe onto the board, which indicates the square they’re meant to capture.
Once a square is chosen, players have to capture it according to certain rules, guard it against opponents, or take it from an opposing player (if it’s already captured).
Welters blends magic and strategy to great effect, opening the game up for dizzying displays of creativity and imagination. It’d be a blast to take to the board and see what I could conjure to capture a few squares (knowing there’s a good chance that I’d probably throw the globe into a water square, resulting in an immediate forfeit. Oh well!)
Cole Rush writes words. A lot of them. For the most part, you can find those words at The Quill To Live or on Twitter @ColeRush1. He voraciously reads epic fantasy and science-fiction, seeking out stories of gargantuan proportions and devouring them with a bookwormish fervor. His favorite books are: The Divine Cities Series by Robert Jackson Bennett, The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, and The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune.
On my best day I would never have survived a game of rollerball.
I think it should be on ESPN and in the Olympics.
And one I wouldn’t want to try: Rollerball from the eponymous film. I’m no James Caan and couldn’t match the legend of Jonathan E.
I’d watch Rollerball.
Moopsball (Rules of Moopsball, Gary Cohn, Orbit 18)
How about Hilketa from John Scalzi’s “Head On”, a mixture of American football and free-for-all massacre? Luckily the players are robot bodies controlled by the minds of humans.
The sky-bike Dragonfly, from Rendezvous with Rama, sounds reasonably safe – unless you fall into water filled with recycling machines of course -though somewhat tiring to propel. (Yes, I am aware that this example probably shows my age)
The race in Alita, on the other hand, looks like a total adrenaline rush but I’d give it a pass, it seems like a high-tech version of the Road Rash game with even fewer rules (though such rules as do exist are still more internally consistent than Quidditch). Would be a glorious way to die no doubt, but I’ll, er, pass.
If you broaden the definition a bit, while Azad in “Player of Games” is technically a game, not a sport, I suspect it would be more my speed (as long as no physical bets are involved). As someone who has played chess and scrabble at tournament levels, I identified more viscerally with this than with any other fictional game or sport I can recall.
(I’m not really much for sport, but I’ll watch a good football match.)
Jonathan! Jonathan! Jonathan!
Might also tune in and bet a few quatloos for thrall combat on Triskelion. Or televised gladiatorial combat from 892-IV.
Someone will have to mention quidditch, so it might as well be me.
@6: it seems like a high-tech version of … Road Rash
Closer to Skitchin’, which I wish would get remade for last-generation consoles.
“Border Guards” by Greg Egan. People who normally live as computer programs download into (simulated?) human bodies to play a game based on sub-atomic physics. Part of the charm is that you get a good enough body, but there’s no hardcore athletic optimization. This is just for fun.
I’ll say that one sport I wouldn’t want to try — especially not if I was a woman — would be “hussade”, in any of the three variants mentioned in Jack Vance’s Alastor trilogy.
The one that will always stick with me from my childhood is mercuryball, from Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, if just for the absolutely horrific safety issues of playing with a ball literally filled with mercury.
@11: Not to mention mercury is almost twice as dense as iron. Unless it’s a very small ball, there’s not many ways a normal person could get sporty with it.
Kosho, from The Prisoner.
Where else do you get trampolines, boxing gloves, and a pool of water all in one sport?
Solar sailing, from Arthur C. Clarke’s “Sunjammer.”
It’s moderately safe (except for those pesky solar flares), but it’s also, quite obviously, both a very rich man’s (the story dates from 1964, published in Boys’ Life) sport and not a particularly satisfactory spectator one.
@10: I can imagine a non-sexist version of hussade — anything would do for a goal — and the idea of dunking one’s opponents is appealing. OTOH, I’d never be athletic enough…
Going even further back, “Bullard Reflects” (one of the eponymous series by Malcolm Jameson) introduces Dazzle Dart, in which the object is to reflect a beam of light from the quarterback, via mirrors on their teammates’ wrists, ankles, etc., into the opponents photocell — while the opponents are trying to intercept it into the quarterback’s photocell. The game is more three-dimensional than basketball as it is played on the Moon, but even under that gravity I’d be hard-pressed to compete.
I’m blanking on the name of the game briefly mentioned at the beginning of The Many-Colored Land. The description suggested a version of lacrosse played on steeds with the moves of polo ponies and the armor and temperament of rhinoceri; I’m not sure I’d care even to watch it, but it had many fans.
What about Anbo-jyutsu, “the ultimate evolution the martial arts”?
Just kidding. Nobody wants to play that.
@15 “Ring-hockey”. (It appears May independently invented the incorrect dash in karmadharaya compounds, anticipating the most offensive trend of 2020s Internet writers.)
I’d be a fan of Jetan from the Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom series.
The live action version, combining Martian chess with fencing. Make it Olympic fencing with blunted weapons and safety gear and I’d gladly be a panthan in someone’s game.
When I was a kid, I thought Triad, the basketball/football game on the original Battlestar Galactica series looked like it would be a blast to play.