Image via Everett Collection, Touchstone Picturs By Michael John Petty Published Aug 29, 2026, 11:09 PM EDT Michael John Petty is a Senior Author for Collider who spends his days writing, in fellowship with his local church, and enjoying each new day with his wife and daughters. At Collider, he writes features, reviews, recaps, and conducts interviews. In addition to writing about stories, Michael has told a few of his own. His novella, The Beast of Bear-tooth Mountain , was released in 2023. His Western short story, The Devil's Left Hand , received the Spur Award for "Best Western Short Fiction" from the Western Writers of America in 2025. Michael currently resides in North Idaho with his growing family. Sign in to your Collider account Add Us Add on Google Preferred Source Google News Summary Generate a summary of this story Like Like follow Follow followed Followed Listen Thread Log in Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents: Try something different: Show me the facts Explain it like I’m 5 Give me a lighthearted recap It's been 15 years since Shawn Levy and Hugh Jackman first teamed up for Real Steel , long before the pair reunited for Deadpool & Wolverine . The 2011 sci-fi boxing drama starred Jackman as former boxer turned robot trainer Charlie Kenton, who is forced to build a robot boxer with his son when automated machines replace the sport. While this might feel like an original concept, the film was an adaptation of a short story titled Steel , written by notable science-fiction and horror author Richard Matheson .
Of course, more well-known is The Twilight Zone episode of the same name that aired in October 1963, starring Lee Marvin as Tim "Steel" Kelly, a former boxer who decides to go a round in the ring with a robotic counterpart. Nearly five decades before Jackman stepped into the robot-boxing world, The Twilight Zone had already entered the ring. If you haven't seen this original series episode, consider this your starting bell.
Whether you prefer the short story or the television episode, both versions of Matheson's "Steel" are incredibly similar . In each of them (set in the near future of 1974...), former boxer Tim "Steel" Kelly has resorted to becoming a boxing trainer/promoter after the sport was outlawed for humans. That might sound preposterous today, but that's only because you weren't living in the 1960s at the time. In 1963, the sport was filled with controversy after the death of not one, but two different boxers — Benny Paret and Davey Moore — one of whom died during a match on live television . Because of this, the massive weight of the sport was becoming clear to general audiences, and many believed that there could come a time when boxing itself was expunged from the record. This is the world of Richard Matheson's story.
Your answers point to the world your instincts were built for. This is the universe your temperament, your survival instincts, and your particular brand of stubbornness were made for.
You took the red pill a long time ago — probably before anyone offered it to you. You're a systems thinker who can't help but notice the seams in things.
The wasteland doesn't reward the clever or the well-connected — it rewards those who are hard to kill and harder to break. That's you.
You'd survive here because you know how to exist in moral grey areas without losing yourself completely.
Arrakis is the most hostile environment in the known universe — and you are precisely the kind of perso…