The conclusions we arrive at after the prior chapters are, on their surface, rather simple: not only has sport been a topic of concern in science fiction for most of that genre's history, but the combination of sport and science fiction allows for a rather unique perspective on biological notions of embodiment. Furthermore, this emphasis on physicality complicates both essentialist equations of sport and masculinity (Part I) and the hegemonic control of that masculinity upon sport (Part II). Yet there are complications, and more socially conscious criticism will be quick to raise certain objections. First, the emphasis on biology in relation to such socially constructed categories as gender and race may seem to conflate, say, biological sex and socially constituted gender. This is not the intent of the present work, but rather the aim is to place the biological body and the psychology of the individual alongside the social construct, to include them rather than relegate them to a marginal position. This motive is why athletes are viewed through the lens of a biopolitically situated monstrosity in sf, because the athlete's sheer physicality so often represents the inclusive exclusion of our own bodies from discourses that tend to dissolve them within a purely social milieu. The other, not unrelated, objection will most likely be the lack of seriousness of the media used for this analysis— the situation of this argument within what Gerry Canavan and Ben Robertson have termed ‘mere genre.’ Maintaining the importance of the genre is a problem as old as sf itself, but, as prior chapters have outlined, sports too have been the target of this accusation throughout history. On the other hand, the charge of lack of seriousness may also be just another mechanism by which athletes are set apart from the ‘full life’ of the serious intellectual.

However, it also may seem somewhat ironic to attempt to maintain the viability of the body while working with bodies that are purely fictional to begin with, that are already enveloped in pure discourse. I have often cited Brian Attebery's reminder that gender ‘is constrained by habits of thought and speech, economics, power, desire, and the stubborn physicality of bodies. But there are no bodies in fiction, only words that call bodies to mind.