I don’t know how many of you are also ravenous sci-fi readers, but I’ve noticed something pervasive in the genre: almost nobody needs to lose about twenty-five pounds. The closest you’re apt to see is an older military officer described as “having a little bit of a paunch, but still able to [do various and sundry amounts of kicking butt].” While part of the genre’s appeal is taking current trends and technology to the Nth degree, it seems increasingly improbable that, even a ways down the road, the average citizen won’t still be fairly recognizably average.

Yes, even a generation from now in Lake Wobegon.

There are a nearly-infinite number of buff bad-asses running through these tales, to be certain — due in no small part to Mary Sue / Gary Stu wish-fulfillment (Robert Heinlein, this Bud’s for you — every one of his protagonists and their girlfriends are brilliant, handsome, gorgeous, sexually ravenous, etc, etc…) — because the high concentration of military or paramilitary characters lends itself towards a fitness bias. It’s understandable that space rangers, interplanetary militias, and terraforming pioneers are going to have to be tough, and possibly subsisting on scant rations.

The same sort of body dysmorphia goes for the dystopian underclasses, where merely getting by is the order of the day, and scrounging enough calories isn’t a given. Drug use? Prevalent. Heroin chic and body modification are staples of cyberpunk.

At the other end of the spectrum are the characters who have run so far to seed as to be immobile — constrained to tanks where they float, weightless, and barely recognizable as human, or relegated to glorified versions of scooters for the elderly (Baron Harkonnen, please report to makeup). See also: WALL-E‘s far-future humans.

(On a related note: Wall-E sushi. Awesome. Also awesome: this floating couch. Do want.)

You seldom see folks who just need to drop a couple of laptops. This is where most of us probably are, and where the bulk of the population (pardon the pun) tends to be these days. We all remember the heady days of the 1980′s, when Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and their ilk were merrily blowing up everything in sight. The closest things to a group of average-sized folks in a big sci-fi extravaganza are the crews of the Nostromo and Enterprises D and E.

Maybe everyone really is going to be a healthier weight in the future, or rich enough to support and survive being egregiously otherwise. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case right now.  A 2006 article in the International Journal of Obesity reports that from 1994 to 2003, Americans adjusted their desired weight upwards by 2.3 kg (5 pounds), while at the same time weighing 3.9 kg (8.5 lb) more. This echoes a much larger study(pdf), conducted from the mid-80′s to the first part of the new century, where nearly 2 million respondents showed an average increase of approximately 2 Body Mass Indicator units. (BMI is a relative measure of height vs. weight; the recommended range is 18-25).

It looks like, if we want to buck the overall trend, we’re going to have to work at it. Whether or not the future is bright enough to require wearing shades, hopefully none of us will have to buy the next larger size of snarky black t-shirt.

Related posts:

1. Fantasy and Fitness: Interviews with Jay Lake and Elizabeth Bear
2. Sticking Points
3. Monday Madness – Week Three