Blossom’s thoughtful and engaging near-future novel centers on Dude McPherson, a natural athlete with a single-minded love of football, living in a time with exciting tech breakthroughs like flying “helicars,” eyeglasses with peripheral messaging capabilities, and 3D printers that can instantly produce robots. His father, who works for the tech giant Circle Headquarters, is adamant that playing football puts players’ bodies at risk, and when Dude is minorly injured playing for his school, his dad gets contact sports banned for every kid, demanding Dude take up after-school activities in the school’s tech lab instead—a lab run by an AI called “Master” and funded by Circle.Despite the cool advancements at the lab, which help keep the pages turning, Dude is reluctant to take up the AI mantle for reasons Blossom (author of The Tunes of Lenore) makes clear and relatable. Dude is still angry that his dad banned real football, his friends are furious and feel like he’s responsible, and the tech lab’s use of bots as avatars to play sports without human contact feels empty. “Don’t you remember the sound of the ball landing in your hands, the smell of the grass?” he asks in one resonant moment. To preserve his love of the game, Dude joins in on a project to make bot football as real as possible—but when the higher-ups at Circle get wind of the project, the potential profit blinds them, and soon Dude and his new lab friends, who only wanted to preserve the joy of traditional football, find themselves in their crosshairs.
Blossom deftly manages the debate about AI versus human experience for a young audience—and probes the boundaries of AI’s creative and emotional capacity, plus the urgent tactile qualities of actual athletic competition. The stakes get high for Dude and the bot football program, but eventually they’re able to meld creative expression, emotional knowledge, and technology into a winning (and safe) combination. Dude’s dilemma—and pressing questions about humanity and machines—will entertain sports lovers and tech whizzes alike.
Takeaway: Compelling sports-centric story of the AI future and human achievement.
Comparable Titles: Jason Segel and Kirsten Miller’s Otherworld, Len Vlahos’s Hard Wired.
Production grades
Cover: B+
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A-
The Last Football Player
John Blossom
Publisher: John Blossom Pages: 316 Price: (paperback) $10.99 ISBN: 9780999615614Reviewed: August, 2023Author Website: Visit »
John Blossom’s new YA novel follows a futuristic teenager on his quest to design a better football game.
In the mid-2050s, eighth-grader Dude and his father, Dudley Senior, disagree on the merits of playing football. Dudley thinks the sport is outmoded and dangerous, and that kids should be contented with virtual gameplay. Dude, on the other hand, loves the sport and can’t wait until high school when he’ll be on the JV team.
When Dude is injured during a game, Dudley has had enough. As an employee of Circle, one of the two rival tech companies that dominate their Silicon Valley community, he uses his clout to get football banned from Dude’s school.
Despondent and ostracized by his former teammates, Dude winds up working in his school’s advanced “Tech Lab,” a place where students can innovate under the supervision of an artificial intelligence known as “Master.” With a quirky crew of fellow students, Dude works to create a new kind of football game: played by robots, but powered by human skills and foibles.
The Last Football Player offers an unusual mix of sportiness and nerdiness, both delivered with irresistible enthusiasm. As the students’ robotic football game gets off the ground, Blossom delivers enough complications to keep things interesting, in the form of hijinks from both Circle and a rival school.
Blossom’s references to real tech companies – for instance, Dude attends Circle-sponsored Honeycrisp School, and his school’s biggest rival is Zinkerberg Academy, which is sponsored by Circle’s rival, Zetta – are sly enough to make young readers feel clever but not so sophisticated as to go over their heads.
The novel is also a good candidate for young people to read with the adults in their lives. Spirited discussions of business ethics, the role of technology, and the value and risks of sports will ensue.
Overall The Last Football Player is charming and captivating, with much to offer a broad range of readers.
Also available in hardcover and ebook.
In Blossom’s YA SF novel, a young athlete is on a mission to get back on the field—even if it means using robotics.
It’s 2055, and teenager Dudley “Dude” McPherson Jr. loves playing football, but his father, Dudley Sr.—who works for giant tech company Circle Corporation—hates the game. In a world where most people are plugged into virtual reality, Dude’s dad thinks football is outdated and too violent. Still, Dude’s dad comes to see him play his final game of the season, during which the teen is seriously injured and rushed by helicar to a medical center, where he requires weeks of recuperation. Then his father puts together a school trustee committee that bans football and other non-virtual sports. When Dude finally starts high school, he’s unpopular, and his dad makes him attend the school’s Tech Lab as an extracurricular. There, he befriends Tomly Newton, Allison Albright, and Adam Angelou. Everything about the lab is new to Dude; their supervisor of sorts is an AI called “Master.” However, he’s surprised to find that the tech allows him a way to channel his anger into art. Adam soon suggests creating football-playing robots: “It would be like a bot battle on a massive scale. It would be epic!” Initially, Dude’s against it, but his father talks him into it, and the project starts to look promising as the team hashes it out. Will their idea catch on? Over the course of the novel, Blossom delivers a breezy story that flies by, and it features a likable core of main characters. Dude reads a bit younger than the supporting players, but they’re charming throughout. Although the plot isn’t especially complex, its easy-to-follow quality makes for a good quick read; as such, the novel would likely be a fine suggestion for reluctant young readers. The futuristic, high-tech setting is developed well, with many details woven throughout the text. Readers who aren’t well-versed in the SF milieu won’t find it difficult to become engaged with the story.
A brisk tale that will even entertain readers who aren’t football fans.
