| Should dueling be legalized?
“I firmly feel we should never have outlawed dueling,” says Ben Bova, author of the new short story, “Bloodless Victory,” which makes its debut online at iPulpfiction.com on March 1st.
“Bloodless Victory” is the most recent of four works that grew out of Bova’s skill as a championship fencer and fascination with dueling as a way to settle disputes. In “The Perfect Warrior” he introduced the concept of a virtual reality dueling machine in which two opponents could battle each other to death. He expanded on the idea in his intergalactic novel, The Dueling Machine. “Duel in the Somme,” also available on iPulp, describes the dueling machine’s origin.
In “Bloodless Victory,” Bova asks the question, “What if this new form of bloodless dueling was afforded the weight of law?” Could clogged civil court dockets be purged if the parties in a personal dispute agreed to abide by the outcome of a virtual duel? Would the legal establishment accept such an idea? |
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