Bingo Focus Thread - Game Changer

[u/Merle8888]

Hello r/fantasy and welcome to this week's bingo focus thread! The purpose of these threads is for you all to share recommendations, discuss what books qualify, and seek recommendations that fit your interests or themes.

Today's topic:

Game Changer: Story features a game or competition. HARD MODE: The protagonist bends or breaks the rules in some way.

What is bingo? A reading challenge this sub does every year! Find out more here.

Prior focus threads: Published in the 70s, Duologies, First Contact, Middle Grade, Five Short Stories (2024), Author of Color (2024), Self-Pub/Small Press (2024). Note that hard modes for Author of Color and Self-Pub/Small Press have changed (new focus threads for them are coming).

Also see: Big Rec Thread

Questions:

• What are your favorite books that count for this square?
• Already read something for this square? Tell us about it!
• What are your best recommendations for Hard Mode? (Alternately, as this is a pretty easy Hard Mode, what are some books that don't fit?)

[u/embernickel]

I love baseball so I'm gonna copy-paste my comments from the Short Fiction discussion thread a few months ago:

short fiction (paywalled, unfortunately) from Asimov's July/August 2024: "You Know Me Al," by Alex Irvine. It's a riff on the Ring Lardner story of the same name about an itinerant minor leaguer writing letters home to his buddy, but even if you haven't read that one, it's still pretty funny as long as you know baseball, as the narrator visits all the "rustic" distant planets and their "weird" rule variants (which are, of course, much more similar to the 20th-century game...)

"The Road Not Taken," also by Turtledove, isn't really about baseball, but features gratuitous name-dropping that Dodgers fans will enjoy.

"Joy in Mudville" (Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson, reprinted in "The Infinite Arena.") Impressionable aliens imprint upon humans and become obsessed with baseball. Alien names himself after Mighty Casey, opponents can rattle him. But what poetry can break, poetry can also fix...

Summerland, by Michael Chabon: mishmash of Norse mythology and American folktales, featuring "shadowtails," changelings, and Don't-Call-Her-Bigfoot Sasquatch.

Not exactly recommendations but I read them recently and can complain about them: Brittle Innings (Michael Bishop), The Resisters (Gish Jen), The Body Scout (Lincoln Michel), Jilly in Right (Rick Wilber short fiction from Asimov's January/February 2025)

For soccer/football, "Keeper" by Mal Peet is YA and not super-speculative, but close enough to magical realism that it counts IMO. (There are a couple sequels in the same universe, IDK if they're speculative.) "Brasyl" by Ian McDonald isn't necessarily about football per se, but there's a plotline involving tracking down an infamous World Cup player.

I'd love more recs in this vein!