Ever read a short story about a staged war (and sports violence)?

B

BDale

Cadet
Hello Alien Soup gang,

I am in search of a short story I must have read in the late 1980s. I remember it so vividly: The stage is set by a pair of TV announcers at a coliseum, setting the audience up for an unbelievable match to take place. It sounds like two sports teams will be taking the field, but they turn out to be small armies, performing a bloody battle to the death in front of an audience. The glorification of sports violence is a clear theme, as shown in the gory slow-motion replay for the entertainment of the TV audience, of a deadly shot to the head.

Ring a bell with anyone? It has stuck in my head all these years, and I've asked many well-read people about it, but no one I've met recalls it. Anyone remember this story I found so striking? Thanks for giving it a shot!
 
Is it...

Escape to Victory​

en.wikipedia.org

Escape to Victory - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Escape to Victory (stylized as Victory) is a 1981 American-British-Italian[6] sports war film directed by John Huston and starring Sylvester Stallone, Michael Caine, Max von Sydow and Pelé. The film is about Allied prisoners of war who are interned in a German prison camp during the Second World War who play an exhibition match of football against a German team.

If that is not the one, you could look at this article from RottenTomatos

editorial.rottentomatoes.com

150 Best Sports Movies of All Time

From football (The Longest Yard, Remember the Titans) to baseball (A League of Their Own, Moneyball) to boxing (Raging Bull, Creed) to...let's just say there's a lot of sports out there, and a lot of movies about sports, and all the best ones are listed right here!
editorial.rottentomatoes.com editorial.rottentomatoes.com
 
I can't place that one - sorry.

Have you tried looking at the contents for anthologies of sport-related sci fi stories (which I am sure exist)? If it's a famous story, it may appear there.

I'm not sure if some kind of database of stories might be on the internet more generally - the Internet Speculative Fiction Database is the largest, I think, but it doesn't indicate what the topics of particular stories are. Maybe no where does - would be a mammoth, contentious task!
 
RH1 said:
I can't place that one - sorry.

Have you tried looking at the contents for anthologies of sport-related sci fi stories (which I am sure exist)? If it's a famous story, it may appear there.

I'm not sure if some kind of database of stories might be on the internet more generally - the Internet Speculative Fiction Database is the largest, I think, but it doesn't indicate what the topics of particular stories are. Maybe no where does - would be a mammoth, contentious task!
Click to expand...
I will be doing that, and will try the database -- thanks for naming it!
 
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