Alien Ball

By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Frank loves basketball. His long career covering basketball puts him in high demand. His purist views on the game well-known.

So, when the Ashtenga seek to form an Ashtenga/Human League for basketball, the Interglobal Sports Network wants Frank to give voice to the anti-alien point of view.

Everyone, including Frank, thinks they know what point he will argue.

But what Frank discovers might change his views...on everything.

Chosen as an Asimov's Readers Choice Award finalist, "Alien Ball" looks at the history (and future) of basketball from a fresh new perspective.

"Great sport story!"

—SFRevu

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Mar 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201424428

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

New York Times bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. She publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov's Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award.   

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Alien Ball

ALIEN BALL

KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH

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Alien Ball

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Also by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

About the Author

ALIEN BALL

They have three arms, one of which, when they play against us, they tie behind their back. They’re short and squat and look more like the basketball writ large than any kind of basketball player. They can’t dunk or even run very well.

But when they play against each other, they transform the game into something else. Something lovely and different, almost like clouds with limbs attempting to confine their movements to a single court with a tiny ball, and strange rules.

It isn’t our basketball. It is their basketball.

And it is beautiful to behold.

Basketball, by its very nature, is a gravity-based sport. Sure, there are versions on the Moon, on other planets, on some large spaceships. There are zero-gravity rules, and Moon rules. Courts are different. The ball is weighted differently. The Moon has a no-dunking rule. Mars uses higher poles for their baskets.

Those games, to me, aren’t basketball. Basketball is a two-team sport, played on a court that’s 28 meters long and 15 meters wide. The hoop is 3.05 meters off the ground, and it’s slightly less than half a meter in diameter. The basketball has a circumference of 75 centimeters and weighs 624 grams.

Rules vary slightly. There’s professional basketball, with a longer 3-point distance from the hoop, a shorter shot clock, a jump ball for possession, and a handful of other things, designed to confound, slow down, or challenge the exceedingly good player. There’s college ball, which has 20-minute halves instead of quarters, a slightly smaller regulation court, and weird rules about uniforms.

High school ball and kid’s ball all have their own variations. But at least the international side of basketball has adopted all of those rules, so that when high school kids from Beijing play high school kids from Paris, they’re playing a game familiar to both of them.

I’m sure I’m the one writing this piece because I’m the one who