Mundane

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This page is about science fiction insider terminology. See Journal of Mundane Behavior for the scholarly journal. See Wiktionary for the adjective mundane.

Look up mundane in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

In science fiction and related fandoms, a mundane is a person who does not belong to a particular group, according to the members of that group; the implication is that such persons, lacking imagination, are concerned solely with the mundane: the quotidian and ordinary.^[1]

Some examples:

In science fiction fandom, some fans classify all non-fans as "mundanes" or, for short, "danes".^[2]
Goths also commonly refer to non-goths as "mundanes" or "norms".
In historical reenactment fandom, too, such as The Society for Creative Anachronism, some participants classify all non-participants as "mundanes". Similarly, one's "mundane" name is the legal name one goes by in the outside world. "Mundanes," sometimes shortened to just "danes" (not to be confused with people of Danish descent), is also a term for normal everyday clothes, as opposed to historical garb.^[3]
In the science fiction television series Babylon 5, telepathic humans (especially Psi Corps members) classify all non-telepathic humans as "mundanes". The classification is employed mainly, but not solely, by telepathic characters who have telepath-supremacist ideologies (such ideologies being one of the issues dealt with by the series), and was deliberately chosen to mirror the classification in science fiction fandom.^[4]
In fantasy literature the term or some equivalent is often used to apply to non-magical people or the non-magical society. It is used in Piers Anthony's Xanth novels, and Bill Willingham's comic book series Fables (often shortened to "mundies" in the latter). The Harry Potter series uses the term muggle in the same way.
In furry fandom, it is used to describe non-furries, or "humans".^[5]
In Sanguinarian circles or "houses" the word Mundane means "non vampire/vampyre/Sanguinarian" or human. Some consider it derogatory but because it is a very private group(s) and there are many different Houses with different lingos and Terminology. See Sanguinarius.org for Real Vampires
In text-based online role-playing games, the term is commonly used to refer to the player as opposed to their character, typically shortened to "mun".

According to a document titled The Mundane Manifesto, mundane science fiction is science fiction which does not make use of interstellar travel or other common tropes of the genre.

Otherwise, within the scope of the software communities of free and open-source software some proponents^{[citation needed]} of the respective movements classify those which do not know enough about their views as "mundanes", signifying their normalcy, their lack of being beyond the regular users of computers.