Future Games (2013)
Future Games is a 2013 short stories book written by Paula Guran and John Shirley.
Sport outlives everything. This anthology gathers science fiction that asks what competition becomes when the players might be machines, aliens, or something past recognizably human, and when the stakes climb from a trophy to survival. Contributors include George R.R. Martin, Orson Scott Card, Howard Waldrop, James Morrow, and John Shirley, each imagining a future arena: who plays, who watches, what winning costs the victor and the loser. The tone runs from playful to brutal across the stories, held together by a single idea, that the drive to win goes wherever people go.
Quick answers
What is Future Games about?
Sport outlives everything. This anthology gathers science fiction that asks what competition becomes when the players might be machines, aliens, or something past recognizably human, and when the stakes climb from a trophy to survival. Contributors include George R.R. Martin, Orson Scott Card, Howard Waldrop, James Morrow, and John Shirley, each imagining a future arena: who plays, who watches, what winning costs the victor and the loser. The tone runs from playful to brutal across the stories, held together by a single idea, that the drive to win goes wherever people go.
When was Future Games published?
Future Games was published in 2013.
Who made Future Games?
Future Games was written by Paula Guran, John Shirley and George R. R. Martin.
Similar books
A few thoughts on Future Games
Rollerball and The Running Man both dramatize the anthology's core bet, that spectacle sport curdles into blood sport once the future needs a distraction. For the game side, Blood Bowl plays the joke straight, turning organized violence into a league with rules and standings, exactly the kind of arena these writers keep inventing.
Competitions where losing costs far more than the trophy
Future Games gathers stories about competition pushed past a trophy into a matter of survival, machines and aliens included among the players. The Running Man, Rollerball, Arena, and Warriors of the Year 2072 all build a future where the sport turns lethal by design, Blood Bowl turns that same idea into tabletop carnage, and The Player of Games and Chess with a Dragon make the game itself a battle for civilizations.
More multi-author speculative-fiction anthologies to binge next
Future Games is a shared-world anthology, several authors including George R. R. Martin and Orson Scott Card working the same premise into different stories. Wild Cards and Aces High run on that model with a shared superhero-universe premise, Isaac Asimov's Masters of Science Fiction and Old Venus gather different writers around one theme, and Microcosmic Tales and The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year round out the same shelf.