Slamjet Stories: The Coach

It wouldn't be sci-fi without fanfiction now, would it? Here's another story by Leon Osborne - hope you enjoy it! All the Slamjet Stadium fanfics can be found via this link.

Coach Hurlock swept his eyes over his team.

What a bunch of disgusting pigs he thought.

Quite literally disgusting pigs; they were the Space Hogs F squad and their sense of personal hygiene had long since abandoned them after deciding it couldn’t put up with the smell. Coach Hurlock was not of the hog persuasion, he came from Jetpack City. It was a quite a radical new thing in the game of Slamjet, inter-region coaches. No longer did the team coach need to be from the same city, planet or species as the team.

Officially this had been done to encourage a new spawn of tactical thinking and to encourage strategies more in depth than I’ll-try-and-knock-that-guys-teeth-out-and-maybe-score-a-goal.

Unofficially, however, this had been done to build a better network of people involved in the sport and make it easier for things like bribery and match fixing.

In practice what was happening was that coaches were being kidnapped, tortured for information about the opposition and ransomed back.

Slamjet Stories - The Commentators

Writer Leon Osborne, who contributed the first Slamjet Stadium fiction to the blog has come up with some more fantastic work, which really captures the setting I'd envisioned for the game. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I have!

A member of the Astro Marines team, as depicted in the game

Part 1

Rikk: Howdy there Sports Fans. Rikk Slinger and Takei Coates here. It looks set to be another beautifully brutal game of Slamjet today.

Takei: That’s right, Rikk. And we’re gonna be here bringing you all the action for Tyrant TV. Today’s match sees the Fanboys go up against the Astro Marines.

Rikk: Ha. There’s gonna be a definite weight advantage going on in this game!

Takei: Too right, Rikk. Slametric data, stretching back decades, will tell you that the Marines have won 90% of the games when facing the Fanboys and have always won on the injury infliction score.

Rikk: Not that we condone the injury infliction score of course as does no one else employed by Tyrant TV.

Takei: You said it, Rikk. Tyrant TV and its associated sponsors promote clean and family friendly hyper violent blood sports. But we’re well aware that many fans-

Rikk: And book keepers.

Takei: -That many enthusiasts take a keen interest in all statistics associated with the sport, most prominent amongst them the Tooth Count…

Rikk: How many teeth a player has lost since his professional career began.

Takei: The Tooth Fairy Count…

Rikk: How many teeth a player has knocked out of other players since his career began.

Takei: The Bone Breaker Count and the Bone Breakee Count…

Rikk: Like the tooth counts but with bones.

Slamjet Stories: The Referee

The following is a fiction piece written by Leon Osborne. Leon is a good friend of mine, one of the testers behind Slamjet Stadium and a very funny guy! He's written this piece about the game and I thoroughly enjoyed it, so I hope you do too.

It wasn’t easy being a referee. You were always going to upset somebody with a decision. The problem with Slamjet of course was that the people you upset tended to outwardly express their upset in a graphically violent manner. Gerry Glass had been a chief referee for two years now and had only been shot the once.