A NOVELLA including 2 Baseball SF stories by Gregory Benford & Gordon Eklund
CATEGORY Science Fiction
PUBLICATION DATE  January 2018
COVER ART  Richard Powers

EDITIONS
ePub edition for Apple iPad, iMac/PC, Sony and other eBook readers
A MOBI edition is also available for Amazon Kindle devices

ABOUT THE BOOK

In two long tales, legendary SF masters Gregory Benford and Gordon Eklund pitch the classic baseball story into the future, and on to Mars . . .

The Good of the Game

Come the late 21^st century and Mel Crumley stands nearly alone among a hardy dying breed. Mel’s a baseball writer. A veteran scribe, his team the Boston Red Sox, still playing their games in fabled Fenway Park in front of ever-dwindling crowds.

But overnight everything changes. A phenom appears as if from nowhere. Sean “Mad Dog” Mulroney, an aging journeyman player, starts hitting baseballs for the Sox as they haven’t been hit in ages. He revives interest in the game, threatening to eclipse baseball’s most cherished record--Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game consecutive hitting streak.

But is Mulroney truly a Natural? Or is there something rotten in Fenway Park? In “The Good of the Game” Mel and his blogging partner Maggie Weiss seek the answers, hoping that what they discover won’t in the end also kill the grand old game of baseball forever.

Red Planet Reds

How can humans play baseball on Mars? And why?
Inside a pressure dome, yes. But in lesser gravity, balls travel 2.4 times farther. So the field has to be huge and pitching is weird, too.
The local team, the Mars Reds, needs to get attention, fans. So they challenge the best Earth team to a Solar System Championship series. How can they use Martian tricks against the rich, bulky, seasoned, ground-hugging Earthers? Physics, that’s how. Plus working-class savvy.