Graying the Playing Field

Abstract

Using both SF literature and film, this chapter indicates age as the clearest challenge to the social construction of the embodied athlete. Within age studies, such constructions often display an escapist quality—the desire to avoid aging and death, to posit aging as a narrative that may be re-written—also sometimes reflected in the fantastic. In much science fiction, however, one also sees a mindful acceptance of the embodied limitations that age places upon us, even in the figures of athletes so often held up as the epitome of youth and health. These limitations are explored in a wide variety of sf literature.