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Post by dem bones on Mar 17, 2009 9:40:05 GMT
Gary K. Wolf - Killerbowl (Sphere, 1975) Deadlier than ROLLERBALL! The explosive shock-novel of tomorrow's killer-sport Killerblurb: Blood Sport - Blood Thirst Saturday, 1 January, 2011 A.D. Superbowl XXI is in progress. Avidly watched on nationwide TV by millions of gore-hungry viewers, it's the climax to another murderous season of Street Football. Clubs, knives -and guns-are as much a part of the game as the ball itself. The players are 21st Century gladiators, trained to maim and kill.
This time round there's an added attraction. Veteran superstar T. K. Mann leads one team,vicious young Harv Matision the other. Everybody knows they hate each other's guts. And everybody's looking forward to seeing guts galore spilled in the most lethal confrontation in the history of the game...
KILLERBOWL is a shattering foretaste of tomorrow's entertainment. It's definitely not for the squeamish. Neither is tomorrow... "This Superbowl stuff is getting to be kind of old hat to me. I mean, it gets kind of repetitious. Every New Years Day, regular as clockwork, I get to kick hell out of the Prospectors. I wouldn't complain if it was at least good exercise but, hell, I'd get more of a work-out by staying home and getting laid, although I guess playing the Prospectors is almost the same thing. Either way I wind up giving a bunch of p*****s a f**k**g over." - Harv Matision, quoted in The Chronicle on the eve of Superbowl XXI. We join the action on New Years Eve, next year (!) as T. K. Mann, star quarterback with the San Francisco Prospectors, prepares for tomorrow's grudge match with the Minutemen on the streets of Boston for the Superbowl XX. In the event, it's a tense encounter with the Minutemen coming out on top due to a bad call by T.K. who, flattened by the monstrous, club-wielding line-backer Bumbo Johnson, opts to pass to inexperienced Fred Gradington when pressing for goal. Gradington makes the fatal error of raising his head, exposing the back of his neck for the Minuteman's hidden sniper. Exit both Prospectors, in an Ambulance and body-bag respectively. In the post-match interviews, T. K.'s team-mates give it their best Stephen Gerrard ("The lads gave it 100% .. we win and lose as a team ... didn't get the rub of the green today .... we're all behind the gaffa ....."), but he won't hide behind excuses. The Minutemen won because they were organised, more violent, better, notably his opposing number, bad boy pin-up Harv Matision. At thirty-four, T. K. knows he's getting too old for this, and that management want him off the team, but he's blown his fortune and the Street Football League doesn't operate a pension plan ... Cut to the home of pay-per-viewer Dreddie, almost orgasmic with excitement at the gory conclusion to the twenty-four hour match. No matter that it will put he and long-suffering wife Marda in hock for the rest of the month, he has to watch the replays .... And so, the countdown begins to Superbowl XXI. Pierce Spencer, President of the International Broadcasting Company, who, thanks to his foresight in screening SFL matches, have 80% of the viewing audience tuned into their station around the clock, is determined that, this season, they're going to boost their ratings off the scale. Spencer knows what his audience wants - more death. He's decided to help the mortality rate among players by surreptitiously introducing a fully-rigged up hired assassin into each of the 32 teams. Maybe they could even be used to eliminate specified players who "don't contribute to the excitement of the game", and guess who's name is first on the list? .... TK and mouthy Matision's mutual loathing boils over at a celebrity golf tournament in pre-season. The younger man wins the contest, but T. K. first floors then publicly humiliates him in the crowded bar after the game. Matision threatens to kill him in their next Superbowl encounter .... Not much of the way in female interest just yet, but hopefully that will change now that sharp, very tall journalist Sarah is hanging around set on an interview with T. K. for her paper, EBS - End blood Sports .... Which brings us up to p. 55. Let's hope there's loads of mindless violence to follow!
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Mar 17, 2009 9:59:54 GMT
And now we need BOWLERKILL!!!!
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Post by severance on Mar 17, 2009 14:46:27 GMT
Dem reading SF! What's going on Didn't Gary K. Wolf write Roger Rabbit
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Post by Jaqhama on Mar 18, 2009 5:01:15 GMT
Dem it's really a strange coincidence that you put Killerbowl up at this time.
I've got a half finished novel set in the future...when first person shooter games like Quake and Doom and Deus Ex, Half Life etc...are played by real people inside massive created areas.
Very violent (obviously) and very fast paced. I figured it was about time we hand a new Rollerball come Killerbowl type story and a first person shooter game made reality just seemed to be the natrual thing.
I've still got my copy of Killerbowl. It was written back in the days of the original Rollerball movie. (And we still have to suffer with the Olyimpics...instead of mayhem orientated sport...what's wrong with people?)
It's good to see your reading some sci-fi...there's a ton of sci-fi pulp books written back in the 60's and 70's that have loads of gore and monsters and such. I'll start a new thread for you in the sci-fi section.
Now back to Killerbowl as the new rookie this week...Dem...takes his place on the field. Dem? Dem? Where's he gone?
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Post by dem bones on Mar 18, 2009 10:49:48 GMT
Don't get carried away. I'm only suffering this and Fantastic Voyage so I can impress upon people who don't know me how 'exhaustively' I've researched the entire SF & Fantasy genres in preparation for a forthcoming item. It will be all killer beetles eating peoples genitals again soon and we can forget this ever happened.
Killerbowl has been plenty fun so far and promises to get better now the ruthless media moguls are doing their worst to up the fatalities. There's not so much Sci-Fi on show, mind. Few but the very rich can afford to run a gasoline powered car on account of anti-pollution legislation, so most people get around in peddle-powered taxi's, but that's the only major concession to futurism I've noticed. Just had a mawkish interlude where-in - didn't you just know it? - T. K. is revealed to be a professional maimer with a heart of gold, but if this leads to him getting in some serious kinky sex action with Sarah Lauffler, crusading journalist, I guess it's excusable.
Of course, the novel would have been improved ten-fold if Mr. Wolf have built it around proper football instead of the American version - you kick the thing, you don't bloody run around with it in your arms. the clue is in the "foot"' - but, again, you can't have everything.
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Post by H_P_Saucecraft on Mar 18, 2009 13:28:26 GMT
It will be all killer beetles eating peoples genitals again soon and we can forget this ever happened Phew!!!!, thought we were going to have to get a doctor in, or get an ambulance for Dem, for a moment there. I have to say, Killerbowl looks & sounds great. I'll be looking out for it, so your suffering SF has not been in vain, Dem, ;D
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Post by David A. Riley on Mar 18, 2009 13:32:48 GMT
Trust Dem to find some SF that's right up his street.
Not too sure about Fantastic Voyage though. I remember the movie - and I did once read that book, when I was about 15 I think.
David
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Post by dem bones on Mar 23, 2009 21:03:59 GMT
Trust Dem to find some SF that's right up his street. David It is, too! The final 100 pages are mostly devoted to T. K. wrestling with his dilemma: he knows that at least one player on every team has been implanted with a radio receiver and is being fed directions from Pierce Spencer's goons at the International Broadcasting Company. He also knows that he's been marked down for death in Superbowl XXI (Spenser already decided who'd reach the final before the season began). Should he expose the blatant corruption that's been the cause of so many on-field murders (including that of his best friend), or does he satisfy his thirst for revenge on Harv Matision who, needless to say, is the Minutemen's remote controlled player, hence his phenomenal kill tally? The long-awaited touch-down with Sarah is a damp squib, but then it's alluded to - in a conversation between avid viewers Eustis Conrad and wife Jenine - that 'football' really has seen off sex as the national obsession. At least the ghoulish audience get a final worthy of the name. Come the final quarter, the stretcher bearers and body-bag fillers have been kept so busy that the teams can only muster half a dozen players between them, and most of those are missing the odd limb. If you've read it, I'd be interested to know who you were rooting for at this point: TK or the cheating, arrogant, most likely psychotic Harv the Horrible? Needless to say: Ladies, gentlemen. I apologise most profusely for any distress caused by my reckless and, on reflection, inexcusable dalliance with a Sci-Fi novel.
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Post by Jaqhama on Mar 24, 2009 8:54:21 GMT
I don't think I was ever in any doubt that TK would emerge victorious.
I can't recall the exact ending now though. So let me know what happens when you reach the conclusion.
Cheers: Jaq.
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Post by dem bones on Mar 24, 2009 12:08:14 GMT
Er, that was me reaching the conclusion, Jaq, and i think it's safe to say you know the outcome, but Mr Wolf then cleverly cuts away to the home of incredulous viewers Eustis and Conrad who despise T. K. for what he's just done. "Christ, a man can't even have a simple night of watching football anymore without some queer c***sucker coming along and fouling it up. I feel like writing a letter to my son-of-a-b****ing congressman, that's how pissed off I am with that faggoty Mann .... I hope they kick his ass out of football for good for pulling a God-damned stunt like that .... I mean forcing Harv Matision to .... say all those dopey things ... what was he trying to prove?"
Spoiler enough for ya?
Ending aside, funny thing. As I reading it, it kept putting me in mind of David Morrell's First Blood in crash helmets for some odd reason.
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Post by Jaqhama on Apr 1, 2009 8:01:55 GMT
Thanks for that Dem.
I really must dig out some of my old sc-fi paperbacks and re-live the stories.
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