The Space Olympics by A. M. Lightner

[james_davis_nicoll]

The Space Olympics by A. M. Lightner

Comments

[kedamono]

Just a comment on the cover... that's a mighty white audience there in the stands. There maybe aliens in the stands, but it's hard to tell. Also... what's with our hero and his stance? The artist may have copied it from a photo, but looks very awkward. And finally, there's that spaceship sitting right next to the Olympic venue...

This book covers a very unique SciFi genre: Sports in Spaaaace. From baseball on alien worlds, to this novel's topic, to a short story about a Psionic pitcher that can cause the batter to hesitate, it was a fairly popular genre. Could make for an article at Tor.

[dwight_benjamin_thieme]

And of course, new sports. I'm thinking of Stadium Beyond the Stars, which I'm guessing almost everyone here as read.

[jbwoodford]

Stadium beyond the Stars was the first thing I thought of when I saw the title on this one, too.

[jennlk]

Discus 'throwing' is a very awkward thing. You start at the back of a circle and spin your way across it, releasing the discus just as you reach the other side. (it's not really 'throwing', as the only momentum imparted to the discus is from your motion across the circle - the arm is only a lever/pendulum for releasing the discus.)

And of course it's all white humans - who else would settle Spaace?

[kedamono]

I think the biggest problem with that picture is his left hand in front of his right knee. And it turns out that the artist used the famous Greek statues "Discobolus" as the model. Every other picture I've seen of discus throwers, they have their left arm stretched out in front of them, acting as a counterbalance.

[jennlk]

He just hasn't gotten to that position yet - good discus throwers start in a crouch, with their non-throwing arm stretched across their body. The start of the throwing motion is a combination of flinging the non-throwing arm out and pushing up from the crouch. (As shown, he's not really in Olympic-level form, but for a 'backwater kid with no real training', it's not too bad.) [I did this in HS field events, our coach was a Div I collegiate discus/shotput athlete.]

[beamjockey]

I presume the spaceship is sitting right next to the Olympic venue simply because, in Future Olympics, Spaceship Climbing is a sport.

[ba_munronoe]

If today's Olympics are any guide, it's there in case the Olympics Committee needs to make a quick getaway, bulging bags of money in hand.

[zeborah]

I wouldn't rule out librarians knowing that Hopf is Lightner. The official authority record for her now is "Hopf, Alice L. (Alice Lightner), 1904-1988"; at the time it probably wouldn't have had that last date but the rest would probably have been the same. I wouldn't be surprised either if the fact were also mentioned in the kinds of review magazines librarians selected from.

[ba_munronoe]

One would think that their somewhat doubtful treatment of off-planet athletes would be counterproductive if the Acadians want to have off-planet athletes flocking to Acadia in the future, but baddies in children's books are rarely required to be sensical in their badness.

"Merinolas?" Sounds like a Smeerp to me.

[austin_dern]

I read this one recently! That means sometime since 2012. (The 1972 paperback: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?182725 which is glorious in its 1970sishnessicity.) I remember finding it pleasantly dopey and that I really liked how haphazard and thrown-together Barnum Winkle's Space Olympics team was. That's not snark; I genuinely liked how much it felt like, yeah, in the early days of a competition there just isn't any kind of organization or prestige, and stuff keeps drifting back and forth between scam and sincerity.

[dewline]

Seems like another thing to be grateful to have avoided reading.

Mind you, there's stuff that I talked my parents into buying for me through the Scholastic programme at school that has not aged at all well...