The Event Schedule for the Sci-Fi & Fantasy Olympics

Quidditch (The Harry Potter Series, by J.K. Rowling)
Well, obviously. From the moment J.K. Rowling introduced it, fans of Harry Potter have longed to see and play Quidditch for real (and in fact, there are real-life Quidditch leagues that play some serious games, the nin-existence of flying brooms be damned). While it’s fun enough game in this mundane, muggle-dominated world, what we’d really like to see is real Quidditch. Someone get Elon Musk on the phone and tell him that instead of flamethrowers and fancy cars and spaceships, he ought to be pouring his money into Quidditch technology. The Olympics would be legendary if we could literally get this one off the ground.

The Dust Slide (The Apprentice Adept Series, by Piers Anthony)
Not totally unlike the Olympics, in Anthony’s universe, all citizens of the planet Photon can participate—and possibly gain social advancement—via a series of games that encompass a huge variety of competitions. The one we’d love to see most is the Dust Slide, a sort-of sci-fi luge wherein the athletes slide along on a bed of microscopic plastic particles that act like water (while infiltrating any available crevice), the channels branching constantly as they shoot at high speed through them. It’s a game that combines speed and strategy and severe discomfort—just imagine the players having to get all that dust out of their, er, crevices after the match.

The Fives (Court of Fives, by Kate Elliott)
Combining speed, brains, and brawn, The Fives is a high-speed competition that requires more than simple athletic ability (let’s just say Ryan Lochte might qualify for the team, but he would never win). As the name might suggest, there are five challenges that must be overcome as competitors race through a multilevel maze that tests their speed, agility, and parkour skills. If you’ve ever wished all the Olympic events would be combined into one super event, this would be the ideal solution.

The Game of Azad (Player of Games, by Iain M. Banks)
Actually, maybe the entirety of the Olympics could be replaced with The Game of Azad. Considering  the fact that in Banks’ third Culture novel, a whole world’s social and political order is determined by the outcome of the game, they clearly don’t get much more high-stakes than this. Sure, it’s ostensibly some kind of board game—albeit a three-dimensional, insanely complex one—but we live in a world where people already watch other folks play video games and board games, so this would totally work. The winner would acclaimed the leader of the world, and the loser—well, best not to think about what happens to the loser, based on the consequences outlined in Banks’ story.

Rollerball (Rollerball, by William Harrison)
Although Harrison’s original novella is sadly out of print, the sport he invented remains one of the greatest fictional games of all time. Combining roller derby with motorcycles and extreme ultraviolence, the game was so fun, legend has it the crew of the 1975 film adaptation asked permission to keep the sets intact so they could play an actual game. The story remains a surprisingly potent comment on the bloodthirst and violence of modern-day audiences, and if you ask us, offers the Olympics exactly what it needs: a sport with intentional grievous injury.

Pod Racing (Star Wars)
Pod Racing is one of the few unambiguously great things to come out of the maligned Star Wars prequels, as evidenced by the slew of sweet video games it inspired. Sure, apparently a small, uneducated child can be a pod racing champion—but he was the once and future Darth Vader, so it’s doubtful the Olympic event would be overrun by dirty-faced children. If the event could be staged so that pods would wipe out entire city blocks when they crashed, the ratings would be through the roof.

Anbo-jyutsu (Star Trek)
Dangerous, stylish, and more than a little silly-looking, this martial art involves visors that render you blind and staffs with proximity sensors on the end so you know when you’re getting close to your opponent. While amateur matches would likely simply be two people running about aimlessly swinging their weapons, skilled players would have to rely on their other senses to win.

Light Cycle Race (Tron)
Another gimme. While digitizing the competitors might be expensive and possibly dangerous, it would be 100 percent worth it to incorporate Light Cycle action into our SFF Olympics. Bringing the light cycles into the real world might be an acceptable alternative, so after Elon Musk is done working up that Quidditch tech he can turn his huge brain onto that problem. One thing that would be forbidden by the rules is the horrifying uncanny valley effect of pasting young Jeff bridges face onto any of the athletes involved.

The Minerva Sierra Challenge (Runtime, by S.B. Divya)
A 24-hour race across a mountain range? Yes, please. A 24-hour race across a mountain range run by athletes outfitted with exoskeletons, biological augments, implants, and other technological advantages? Double yes, please. Our real-world Olympics are kind of boring in the way they forbid any sort of enhancements, to be honest. The Minerva Sierra Challenge would be a great way of showing the world the joy of watching people who are basically cyborgs compete.

Brockian Ultra-Cricket (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams)
The rules for this galactic sport are so famously dense, the one time they were compiled into a single book it formed a singularity and collapsed into a black hole, but the genius of the sport is that it can be summed up quite easily: it involves hitting your opponent as hard as possible with a cricket bat (or anything else, really) and running away as fast as you can. Elegant and straightforward, it’s possible that all future international disputes could be dealt with at the Olympics using this event.

Indoor Tennis (Rivers of London, by Ben Aaronovitch)
A combination of dodgeball and tennis, the game is played using magic spells to send a tennis ball whipping at your opponents, who use magic to defend and turn the tables on you. This seems like a pretty realistic outcome of allowing teenagers access to magical spells, actually, and would make for a suitably exciting event—although we admit you could get similar results sans the magic (as certain high school bullies already have discovered). Still, getting a 100 mph serve whipped at your head would be just as exciting as a bunch of people in cricket helmets using the impello spell over and over again.

Kosho (The Prisoner)
Just about as silly-looking as Star Trek’s Anbo-jyutsu, Kosho combines trampolines, a pool of water, and parkour into a deliriously entertaining sport that could only have been conceived in the late 1960s when the quality of hallucinogenics was at an all-time high. Still, watch one video on Youtube and you’ll be hooked—especially since you can create your own extremely dangerous Kosho court in your backyard with some trampolines, a kiddie pool, and your old high school sports equipment.
What would be your must-watch event at the SFF Olympics?