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The Future of Football #2
20020: An American football story
Unknown Binding
Published October 1, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 161 reviews
October 27, 2020
uh oh fellas I'm crying over football and satellites again
October 23, 2020
"All that time, all those threads, weaving through something that must have been far too confusing to enjoy."
"I think that's love."
"I know that’s love. They didn’t know what I’d be or who I’d be, but they loved me."
like all of bois' work, i find this absolutely staggering in the way he combs through data, american folklore, and sports history to create a new kind of storytelling that is truly impossible to classify and still manages to appeal to people like me who really don't care about football. i cannot begin to fathom the amount of research that went into this. it makes my head hurt to think about. i think this in particular is one of his best, and along with david byrne's american utopia (which is on my mind since i watched it last night) feels like one of the only pieces of media from this year that is equipped to actually meet the current moment. neither one tries to really be "What The World Needs Right Now," but instead try to begin to make sense of what's going on through their own brand of beautiful nonsense. bois and byrne are both very optimistic, but neither is denying the current reality, which is a really tricky line to thread and both of them mostly pull it off. i haven't read 17776 since it came out, but i think this works better working within a smaller scope and zeroing in on these smaller character moments (the extended conversation between nine and "the sharks" i love in particular and find really powerful.) it's also really funny and insane and genuinely thrilling. cannot wait for 20021.
"I think that's love."
"I know that’s love. They didn’t know what I’d be or who I’d be, but they loved me."
like all of bois' work, i find this absolutely staggering in the way he combs through data, american folklore, and sports history to create a new kind of storytelling that is truly impossible to classify and still manages to appeal to people like me who really don't care about football. i cannot begin to fathom the amount of research that went into this. it makes my head hurt to think about. i think this in particular is one of his best, and along with david byrne's american utopia (which is on my mind since i watched it last night) feels like one of the only pieces of media from this year that is equipped to actually meet the current moment. neither one tries to really be "What The World Needs Right Now," but instead try to begin to make sense of what's going on through their own brand of beautiful nonsense. bois and byrne are both very optimistic, but neither is denying the current reality, which is a really tricky line to thread and both of them mostly pull it off. i haven't read 17776 since it came out, but i think this works better working within a smaller scope and zeroing in on these smaller character moments (the extended conversation between nine and "the sharks" i love in particular and find really powerful.) it's also really funny and insane and genuinely thrilling. cannot wait for 20021.
October 23, 2020
I stumbled upon Jon Bois late 2015 and he immediately became my favorite online content creator. Clocking in at around 50,000 words, this is his third "novella" piece. 20020 is the sequel to Bois's piece 17776. (His first "full-lenth" piece, The Tim Tebow CFL Chronicles has similar themes to 17776 and 20020, but takes place in a different alternate universe. I reviewed Tim Tebow back in 2015, but somehow it went missing from Goodreads. My 17776 review might be missing too... Guess I better back this one up).
They all focus on one thing: the future of football.
20020 takes place in the titular year 20020. You and I are . And that's not about to change. The people in this world live to fill time. And, just like humans in 2020, many of them do so through college football. But boy, the game has changed.
Our sentient space probe friends from 17776 are back watching a very unique game of college football. Grab the clicker, chances are your favorite team is still playing in 20020. Yet in this massive clustercuss of a game, the satellites hone in on two players from a plucky underdog school as they try to pull off the most ambitious play in centuries.
Unlike 17776, 20020 follows a much tighter narrative. There are still vignettes, GIFs swooping across Google Earth, obscure newspaper clippings, videos with 1990s "easy listening" tracks and scrolling text, and a cast of oddball characters. But Nick and Manny are the main protagonists that 17776 never had.
Bois has built a world full of rich themes: time, productivity, humanity, immortality, purpose, loneliness, eternity, recreation, disaster, love. These themes are more apparent in 17776. The episodic nature of that piece lends itself better to the world-building. But the stories! Jon Bois has always been a masterful storyteller, but he dials it up a step here. The stories are evocative, quotidian, infuriating, hilarious, mesmerizing, and so much more in between.
"I just need to try something impossible. That’s what it is for me. I need to find one of the rules of the world and break it."
They all focus on one thing: the future of football.
20020 takes place in the titular year 20020. You and I are . And that's not about to change. The people in this world live to fill time. And, just like humans in 2020, many of them do so through college football. But boy, the game has changed.
Our sentient space probe friends from 17776 are back watching a very unique game of college football. Grab the clicker, chances are your favorite team is still playing in 20020. Yet in this massive clustercuss of a game, the satellites hone in on two players from a plucky underdog school as they try to pull off the most ambitious play in centuries.
Unlike 17776, 20020 follows a much tighter narrative. There are still vignettes, GIFs swooping across Google Earth, obscure newspaper clippings, videos with 1990s "easy listening" tracks and scrolling text, and a cast of oddball characters. But Nick and Manny are the main protagonists that 17776 never had.
Bois has built a world full of rich themes: time, productivity, humanity, immortality, purpose, loneliness, eternity, recreation, disaster, love. These themes are more apparent in 17776. The episodic nature of that piece lends itself better to the world-building. But the stories! Jon Bois has always been a masterful storyteller, but he dials it up a step here. The stories are evocative, quotidian, infuriating, hilarious, mesmerizing, and so much more in between.
"I just need to try something impossible. That’s what it is for me. I need to find one of the rules of the world and break it."
February 14, 2021
Oh, man. This one hit the feels, too.
A bit more technical (I was more aware of my lack of football knowledge) and harder to follow at times, but I enjoyed it a great deal. The research was incredible, the comedy was on point, and the characters felt real :) I loved it!
A bit more technical (I was more aware of my lack of football knowledge) and harder to follow at times, but I enjoyed it a great deal. The research was incredible, the comedy was on point, and the characters felt real :) I loved it!
June 28, 2025
after finishing it, i didn't quite think 17776 would stick around in my brain for too long. of course, it would. it has. sometimes things just fly by me, i read them, i watch them, i play them, they dissolve. when i was watching 30+ movies a month, i was hardly absorbing any of them. i don't think any of them stuck with me quite like the ones i was watching when i would just put something on every few weeks. i don't know. maybe i was just getting unlucky.
17776 feels kind of like house of leaves to me. also kind of like homestuck, but i feel like that's mostly just because of JUICE. see, i think that mark danielewski read a lot, and thought a lot, and learned a lot, every day. for years. just stuffed his brain full of information. history, philosophy, architecture, language, physics, literature, just anything he could get his hands on. and eventually his brain was going to burst, and it did, and house of leaves was born. i think 17776 is like this too. but looking more into jon's work, the videos he makes, i feel like i've found the benchmark for jon's wellspring- data. i feel that jon loves data more than history or space or even football. the eternity of 17776 is a way to explore probability. well, it's a way to explore a lot of things, but it really feels like it's about probability.
i'm scared of eternity. i'm scared of large numbers.
20020 is cool. it's exciting. it feels much closer to football than 17776. it takes a different approach, a lot less existential and a lot more... hopeful, i suppose? it feels like the other side of the argument. 17776 feels very morose. 20020 just... i dont know. it feels different ok. it's a lot more concerned with the past than the future. if this is jon's answer to us being stuck in a cultural rut, seeming to see the same things over and over again, endless reboots and hauling out our popular dead, it's a strange one. it's a gentle one. history (even the smallest, strangest moments of it, on a long enough timescale) repeats itself. that's something i thought about a lot reading 17776. how we'd just end up writing the same songs eventually. i thought a lot about cheapness. how long does something have to live, have to be reborn, before it becomes completely absent of novelty? if steely dan was around for another hundred, two hundred years, they would probably, eventually, write a better song or two. but would anyone care? at what point does it stop being original, and just being meticulous, marginal improvement? is it lesser because thousands of songs came before it? i don't know.
i should have written this after chewing on 20020 for a few days. clearly i have more to say about 17776 than i did a few days ago. i can't stop thinking about the guy walking in a line across the US preaching the word of god. i think i relate to him more than anything else.
fuck man, i don't know. jon seems cool. he probably likes a silver mt. zion's 'horses in the sky'. i feel like we could shoot the shit.
cried a lot at the end.
i love you all.
17776 feels kind of like house of leaves to me. also kind of like homestuck, but i feel like that's mostly just because of JUICE. see, i think that mark danielewski read a lot, and thought a lot, and learned a lot, every day. for years. just stuffed his brain full of information. history, philosophy, architecture, language, physics, literature, just anything he could get his hands on. and eventually his brain was going to burst, and it did, and house of leaves was born. i think 17776 is like this too. but looking more into jon's work, the videos he makes, i feel like i've found the benchmark for jon's wellspring- data. i feel that jon loves data more than history or space or even football. the eternity of 17776 is a way to explore probability. well, it's a way to explore a lot of things, but it really feels like it's about probability.
i'm scared of eternity. i'm scared of large numbers.
20020 is cool. it's exciting. it feels much closer to football than 17776. it takes a different approach, a lot less existential and a lot more... hopeful, i suppose? it feels like the other side of the argument. 17776 feels very morose. 20020 just... i dont know. it feels different ok. it's a lot more concerned with the past than the future. if this is jon's answer to us being stuck in a cultural rut, seeming to see the same things over and over again, endless reboots and hauling out our popular dead, it's a strange one. it's a gentle one. history (even the smallest, strangest moments of it, on a long enough timescale) repeats itself. that's something i thought about a lot reading 17776. how we'd just end up writing the same songs eventually. i thought a lot about cheapness. how long does something have to live, have to be reborn, before it becomes completely absent of novelty? if steely dan was around for another hundred, two hundred years, they would probably, eventually, write a better song or two. but would anyone care? at what point does it stop being original, and just being meticulous, marginal improvement? is it lesser because thousands of songs came before it? i don't know.
i should have written this after chewing on 20020 for a few days. clearly i have more to say about 17776 than i did a few days ago. i can't stop thinking about the guy walking in a line across the US preaching the word of god. i think i relate to him more than anything else.
fuck man, i don't know. jon seems cool. he probably likes a silver mt. zion's 'horses in the sky'. i feel like we could shoot the shit.
cried a lot at the end.
i love you all.
September 10, 2021
not a book pt.2 but look my reading challenge is empty.
immortal husbands play football and make my heart ache.
immortal husbands play football and make my heart ache.
May 1, 2022
Once again, an interactive multimedia fiction project about three sentient space probes and a never-ending game of absurdist American football has produced some of the most moving and heartfelt commentary on humanity I’ve read in recent memory. It’s gorgeous. Can’t wait for 2002[2].
March 20, 2021
Another charming, funny, philosophical interactive story of America at play in the future...playing a very unusual football game with a satellite as football commissioner.
April 28, 2026
literal genius but the worst cliffhanger i've been faced with in YEARS !!!! about so much on so many levels, the way the meta structure feeds in to the narrative, a treatise on love ... !!!
May 15, 2023
Deeply moving, philosophically interested story. Sequel that somehow tops the original. The all around human perserverance and time theme was really enjoyable, reminded me of the best chapters of Count The Monte Christo. If u re at all interested in a futuristic world like no other give it a shot, and u might just get emotional about satellites
May 16, 2021
So good! Cannot wait for the sequel. I'm really curious about the answer to the existential question set up here. I loved how the author's passions shone through in the stories told.
March 27, 2025
ik zal het nog maar eens zeggen, de VS is echt funky in de toekomst.
April 19, 2026
hated the entire process. no one should ever edit anything. just write shit who cares
October 21, 2025
4.25
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and hang out for a moment (or a week or a century or a millennium) or two. You have all the time in the world to Despair.
Muuuch more football-y but also much dumber. In such an awesome way. How do you impose restrictions on your life when the biggest restriction of them all—time, death—no longer holds any meaning? This one was less philosophically-inclined and focused more on why we play sports/games. Because they're fun? Yes. Because they're something to do? Closer. Because what else are you going to do? Bingo. America is a country of stupid stories and stupider people and those stupid people's stupid stories are the foundations of everything. At what point does escaping from a maximum security prison go from wanting freedom to wanting to see how many times it can be done? Taught me about core rope memory, and the women who made it possible. I love you Little Old Ladies. Jon never asks nor answers the question "where are the goal posts in a country-wide game?" so I am asking it now. This is prettier than 17776.
There's nothing up there for us; it's always been down here.
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and hang out for a moment (or a week or a century or a millennium) or two. You have all the time in the world to Despair.
Muuuch more football-y but also much dumber. In such an awesome way. How do you impose restrictions on your life when the biggest restriction of them all—time, death—no longer holds any meaning? This one was less philosophically-inclined and focused more on why we play sports/games. Because they're fun? Yes. Because they're something to do? Closer. Because what else are you going to do? Bingo. America is a country of stupid stories and stupider people and those stupid people's stupid stories are the foundations of everything. At what point does escaping from a maximum security prison go from wanting freedom to wanting to see how many times it can be done? Taught me about core rope memory, and the women who made it possible. I love you Little Old Ladies. Jon never asks nor answers the question "where are the goal posts in a country-wide game?" so I am asking it now. This is prettier than 17776.
There's nothing up there for us; it's always been down here.
January 16, 2021
A wonderful sequel to 17776!
There is palpable growth among the characters, and John Bois is absolutely incredible at showcasing time, space, and emotions through the various forms of media utilized in 20020. The visuals that I once found to be unfamiliar and empty now bring forth comfort and the realization that although the world may be full of mistakes, we are all meant to be here.
A read that can either be completed in one sitting or several, I'd recommend 17776 and 20020 to everybody, from the most passionate football fan to somebody who has never cared to watch a game.
There is palpable growth among the characters, and John Bois is absolutely incredible at showcasing time, space, and emotions through the various forms of media utilized in 20020. The visuals that I once found to be unfamiliar and empty now bring forth comfort and the realization that although the world may be full of mistakes, we are all meant to be here.
A read that can either be completed in one sitting or several, I'd recommend 17776 and 20020 to everybody, from the most passionate football fan to somebody who has never cared to watch a game.
October 26, 2022
It’s football. It’s science fiction. It’s all that is good and bad about humanity, narrated by robots. It’s not a book. Not in the traditional sense anyway. It’s an… experience. It’s emotional and silly and absurd. Bois will forever be the King of sports writers in my opinion, but he’s got a promising career in YA if he wants it. More than anything else I’ve read in the past two years, 20021 has captured my imagination and won’t let it go. I hope there is more to come.
October 26, 2020
Okay, y'all, I don't care if you, like me, don't care much about football. I'm going to need you to look up 17776 and read it because it's great, and this sequel was even more delightful. Job Bois knew exactly what we needed in this dumpster fire of a year, and apparently that is college football.
Content notes: swearing
Content notes: swearing
October 25, 2020
Jon Bois can tell a goddamn story, and the scope and ambition of this one was truly astounding. Yeah, it's about football, but it's also about the tenacity of the human spirit, and it is so beautifully told.
Read
December 7, 2025If you read human history up to the year 1868, you’d never imagine that people were just a hundred years from launching me into space with all these sophisticated instruments and experiments. I feel like I wasn’t “supposed” to happen that soon, that it should have taken hundreds more years to figure out something like me and send me into the cosmos.
I have about as much onboard memory as a dishwasher, maybe a little more. And they had to sew it by hand even to get that much. It feels like they shouldn’t have been able to do it.
MIMI: That’s how much they loved you, isn’t it? That’s how badly they wanted to bring you into the universe.
NINE: It is. I think about them a lot. I remember them all. Some made it to today, a lot of them didn’t.
They’ll always be a part of me.
- so basically I was trying not to cry reading this part
- besides that, I have discovered that if sports were actually about a shark veterinarian, grouchy pizza jock and (most importantly) an immortal couple who can’t really play normal football but make one of the most legendary plays of all time by virtue of being really fast and gay and unhinged—maybe I would tune in idk
I have about as much onboard memory as a dishwasher, maybe a little more. And they had to sew it by hand even to get that much. It feels like they shouldn’t have been able to do it.
MIMI: That’s how much they loved you, isn’t it? That’s how badly they wanted to bring you into the universe.
NINE: It is. I think about them a lot. I remember them all. Some made it to today, a lot of them didn’t.
They’ll always be a part of me.
- so basically I was trying not to cry reading this part
- besides that, I have discovered that if sports were actually about a shark veterinarian, grouchy pizza jock and (most importantly) an immortal couple who can’t really play normal football but make one of the most legendary plays of all time by virtue of being really fast and gay and unhinged—maybe I would tune in idk
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 22, 2026
Are you kidding me, a love story between two football players in the middle of my experimental speculative fiction about humanity living forever told from the perspective of satellites??? I’M SO EMOTIONAL
I loved the first one and didn’t even initially know there was a second one until I found it. The plot in this one had me HOOKED and I just couldn’t put it down. I can’t believe I’ve fallen so in love with a story that has so much football jargon in it. Heartbroken to know that the next instalment no longer has a publishing date, but I will hold out hope. If Nick and Manny could wait 2000 years, I can too.
I loved the first one and didn’t even initially know there was a second one until I found it. The plot in this one had me HOOKED and I just couldn’t put it down. I can’t believe I’ve fallen so in love with a story that has so much football jargon in it. Heartbroken to know that the next instalment no longer has a publishing date, but I will hold out hope. If Nick and Manny could wait 2000 years, I can too.
April 23, 2026
Everything I loved about the first one, but with a more interesting plot. I did have to deduct a point for the cliffhanger though as the next instalment has not come to fruition and, seeing as it was meant to be released 5 years ago, I don’t have faith that it ever will :(
August 3, 2021
Holy fuck. Absolutely blew me away. ITCHING for the next!! Gimme gimme gimme.
March 26, 2022
F***ing brilliant, no two ways about it.
April 6, 2026
a little more confusing to follow with all the rules and football talk but still so good and i can’t believe how much time and research went into this
April 8, 2026
"𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘧𝘶𝘤𝘬 𝘶𝘱. 𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵'𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘐 𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨."
April 25, 2022
Wow. Love is real. Again taking the top spot as most insane multimedia story I've ever read. Wow. The epic highs and lows of college football...
July 18, 2025
Criminally, criminally underrated
April 8, 2026
And if it turns out things went sideways? If we don’t have possession? Then I’ll just come out and say it: Lacrecia Evans MUST resign as head coach of Oklahoma State football.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 3, 2024
Give Juice his Lunchables. Nick and Manny are marriage goals. My three space probes who love each other across space :) UGH! Who would have thought that I'd be crying over sentient space probes at 2 am? Such an interesting and creative story, interlacing football with existential dread and sprinkled with fantastic humour. Jon Bois, please bless us with the 20021.
- melodious
- melodious
April 25, 2021
I don't know how Jon Bois so perfectly blends everything: absurd and mundane, satire and slapstick, humor and poignancy, future and past. This story, like 1776, is difficult to describe (they must simply be experienced).
I only have two slight critiques. One is that there were maybe a couple too many detours. The chess scene was fun in its own right but I can't say it "belonged" with the rest of the story. And following that, I was a little disappointed that it ended with a to be continied given that there were so many detours. I think you can detour or you can end with to be continued but doing both feels excessive.
Still, these critiques are small and overall this was still an amazing project that I hope many people will have the opportunity to experience.
I only have two slight critiques. One is that there were maybe a couple too many detours. The chess scene was fun in its own right but I can't say it "belonged" with the rest of the story. And following that, I was a little disappointed that it ended with a to be continied given that there were so many detours. I think you can detour or you can end with to be continued but doing both feels excessive.
Still, these critiques are small and overall this was still an amazing project that I hope many people will have the opportunity to experience.
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