Idle Pleasures

by George Alec Effinger

THE ALIENS' FIRST WORDS WERE "LET'S PLAY BALL!"

• Ice hockey with an entire planet for a rink
• A chess competition where the rules change with every move
• No-holds-barred basketball with the blue Cobae

And other stories from the Wide Universe of Sports by one of today's most astonishing Masters of Imaginative Fiction

• Naked to the Invisible Eye - (1973)
• From Downtown at the Buzzer - (1977)
• The Exempt - (1977)
• 25 Crunch Split Right on Two - (1975)
• The Pinch Hitters - (1979) - (variant of The Pinch-Hitters)
• Breakaway - (1981)
• The Horse with One Leg - (1974)
• Heartstop - (1974)

Genres: Science Fiction, Collections

197 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Idle Pleasures is a collection of stories by Effinger that all concern the topic of sports and games. It's probably my favorite of his collections. It includes stories about basketball, horse racing, football, chess, baseball (he was quite an Indians fan), running, and a very good one about hockey. There have been quite a few volumes of fantasy and science fiction short sports stories, but not many by a single author; this is a very enjoyable one. It has the Sandor Courane seal of approval!

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of relatively fun sports short stories with science fiction and fantasy twists.

[George Siehl · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of short stories that are said to link science fiction and sports. Some of them succeed in linking these two subjects, but other fall short of such a mating. Some of the stories rely on sentimentality, psychological disorientations, of stretched interpretations of sport. Those that do fulfill the intent do so enjoyably. In particular, I found the hockey story quite powerful, and the basketball story, also. The two baseball stories, I found intermediate. A reread from a 1991 completion.