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Study 006 - Arena (Patreon)

Published:
2022-08-11 19:30:43
Edited:
2022-09-11 16:59:03
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Let the cosmic battle begin! It's Arena by Fredric Brown!

Special thanks to reader Rafe Ball!

Next up: The Sea Was Wet as Wet Can Be 

Comments

ESTY

I’m not going to advise anyone to try this on themselves, but rather than blunt force head trauma… the best way to make one’s self briefly loose consciousness is what’s known as a “blood choke”. Pressure with your own hands to the big arteries on the side of the neck to cut-off blood flow to the brain and thus cause unconsciousness, at which point your hands fall away and blood flow returns. Warning: do not ever attempt in an unsupervised setting.

Eric

Frederic Brown is probably my favorite short story genre writer. He wrote a TON of stuff which would probably be "of interest" to the podcast. Mysterious Press just put out an inexpensive ebook edition of "Here Comes A Candle" which is great but he also did about a billion short stories worth reading as well.

DR

I wonder if the war with an enemy that they have never seen was an inspiration for the Romulans in Star Trek

Adequately Excellent Entertainment

Are you sure he wasn’t muttering about reporting people to the Bus Line management and being yelled at about human alarm clocks on those busses? … I would have thought the way to use what I learned about the forcefield would be to knock out the roller and use my spear on a line to drag it over. Then, when it’s halfway through, wake it up again… but you do you buddy.

It's a Ghost.

I can only guess that, like me, the invisible barrier in "Arena" reminded Gene Coon of the invisible walls in Lovecraft's "In the Walls of Eryx," which made him think of man-lizards, which led him to add his own man-lizard to the Star Trek episode.

Ben Gilbert

There was also a TV movie from the 70s called The Challenge with Darren McGavin. The U.S. and an Asian country (I forget which one) agree to let the outcome of their war be decided by two men placed on a deserted island. Winner takes it all.

Alan Ricks

There are several similar plot points with this and the Wing Commander movie (1999) which is itself based on the plot of the game. In that there is an unknown alien race attacking earth outposts and colonies. They’ve never seen the aliens face to face. The human fleet is amassed in a giant armada but can’t get to the terran system in time to stop an invasion. A single human ship (really one guy) has to duel the alien fleet for coordinates of the invasion fleet and once it is successful the alien fleet is destroyed as it comes into the system, without even damaging the human fleet. Since the warlike alien species, the Kilrathi, are based on Known Space’s Kzinti, which were also added into the TOS universe, there is another Star Trek connection. Also the Star Trek writer was like, “What if the talking Lizard was the alien monster?”

Eduardo Garcia

So, Mr. Chris Lackey, what does the blue sand represent? We didn't hear about that at the end. In other topic, this story really remind me of the Xipéhuz, that "forced" war between two species that really, good times!

Ethan Cordray

I gotta say, the planet-god-entity thing seems like kind of a jerk, giving both the humans and the bloodthirsty hate-filled spider-ball guys an equal shot at evolutionary ascension. And basing the decision purely on who's better at killing? Hmm...I'm starting to wonder if this entity isn't quite a enlightened as it pretends to be. Of course, dealing with omnipotent dudes who turn out to actually be jerks is another classic Star Trek plot (Q, Star Trek V, etc.). Maybe the sequel could have the humans and the Rollers team up to take him down! Assisted of course by the cute little talking lizards, who are the real heroes here.

Jack Saul

on the question of "trial by champions" as a good way of resolving conflict, this reminds me of the film Robo Jox(1989) where champions in giant robot suits fight gladiatorial combats instead of wars. However they only fight over the ownership of bits of territory at a time- removing the all or nothing nature of an outcome from a single combat. Truly one of our most insightful works of political military thought.

Ravewolf

Nice to get a Frederic Brown story, as he is one of the greats of the short form. Some of his tales are quite Weird indeed as well, and he could have a very dark sense of humor. His "Come and Go Mad" story is downright Lovecraftian in its cosmic horror, and very good. His "The Geezenstacks" story is also very creepy, the stuff of nightmares. Both are highly recommended.

Jim Cannon

I have a vague memory of reading this, or something like it, in grade school. The weird sand and the force field sound familiar, at least, but that doesn't mean someone outside of the Star Trek writer's room didn't steal stuff from Brown, too. Pretty gruesome stuff for grade school though.

Jonathon Alvis

This story unlocked a core memory for me from when I was 3 years old. My parents subscribed to Readers Digest all through my childhood, and when I was very young I became deeply disturbed and fascinated by a painting in one of them. It was an illustration of a ball shaped monster fighting a spear wielding caveman in the snow. My parents told me it was a “living basketball”. I’ve wondered about that story and illustration the rest of my life (I’m 45 now), but no matter how many times I’ve searched “ball shaped monster” or “living basketball” over the years, I’ve never been able to solve the mystery. Upon listening to you guys talk about this story, I immediately recognised the description as the subject of the painting from my childhood. A quick google search of the authors name, the story title, “painting”, and “readers digest”, and all my questions were answered. The illustration was from the March 1982 issue of Readers Digest, which featured the story in question. I would have been just 1 month away from turning 4 years old…wow. Great show guys, and thank you for unintentionally solving a mystery from my childhood. P.S. The painting is not nearly as riveting as I remember.

Thunk

The human suffers the heat and gravity, and the roller suffers (equally) due to body image fears

Karlandos

Excellent story. This one hits for me because it's fairly straight forward; no subversion or ambiguity and a simple premise of do or die along with the fate of your entire species hanging on the fight. That said, I would be curious to know how our dude Death Ball,That's what I'm calling him, took the situation intially because he no doubt got the same speech as our dude Bob. I'd like to image that perhaps Death Ball was just all about the business and didn't want to bother with talking with so much on the line. But we'll never know how Death Ball felt about the situation other than his desire to kill and the story is better left that way. On a final note, I do find it weird that Bob would not have been able to prove his death match because the scars he has he surely didn't have when he first set out and the way its described I'm imagining flash healed discolored skin patches where Death Ball tried to RIP and TEAR but couldn't RIP and TEAR quite hard enough.

Cacodaemoniacal

There's another story that's clearer in my mind that might be a riff on this. Basically a guy has to get through an invisible maze, possibly to kill someone? get a treasure? but he can't figure out how to leave marks so he can map it so he dies. It's fun when you can see other authors responding to a story with their own take. Our MAN had no personality other than intelligence, luck, ingenuity and drive.

Rafe Ball

The Sea Was Wet as Wet Can Be next week - Is Chad warming up for another bout of oceanic fisticuffs?

Jason Thompson

I love your autoerotic asphyxiation rewrite of this story!

Jason Thompson

BTW, I too saw this episode as a kid in the early ‘80s and I was SO disappointed THROUGHOUT Star Trek Next Generstion thst the Gorn never showed up! In fact I’m still disappointed they aren’t major Star Trek players! Boo hiss!

Ben Gilbert

Not quite the same thing but in 'The Dreams of Albert Moreland' by Fritz Leiber a chess player in 1939 plays a strange game in his dreams that seem to have repercussions in the real world. A great story with some Lovecraftian overtones.

Rob Gillie

I have fond memories of this story, which I read when I was a kid -- since I'd seen the Star Trek episode before I read the story, I was disappointed at first that there was no lumbering lizard-man, but I quickly warmed to the Tentacled Ball of Death, which got creepier and creepier every time I pictured it in my head. Coincidentally, I just watched that Star Trek episode last night, since it popped up in my "watch all the Star Trek there is" project, and I gotta say: the Metrons are a lot cooler than the interstellar assholes in Brown's story, since they're not talking about committing genocide, and that one Metron dude at the end seemed rather amused by James Kirk, and usually those god-like aliens aren't amused by humans. Also! Chad, there is an awesome article in the latest issue of National Geographic History about a poor bastard who got executed for being a werewolf in 16th-century Germany, and since it was about werewolves I immediately thought of you. There's even a I-cut-this-wolf's-paw-off-and-now-this-guy's-missing-a-hand moment in the story, and a speculation that werewolves were possibly a way to explain serial killers in the early modern period. That last bit's nothing but nonsense, of course: we know werewolves exist, and we also know that ghosts of werewolves exist. It's just science.

Thunk

Man what happened to the lizard

Karen Bo Baren

Oh man, I'm so glad you did this one! So much nostalgia,, I remember reading this as a kid and I always thought of it as the story where the lizard gets thrown through the force field since that's what stuck with me the most. 🦎

Mark K

Good episode, but I'm going to stick up for this one over the Star Trek episode. I think the act of puzzling through the nature of the barrier is more interesting than the gunpowder trick. And if hitting yourself over the rock with a head is silly, I can say as a chemist that the idea that you'll hit on an explosive blend of gunpowder from vaguely remember the ingredients and then eyeballing stuff is just as silly. (It's like Ash having "Chemistry 101" in his truck in Army of Darkness and making explosives; to my eternal regret this isn't really what intro chemistry really focuses on.) I will agree that the ending to the Star Trek episode--with them killing no one--is better and appropriately Trekky.

Mooncubus

Man I love that you guys were able to get Chris and Rafe from Rachel Watches Star Trek to do this little crossover! How'd you manage to convince that prestigious long running podcast to jump on to this humble little new podcast?

Joshua Weiss

Many years ago, I read this story in a SF collection (possibly edited by Harlan Ellison?), and to this day, I prefer the Star Trek version, if only because the mor enlightened competitor wins, and there is no genocide.

Ratchbox

Why didn't he just go to sleep instead of knocking himself out? Surely that would have worked!?

Steve

Isn't it Fredric Brown, rather than Frederic?

Rick Hound

Can’t wait for Chad’s next short story be…A Chad insert character having to go through a death battle with the ghost of a werewolf for the amusement of an alien god. Only winning by the skin of his teeth and pulpy logic.