5 Tech-Enhanced Sci-Fi Sports

The Minerva Sierra Challenge (Runtime, by S.B. Divya)
S.B. Divya’s impressive debut offers us the Minerva Sierra Challenge, a day-long race across the Sierra Nevada mountain range, run by competitors outfitted with the latest exoskeletons, implants, and biological augmentations. Most of the runners are corporate-sponsored and come from money, but Marmeg Guinto has none of that; she can’t even afford the licensing fees to become a citizen in this grim futuristic America. Her gear has been picked from dumpsters, bought on the black market, and programmed with a fierce DIY determination in the best Maker spirit—and she’s bet her entire life on placing in the race and taking home the prize money involved. Gritty and realistic, Divya’s novella smartly avoids simplistic visions of the future, crafting a world as complex and uncertain as our own, making Marmeg’s underdog story that much more compelling.

Robot boxing (Steel, by Richard Matheson)
Few writers have been as under-the-radar influential as Matheson, whose 1956 short story Steel was the basis for a classic Twilight Zone episode as well as the 2011 Hugh Jackman film Real Steel. In a future where human boxing has been outlawed, android fighters are now the main event. Battling Mayo is an aging, obsolete fighting robot managed by former boxer Tim “Steel” Kelly and his partner Pole. They get a surprise chance tat a bout with a healthy purse of prize money, but all seems lost when Mayo breaks down and they have neither the parts or the money to repair him. Kelly engineers a desperate plan: he’ll wear Mayo’s exoskeleton like a suit and box their advanced robotic adversary himself. While Kelly isn’t exactly enhanced by Mayo’s armor, he ouldn’t even compete without it in this compelling survival story. The connection between the Mayo and Kelly’s shared obsolescence make this a bleakly affecting work of sci-fi.

The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins)
The ultimate take on a brutal, sci fi-enhanced sport is Collins’ vision of the Hunger Games, a death sport in which technology plays a huge role, from the weapons each tribute uses, to the gifts sent them by sponsors, to the tricks and traps the government has created to make the Games more exciting and control the outcome to their liking. Collins works the competition theme with intelligence, as the end results of the Games pivot more on the intelligence and emotions of its participants than the technology enhancing the competition. While a despotic government could probably organize a Hunger Games-like sport in the modern age, it wouldn’t be quite the same without the gadgets and killing machines—not to mention the fabulous future fashions the broken world serves up.

Handlers (The Mind Riders, by Brian Stableford)
In this overlooked novel, Stableford offers another variant on futuristic boxing in which genetically identical fighters are controlled by “handlers.” Spectators don’t simply watch, they experience the full range of the handlers’ physical and emotional reactions—which is problematic for Ryan Hart, an incredibly skilled Handler whose lack of sadism and emotional reactions makes him a weak audience draw. When the reigning champ, Paul Herrera, kills the son of millionaire (ah, inflation, the bane of 1970s sci-fi), Hart is brought back to the game as the only man to have defeated Herrera. Filled with trademark 1970s cynicism, this fascinating story explores the reasons people love brutally violent sports, and examines the effects of competition on a man who struggles with his own moral code.

CPU games (Tron)
And then there are the ultimate sci fi-enhanced sports, which involve literally being subsumed into a computer and transformed into a digital warrior. From the light cycles to the disc battles, literally none of the sports in Tron would be possible outside of the computer environment; a physical body is not only unnecessary, it would likely be impossible (and kind of messy) to try and use one in these games. Developed during a time when it seemed likely that computer would soon replace every real-life experience with an abstraction, actually being able to jack into a computer and play these games would be extremely cool. Scientists, forget curing cancer, and get on Tron, please.
What’s your favorite enhanced sci-fi sport in books, film, or TV?