mundane n. 2

a person who is not a science-fiction fan; an outsider

Fancyclopedia


SF Fandom

  • ?1960 J. L. Chalker Hic-Cup in Centaur (#1) Apr.–May (unpaged) page image Jack L. Chalker

    May it be noted that I heartily approve of the name change from ASTOUNDING to ANALOG, and them who are against it are very sentimental fools against any progress and change—the very foundations of stfnal stuff. It's good business, pulls in the mundanes who are the real money of the mag, and gets rid of a title which I have always considered very juvinile [sic] and disgusting.

  • 1963 Whatsit #4 (June) 5 page image

    The ‘persecution complex’ that presently makes fans more tolerent [sic] of each other than they are of mundanes (or one mundane is of others) would be absent.

  • 1969 H. Warner, Jr. All Our Yesterdays 145 Harry Warner, Jr. bibliography

    He claimed that he was immediately honored by fourteen fans and eight mundanes at a banquet staged for him by the Oak Grove Science Fiction Society.

  • 1985 G. Wolfe Aussiecon Two Guest of Honor Speech in Castle of Days (1992) 429 Gene Wolfe bibliography

    Some have announced with even greater pride that they never read fantastic literature, or that they haven’t read a word of it for the past five or ten years—that they are in fact closet mundanes.

  • 1988 W. Relling Adventures in Scream Trade in Horrorstruck Mar.–Apr. 41/1

    That’s one of the things I've noticed at cons. You hear the name ‘mundanes’ bandied about a lot. There are the ‘fans’ and the ‘mundanes.’ The mundanes read Shakespeare and Joyce Carol Oates; they don’t just read the latest gore novel.

  • 1989 Nova Express Spring 10/1

    The Demon Barber and I played Shock the Mundanes. The door would open up and we would start a sentence in mid-imaginary conversation, like—‘Of course, they never found the body.’

  • 1994 T. Pratchett The SF Kick in Interzone (#81) Mar. 26/2 (interviewed by Stella Hargreaves) page image Terry Pratchett bibliography

    Have you heard the term ‘mundanes’? It’s a throwaway word for everybody but ‘us fans gathered here today.’

  • 1998 G. Westfahl Why the Stars Are Silent in Interzone Feb. 45/1 page image Gary Westfahl bibliography

    Readers and writers believed that the genre, if lacking the power of specific prediction, was still somehow better aware of, or more attuned to, the future, and that its enthusiasts were better prepared for the future than the mundanes.

  • 2013 C. Clare Introduction in Shadowhunters & Downworlders xii Cassandra Clare bibliography

    In fact, the non-magical humans in the Shadowhunter books are called mundanes, a term borrowed from my gamer friends, who call everyone who doesn’t play Dungeons and Dragons a ‘mundane.’

Research requirements

antedating 1960
Research History
Jeff Prucher submitted a cite from Gene Wolfe's Aussiecon Two Guest of Honor speech, in a 1995 reprint of "Castle of Days".
Jeff Prucher submitted a 1988 cite from an article by William Relling, Jr. in Horrorstruck.
Bee Ostrowsky submitted a 2013 cite from Cassandra Clare.
Jeff Prucher submitted a ?1960 cite from Jack Chalker in Centaur #1. While the issue does not provide a year date, there are several pieces of internal evidence pointing strongly to 1960, including the June 1960 postmark of the scanned issue; the fact that the Astounding-to-Analog name change was announced in January 1960; and the fact that the "Aero-File" article by John Berry is dated "1960". The page number is unclear, however; this article does not have a printed page number, nor does the ToC mention one, and the scan of the issue has several pages out of order.

SF sense added to OED3 in March 2003, with an earliest date of 1959 (representing mundane n. 1.).

Last modified 2026-05-05 13:13:53
In the compilation of some entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries in OED.