Not in the Rules

In a future where war has been civilized out of existence, the fate of entire planets rests on a single set of gladiatorial games. When Earth is challenged to combat by an alien empire, humanity must select its champion from the ranks of the desperate and disgraced. The selected fighter, a man with nothing left to lose, enters an arena where the weapons are ancient but the stakes are utterly modern: the survival of his world hangs on his willingness to kill or die. Mack Reynolds, writing in the paranoid dawn of the 1950s, crafted a savage little adventure that uses its gonzo premise to ask uncomfortable questions about how civilizations avoid destroying each other, and what price some poor fool always pays for the peace.