The vast, vast majority of multicellular life on earth, is aquatic.

Statistically, the average multicellular life on earth looks more like a bobbit worm than a human.

And yet scifi is full of bilaterally symmetric, land-dwelling *bipedal* organisms.

When, statistically, the average organism doesn't have any of those characteristics.

If all the multicellular life on earth held a vote to send its most representative ambassador, *beetles* wouldn't even make the cut.

They'd send this guy, the bristlemouth fish. He outnumbers pretty much everyone else.

If they went by "most varied multicellular organism," the bristlemouth would lose because despite there being quadrillions of them, they only have a dozen species.

Nematodes would win. 4 out of every 5 animals on earth is a worm, and there are 15,000 known species.

Again: our planet's most representative multicellular organism is more bobbit worm than beetle, let alone a messed up primate.

So: why does science fiction show such an utter lack of imagination?

Why don't scifi writers all pay marine biologists for consulting?

On the one hand, you could say it's parochialism. Stephen King's protagonists are all horror writers who live in Maine, after all. You write what you know.

But on the other hand, you could say it's also because doing so admits that even without space travel, humanity is a candle floating on an ocean of infinite alien terror that can snuff us out in an eyeblink.

And on the gripping hand, you could say it's because, although the average animal on earth is a terrifyingly alien monstrosity, earth itself is *vanilla* compared to actual xenobiology.

So: klingons who don't have 3 penises, like koala bears. Or 20,000 sexes, like slime molds. Or radial symmetry, like the humble Jimbacrinus bostocki whose body now comprises whole fields of sedimentary rock from 260 million years ago.

Science fiction writers commonly display such a stunning lack of biodiversity that you'd think they were not at all times aware of what a crab actually looks like.