Take Me Out To The Future Ball Game.

Anyone who knows me will be quick to tell you that I am not a sports person. Up until a few months ago I thought that the term was “pitch hitter” instead of “pinch hitter” and I was confused because the whole point of baseball is hitting pitches.

My husband loves sports. He has season tickets to the new NYCFC that plays at Yankee Stadium. Needless to say I’ve seen more sports than ever recently. I couldn’t tell you most of the rules or any of the players’ names really, but I’m there. I’m eating sports food. I’m clapping.

We went to a soccer game today and NYCFC (finally) won! So it got me thinking. There’s sports in plenty of science fiction. Here’s a list of the ones that I think are the most entertaining!

• Rollerball – Based on a short story called “Roller Ball Murder” and made into two movies. This sport is violent. In the “not too distant future” corporations that control most of the world have made war a thing of the past. Instead, they use the super violent rollerball to settle disputes.
• Transcontinental Death Race – This sport is the premise of Death Race 2000 which was based on a short story called “The Racer”. I love this movie. I didn’t see the remake but that doesn’t really matter. In this there’s just a violent race going across the country and boy oh boy is it a hoot.
• Blernsball – From Futurama (my husband’s favorite sci-fi thing). It’s essentially just baseball except the ball is on a string. I don’t know what it is but I find it way more entertaining than actual baseball.
• Obstacle Golf & Centrifugal bumble-puppy – These are from Brave New World. There’s not really a lot of details given about them in the novel, but the names themselves raise a few interesting ideas. 

There's a general theme that crops up when you come across sports in science fiction which is that the government/corporations that are all powerful fund these games to distract the population from how terrible their lives are. It's pretty much Rome and the Coliseum all over again. I think Blernsball is the only one of the few listed that doesn't take place in a world state of that kind.