”The Last Super Bowl” by George R. R. Martin, A Review By The Bastards of Kingsgrave

From 2015, Amin and the Vassals review George R. R. Martin’s "The Last Super Bowl" in a spoiler filled discussion that was recorded before the Super Bowl, which thus explain their pro-Seahawks hopes.

Sports are universally beloved. Geographically, athletic competitions take on various forms; the NFL, NBA, MLB are strong in America; NHL in Canada; Premier League in Europe; and Cricket in India.

But the now legendary George R. R. Martin wrote about the downfall of them all in “The Last Super Bowl,” a fantastically written short story in February 1975’s issue of Gallery Magazine, a men’s magazine.

The story is actually two tales, as he covers the last Super Bowl which takes place in January 2016 and interjects the depiction of that Super Bowl, between the Green Bay Packers and the Hoboken Jets, and the downfall of real sports. Real sports, in the 2016 of Martin’s fictional world, have been overtaken in popularity by simulated sports.

Simulated sports are controlled by a computer that can put any team, from any era, against any other for the enjoyment of the spectators. The technology he describes in the computers that control the simulated sports may have been a thing of science fiction in 1974, when I assume he wrote the piece, but here in 2022, our computers are powerful enough to create those simulations. Just look at video games like Electronic Arts’ Madden and FIFA series.

The implications that computer simulated games would overtake the real thing isn’t so far fetched now, but back in 1975, Martin was looking to a future where the complexities of computers and their power seemed infinitely abundant.

The last Super Bowl – just think about it. No more National Football League, no more National Basketball Association, no more Major League Baseball, the players all replaced by pixels and simulations. The piece is entitled “The Last Super Bowl” because the NFL was the last sport to fall to the computerized simulations. Martin explains that the NBA and NHL disbanded in 2010, while the MLB lasted just until 2014, with the NFL holding on just long enough to have one last Super Bowl in 2016.

Why have the real leagues folded to simulations? Money, of course, which is the underlying scariest thing about this piece. The power of the media, which still exists to a certain degree, functions in Martin’s simulation to make decisions not in the interest of art or tangible implications for the cultures we live in but for profit and a healthier bottom line. These are things that aren’t science fiction, as they are now an overt fact of our society.

You can read it here at Sportsmaster Simulations...