George Alec Effinger (1947-2002) attended Yale University, where an organic chemistry course disabused him of the notion of becoming a doctor. A graduate of Clarion, he was the author of at least twenty novels and six collections of short fiction including the popular cyberpunk series beginning with When Gravity Fails (1987), Hugo, Nebula, and Sturgeon Award-winning novelette "Schrodinger's Kitten" (1988), and many satirical works including a series of stories about Maureen Birnbaum, Barbarian Swordsperson. Born and raised in Cleveland, Effinger was a lifelong fan of the Cleveland Indians and one of science fiction's most avid sports fans. Many of his science-fiction sports stories were collected in Idle Pleasures.

Timons Esaias is a satirist, poet, and writer of short fiction, living in Pittsburgh. His work has appeared in fifteen languages. He won an Asimov's Readers Award; and was a finalist for the British Science Fiction Award. He has had over a hundred poems in print, including Spanish, Swedish, and Chinese translations, in markets ranging from Asimov's Science Fiction to 5AM and Elysian Fields Quarterly: The Literary Journal of Baseball. He is Adjunct Faculty at Seton Hill University, in the Writing Popular Fiction M.F.A. Program.

John Shirley (john-shirley.com) is the author of more than thirty novels. His numerous short stories have been compiled into eight collections including Black b.u.t.terflies: A Flock on the Darkside, winner of the Bram Stoker Award, International Horror Guild Award, and named as one of the best one hundred books of the year by Publishers Weekly. He has written scripts for television and film, and is best known as co-writer of The Crow. As a musician, Shirley has fronted several bands over the years and written lyrics for Blue oyster Cult and others. The only game he is any good at is hold 'em poker, but his wife is teaching him how to comprehend football. (So far he knows it is not that sport where you throw a round ball into a basket.) Louise Marley is a novelist working in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and historical fiction. Her novels have been shortlisted for the Nebula, the Tiptree, and the Campbell awards, and she is a two-time winner of the Endeavour Award. Her most recent novels-Mozart's Blood, The Brahms Deception, and The Gla.s.s b.u.t.terfly-combine elements of history and speculative fiction. Louise is a former opera singer, and has been an avid baseball fan since her girlhood.

Now a #1 New York Times best-selling author, George R. R. Martin sold his first story in 1971 and has been writing professionally ever since. He spent ten years in Hollywood as a writer-producer, working on The Twilight Zone, Beauty and the Beast, and various feature films and television pilots that were never made. Martin also edited the Wild Cards series, fifteen novels written by teams of authors. In the mid-1990s he returned to prose, and began work on his epic fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire. In April 2011, HBO premiered its adaptation of the first of that series, A Game of Thrones, and he was named as one of Time's most influential people of the year. A sports enthusiast, at least as a spectator, Martin is a fan of the New York Jets and Giants. He is the only author in this anthology to have ever been interviewed by Sports Ill.u.s.trated.

James Morrow has been writing fiction ever since, at age seven, he dictated "The Story of the Dog Family" to his mother, who dutifully typed it up and bound the pages with yarn. Upon reaching adulthood, Morrow wrote such satiric novels as Towing Jehovah (World Fantasy Award), Blameless in Abaddon (a New York Times Notable Book of the Year), The Last Witchfinder (called "an inventive feat" by critic Janet Maslin), and The Philosopher's Apprentice ("an ingenious riff on Frankenstein" according to NPR). His short fiction has won the Nebula Award (twice), the Rickie Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.

Missourian Walter F. Moudy (1929-1973) was an attorney, but he also auth.o.r.ed a handful of science fiction stories after publication of his sole novel, No Man on Earth (1964), which tells the story of a man born of a human mother and an alien father.

Joel Richards lives in Northern California where he has attempted to do every sport known to man. However, new sports have emerged over the years faster than he's grown older, and he's given up on that goal. His favorites have been running, judo, dog sled racing, and scuba diving. Though he's written one novel, Pindharee, Joel is mainly a short fiction writer. His stories have appeared in a range of magazines, most frequently and recently Asimov's, as well as a number of original anthologies, including Terry Carr's Universe 14 and Universe 17, Roger Zelazny's Warriors of Blood and Dream, and Harry Turtledove's Alternate Generals II.

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough is the author of twenty-three solo fantasy and science fiction novels, including the 1989 Nebula Award-winning Healer's War, as well as sixteen novels with Anne McCaffrey, most recently, the Tales of the Barque Cat series, Catalyst and Catacombs (from Del Rey). She is also the author of a numerous short stories. Her most recent works are Spam Vs. the Vampire (2011), 9 Tales O' Cats (a collection) and Father Christmas, a novelette. In progress: The Tour Bus of Doom: Spam and the Zombie Apocalypso and Shifty, stories of shape shifting and transformation.

As Eileen Gunn once wrote, Howard Waldrop is "a legendary unknown writer." He lives in Austin, Texas, and is a devoted fisherman. He does not have a cellphone, a computer, or an email account. He's written a couple of novels and a bunch of short stories, most of which can be found in his eight collections. The winner of both a Nebula and a World Fantasy Award. Locus quotes him as saying: "When I wrote 'Man-Mountain Gentian' . . . most people had maybe seen one picture of a sumo wrestler and that was it. I got fascinated by the ritual . . . and if somebody comes along and messes with it, it's like the world has ended."

Scott Westerfeld was born in Texas, lived in California and Connecticut, and now-with his wife, Justine Larbalestier-divides his time between Sydney, Australia and New York City, USA. He is the author of eighteen novels: five for adults and the thirteen for young adults, including the Leviathan series (the first book of which was the winner of the 2010 Locus Award for Best Young Adult Fiction), and the New York Times bestselling Uglies series, The Last Days, Peeps, So Yesterday, and the Midnighters trilogy. He plays tennis semi-competently, but not often enough, and enjoys watching basketball-he has season tickets to the WNBA's Liberty, second row-and cricket, recently discovered in Australia. His website is ScottWesterfeld.com.

Over the span of her fifty-year career, Kate Wilhelm has delved into many genres. Her works have been adapted for television and movies in the United States, England, and Germany. Wilhelm's novels and stories have been translated to more than a dozen languages and she has contributed to Quark, Orbit, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Locus, Amazing Stories, Asimov's Science Fiction, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Fantastic, Omni, Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k's Mystery Magazine, Redbook, and Cosmopolitan. Wilhelm and her husband, Damon Knight (1922-2002), also provided invaluable a.s.sistance to numerous other writers over the years as teachers and lecturers. Kate Wilhelm currently lives in Eugene, Oregon. In her spare time she likes to garden.

Genevieve Williams is a Clarion West graduate and currently working toward her MFA in Popular Fiction at the University of Southern Maine Stonecoast program. Her critical essay on Geoff Ryman appeared in the Summer 2008 issue of the journal Extrapolation. Her current projects include a podcast, t.i.tled Sacred Road, to be released in 2013.

About the Editor.

Paula Guran is the Senior Editor of Prime Books. Although not in a sport or a game, she thinks she may have set some sort of world record in 2012 with one original and seven reprint anthologies she edited all published within a single calendar year. This is the first to be published in 2013. She expects Weird Detectives: Recent Investigations, After the End: Recent Apocalypses, and the annual The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror all to be published by Prime Books in 2013, as well as two all-original anthologies: Halloween: Magic, Mystery, and the Macabre and Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales. Constable & Robinson (UK) and Running Press (US) will be publishing her The Mammoth Book of Angels and Demons in spring/summer 2013.

We won't get into games, but as for sports, Guran is mostly an avid spectator. (But yes, if you read the story introductions, she really did break that board in the dojo.) She lives in Akron, Ohio and is a fan of the Cleveland Indians (and the Akron Aeros); learned to love basketball thanks to Akron's own LeBron James (who is not hated by all of Northeast Ohio). Thrilled he finally got his ring, she still follows King James, but supports the Cleveland Cavaliers. Guran is nominally interested in the Browns, but tends to watch more college football than pro. She is somewhat addicted to watching the Olympics.

As a mother, Guran was exposed to many sports including karate, soccer, football, skiing, tennis, informal wrestling, and orthopedic surgery thanks to her three sons' partic.i.p.ation. Her daughter is a great "cheerleader," but of the sincere variety, not the type with pom-poms. One daughter-in-law has taught her something about soccer and the other about running. Now golf seems to be entering the picture again for some of her offspring.

Guran's house has a long history of partic.i.p.atory sports. The croquet set finally fell apart, the trampoline is gone, but the horseshoe pitch is used. There is still a punching bag in the bas.e.m.e.nt not far from the weight bench, and a shotput in the sports bin along with a lot of other interesting things. She might still be a contender.

Acknowledgements.

Special thanks to Ellen Datlow and Marty Halpern for suggestions.

"Distance" by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff Dell Magazines, Inc. First publication: a.n.a.log Science Fiction and Fact, February 2003.

"Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card 1977 Orson Scott Card. First publication: a.n.a.log Science Fiction/Science Fact, August 1977.

"Anda's Game" by Cory Doctorow 2004 Cory Doctorow. First publication: Salon, November 15, 2004.

"Breakaway" by George Alec Effinger 1981 Mercury Press, Inc. First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January 1981. Published with the permission of Barbara Hambly for the estate of the author.

"p.a.w.n" by Timons Esaias 2002 Timons Esaias. First publication: Interzone Number 180, June-July 2002.

"Diamond Girls" by Louise Marley 2005 Louise Marley. First publication: Sci Fiction, June 8, 2005.

"Run to Starlight" by George R. R. Martin 1974 George R. R. Martin. First publication: Amazing Science Fiction, December 1974.

"The Fate of Nations" by James Morrow 1983 James Morrow. First publication: Sci Fiction, May 14, 2003.

"The Survivor" by Walter F. Moudy 1965 Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. First publication: Amazing Stories, May 1965. Reprinted by permission of the Virginia Kidd Literary Agency on behalf of the author's estate.

"Listen" by Joel Richards 1995 Joel Richards. First publication: Warriors of Blood and Dream, ed. Roger Zelazny (Avon/AroNovo).

"Name That Planet!" by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough 2005 Elizabeth Ann Scarborough. First publication: You Bet Your Planet, ed. Brittiany A. Koren & Martin H. Greenberg (DAW Books).

"Will the Chill" by John Shirley 1979 John Shirley. First publication: Universe 9, ed. Terry Carr (Doubleday).

"Man-Mountain Gentian" by Howard Waldrop 1983 Howard Waldrop. First publication: Omni, September 1983.

"Unsportsmanlike Conduct" by Scott Westerfeld 2003 Scott Westerfeld. First Publication: Sci Fiction, 9 April 2003.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, This Is Your Crisis!" by Kate Wilhelm 1976 Kate Wilhelm. First published: Orbit 18, 1976. Reprinted with permission of the author and InfinityBox Press LLC.

"Kip, Running" by Genevieve Williams 2008 Genevieve Williams. First Publication: Strange Horizons, 10 March 2008.

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