Mundanes

On Earth, science fiction and fantasy fans have a term they apply to the people who are not particularly science fiction or fantasy fans. These are people who don't really understand the activities of these fans, or think them strange because they go to all these Star Trek conventions and Blake's Seven conventions and comic book conventions and even Groo conventions for goodness sake.

They are called Mundanes.

Mundanes, as it happens, find it strange that these fans spend money on models of phasers, on Star Trek communicator pins, on Star Trek uniforms, costumes and spaceship blueprints. They scratch their heads wondering why these fans try to learn to speak Klingon.

But, of course, Mundanes have their crazy obsessions, too. Some Mundanes go out of their way to buy up everything in sight related to, say, a particular football team. They buy all the penants, posters, key-chains, pins, T-shirts, automotive air-fresheners, and even footballs with a certain team logo. Then they spend large sums buying season tickets for the games, even spending extra to get box seats, where they can watch these silly games in air-conditioned comfort.

And then they spend money on all these silly noisemakers, big foam rubber hands gesturing "Number One!" to wave around in the air, and other basically useless junk.

And then they buy biographies of the players, buy any magazine issue that has an article or an interview with a member of their team, buy record albums dedicated to their team, and so on and so on...

And yet they wonder why science fiction fans spend so much on collecting the deck plans of starships, autographed posters of Luke Skywalker, and replicas of sonic screwdrivers.

Great Prophet Zarquon!

See also

• Imperial College Science Fiction Society
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• Jargon In British Science Fiction Fandom
  /articles/2R38.html
• Encyclopedia Of Science Fiction
  /articles/2R157.html