History Main / Lightworlder

** Two human worlds, Wunderland and We Made It, have low gravity compared to Earth. As a result, Wunderlanders and crashlanders tend to be very tall, often around seven feet in height, with slender torsos and limbs.

* ''VideoGame/ZoneOfTheEnders Dolores, i'' portrayed people born on Mars as being weaker than those born on Earth. It's mentioned that it's a criminal offense for an Earthling to strike a Martian, as there's a good possibility it could kill them. Which is why they built themselves HumongousMecha about six times the power of Earth models in their most mass produced forms. This is also mentioned when main character James Links is challenged to a fist fight by a Martian gangster. James figures the fight will be easy as he's a Earthling, only to get his ass kicked in record time. Apparently the gangster works out in heavy G, just so he can knock arrogant Earthlings down a peg or two.
* ''Manga/{{Planetes}}'':
** Nono. She's two meters tall. She's ''[[HugeSchoolgirl twelve]]''. She was born on the Moon. However, since the human body wasn't designed for this sort of environment, the effects of lunar gravity to her physiology lead to her living permanently in a hospital, both to monitor her health as well as to aid medical research into the effects of low-gravity environments on humans -- which is vital for deep-space missions like the Jupiter-bound Von Braun expedition.
** There is also a subversion of the "Earthborn protagonists are stronger" aspect of the trope in that professional astronauts who spend too much time in zero-G will suffer muscular atrophy and a form of osteoporosis. This is shown explicitly when the elderly Harry Roland easily overpowers the 25 year-old Hachimaki because the veteran astronaut actually made a substantial effort to maintain his muscle mass and bone density. Hachi is inspired to do the same after the incident.
* ''Manga/{{MAR}}'': Although the world of MAR Heaven [[AllGravityIsTheSame doesn't have gravity that is notably different from Earth's]], in that the humanoids look no different, it does give Ginta [[spoiler: and Nanashi]] an extreme power up in strength and jumping ability when compared to the standard occupants of the world.

* In ''Film/{{Avatar}}'', the [[MagicalNativeAmerican Na'vi]] live on the lower-gravity Pandora. They're in the range of ten feet tall and skinny as a rail. Contrary to usual, they're ''much'' [[PunyEarthlings stronger and more durable than humans]], with the ability to use a hunting/war bow as tall as an average human man and their bones are practically natural carbon-fiber.
* In ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi'', the Ewoks are a lot weaker than humans, not just because they're small but also because Endor is a low-G moon.[[note]]This is also how the Ewoks' primitive gliders (which at first glance seem to have wings far too small to provide sufficient lift) are able to function.[[/note]] This shows up more in the Ewoks TV special/movie where a 30' giant appears and can move around without suffocating under its own weight.

* ''{{Literature/Artemis}}'': The titular colony has no native-born residents. Pregnant women go back to Earth to avoid birth defects from the Lunar gravity and children under the age of twelve are not allowed to move to the city. Main character Jazz moved to Artemis when she was six, before the law was changed, and doubts she could handle Earth's gravity if she was deported there.
* Creator/IsaacAsimov
** "Literature/ABoysBestFriend": Jimmy is "Moonborn", meaning he was born in Lunar City. UsefulNotes/TheMoon has much less gravity than Earth, which causes him to grow up taller and skinnier compared to Earthborn boys his age. However, this means he's too fragile to visit Earth and its much stronger gravity.
-->By Earth standards, he was spindly, but rather tall for a 10-year-old. His arms and legs were long and agile. He looked thicker and stubbier with his spacesuit on, but he could handle the lunar gravity as no Earth-born human being could. His father couldn't begin to keep up with him when Jimmy stretched his legs and went into the kangaroo hop.
** In ''Literature/TheGodsThemselves'', Moonborn people have weaker bones, leading to [[CantHaveSexEver slight sexual incompatibility]] with Earth people. And due to the metabolism being about the same, they need constant exercises to keep their bodies under the proper strain. A human from Earth who comes to the Moon must spend at least a week every two months on Earth, unless he wants to become a permanent resident. It is said they remember every Moonborn child whom their parents took to Earth without realizing they were signing their child's death sentence.

* ''{{Literature/Gor}}'': Inverted, as the planet is often described as having lower gravity than Earth but the men of Gor are far stronger. That's because they use the muscles they have -- wind, water and muscle are Gor's only motive powers, so they get plenty of exercise. It should be noted that the occasional Earth exports -- Tarl Cabot and Jason Marshall -- benefit from their Earth-developed muscle mass, even though Jason takes half of ''Fighting Slave of Gor'' to find out how strong he is. Otherwise, the usual comparison is between Gorean men and Earth women, where testosterone trumps gravity every time. And though Gor's lesser gravity is, plotwise, doubtless a tip o'the hat to ''John Carter of Mars'', Gor is much nearer to Earth in size than Mars.
* In the ''Literature/GreenSkyTrilogy'', the titular world does have much lower gravity, so much that a toddler's fall from the high treetops will injure, but not kill. The Kindar are on the willowy and frail side, while the ground-walking Erdlings [[spoiler: descended from Kindar Exiles]] have developed a sturdier frame from generations of living underground.

* ''Literature/JohnCarterOfMars'': The native Martians are considerably weaker than John Carter, who can easily make 50-foot standing leaps in Barsoom's low gravity. However, not many of the native creatures reflect this trope in their designs, often appearing as bulky as anything on Earth, and the Red, Black, White, and Yellow Martians all look [[HumanAliens basically human]]. Most illustrators - and the [[Film/JohnCarter Disney movie]] - have agreed that the more alien Green Martians should be relatively lightly-built and wiry as far as 14-foot tall {{proud warrior race guy}}s go, though, and it's worth noting that in the first book, Carter accidentally kills a Green Martian simply by punching him in the face.

* The protagonist of Gerard Klein's short story "Jonah" was born and grew up in zero-g. A bitter and lonely hero eight feet tall and not fifty kilograms in weight, frail, making his living taming berserk {{bioship}}s. People complain about his fees, but life is expensive in space.

* Creator/LarryNiven's works:
** In the setting of ''Literature/TheIntegralTrees'' and ''Literature/TheSmokeRing'', the inhabitants of Integral Trees are somewhat taller and slimmer than Earth people, but they are strong, tough Heavyworlders compared to people from the rest of the Smoke Ring. The tidal forces acting on the trees provides at least a little simulated gravity, but everyone else grows up in zero-G. One character, often referred to as a "dwarf", actually has an Earth-normal build; he's described as "monstrously strong" and is the only person who can wear one of the original spacesuits.
** ''Literature/KnownSpace'':
*** Two human worlds, Wunderland and We Made It, have low gravity compared to Earth. As a result, Wunderlanders and crashlanders tend to be very tall, often around seven feet in height, with slender torsos and limbs.
*** Earth's moon, Luna, is also colonized. The people who grow up there, "Lunies," average around eight feet tall and are said to look like fantasy elves.

* In ''Literature/{{Pellucidar}}'', another series by Edgar Rice Burroughs, gravity is slightly lighter on the interior of the [[HollowWorld hollow Earth]] than on the exterior due to tidal forces from the other side of the sphere. Which might explain how the surface-worlder protagonists often beat the crap out of natives.

* ''Literature/SectorGeneral'' again, this time with the GLNO Cinrusskin, a meter-long insectile species from a planet with 1/8 G. Requires an antigravity belt to ''survive,'' much less be able to move, in 1G conditions (if the belt failed it'd die of shock within minutes, assuming its exoskeleton didn't collapse first).
* In a story in ''Literature/TheShipWho Sang'', [[SapientShip Helva]] is told to adjust her gravity to half-standard for a passenger. Given how he visibly struggles in normal gravity, she wonders if he's a lightworlder, but it actually turns out that overusing [[FantasticDrug mindtrap]] to help his recall has given him soft bones and chronic fatigue.

* In ''Literature/{{Strata}}'', archaeological evidence suggests that the [[{{Precursors}} Great Spindle Kings]], a planet-building race which pre-dated humanity and its contemporaries, were tall, attenuated Lightworlder-types. [[spoiler: Or ''would'' have been, had they actually existed; turns out their remnants were fakes, cooked up by the ''actual'' Precursors to emulate this trope.]]
* ''Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds1898'': The Martians are massive, octopus-like beings who could walk on their tentacles on their home planet, but can only drag themselves on their bellies on Earth.

%% * ''Series/TheExpanse'':

* ''TabletopGame/CallOfCthulhu'' points out that the Martians of ''Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds'' are actually this, and the fact that they can move relatively well unassisted on a planet that is ''triple'' their normal gravity means that, despite their vulnerability to Earth diseases, they are not the feeble beings that H.G. Wells portrayed, but ''immensely'' strong. This is reflected in their stat block.

* ''TabletopGame/EclipsePhase'': Most [[AfterTheEnd post-Fall]] transhumans live on planets, moons, or habitats with lower gravity than [[EarthThatWas old Earth]]. Though the only morphs that particularly fit the "lightworlder" profile are [[SpacePeople Bouncers]] and Titan's "Hazers".
* ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}} Terradyne'': Moonbabies are humans raised in Lunar gravity. They're tall and fragile, as one might expect, and can't safely return to Earth.
* In ''TabletopGame/HcSvntDracones Core: Extended'' Cogsune are designed for life in space stations with microgravity. Their "field agents" need to have augmented musculatures to survive planetary gravity and even then they have minimal Body: Strength and Resilience stats.

* In ''Videogame/MasterOfOrion II'', races with the Low-G World trait suffer a penalty in ground combat, as well as production penalties on normal-gravity worlds in addition to the penalty most races have on high-gravity worlds. While the trait removes the production penalty most races have on low-gravity worlds, it is considered a disadvantage since low-gravity worlds are slightly rare and tend to be small and poor in resources.

* [[ApesInSpace Winston]] from ''VideoGame/{{Overwatch}}'' is a {{Downplayed}} example. He is an Earth-born gorilla, but was raised in the Horizon Lunar Colony on the moon until his adult years, which left him with comparatively weaker bones. He eventually built his bone strength up to an average level with exercise and dietary supplements.

* In ''Webcomic/TheInexplicableAdventuresOfBob,'' Voluptua has said she is more fragile than she looks because Earth has higher gravity than her homeworld. In fact, Fructose Riboflavin, a member of the same species, refers to Bob (a completely normal human) as a {{Heavyworlder}} while fighting him, commenting on how he had to punch him dozens of times in a few seconds to even affect him, while if Bob got one good punch he'd be done for. Of course, we don't get to see the latter happen due to Galatea intervening.
* In ''Webcomic/QuantumVibe'' Spyders and Beltapes were designed for microgravity, they can't even take Martian gravity for long. Though Beltapes avert the usual lightworlder build by looking like six-foot gorillas.

** The [[InsectoidAliens Umiak]] come from a world about the same size and mass as Mars, which is a large part of how they can get away with being as large as their are with an arthropod's anatomy, and are consequently very poorly suited for handling Earth-normal gravity -- on most inhabited planets, a unmodified Umiak would be barely able to walk. Consequently, almost all Umiak sent onto other species' planets are heavily genetically and/or cybernetically augmented in order to be able to bear their own weights. This is also why the Umiak have never used {{Space Fighter}}s -- even with liquid breathing mediums for cushioning, they simply can't handle the g-forces.

* ''WesternAnimation/Ben10AlienForce'': Goop's species come from a world with such low gravity that his gelatinous form must be upheld with a small flying anti-gravity device on earth.

* ''WesternAnimation/InsideJob2021'': It turns out that when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon they formed a prosperous space colony of [[ExtremeLibido sex addicts]] with prolonged lives from living in a low-gravity environment. Though overtime, said low-gravity also caused their muscles to degenerate and render them weak compared people on Earth, [[spoiler:which helps Brett [[CurbStompBattle beat their soldiers up]], as he is superhuman compared to them.]]
* ''WesternAnimation/Phantom2040'''s Sean One, who might not live on an actual ''world'', but was born and raised on an orbital colony. He's much taller and thinner than the other characters, is weaker on Earth due to our heavier gravity, and is an absolute ''bastard''.

* ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse'': Gems are an artificial race meant to travel all over space. One ability of their is automatically and immediately adjusting to a planet's gravity, [[DefiedTrope so they'll have the same strength and movement wherever they are]]. They also have SuperStrength, but that's totally separate.

** The ''Literature/KnownSpace'' series has the planet "We Made It," whose homeworld has low gravity and such severe storms that everyone is forced to live underground. Its inhabitants are all tall, wiry, and albino -- basically the opposite of the Jinxians.
** Earth's moon, Luna, is also colonized in Niven's stories. The people who grow up there, "Lunies," average around eight feet tall and are said to look like fantasy elves.

For the opposite, see {{Heavyworlder}}.

* Creator/{{Filmation}}'s version of ''WesternAnimation/{{Flash Gordon|1979}}'' claims that Mongo's gravity is a bit lighter than Earth's, so humans are stronger there than on Earth. Flash mentions this to encourage Dale when she has to jump across a wide gap to safety.

* The ''WesternAnimation/SamuraiJack'' episode "Jack and the Flying Prince and Princess" had a prince and princess from another planet crash land on Earth. As their home world had lighter gravity, they could barely move in Earth's gravity and needed Jack's help to survive. Then near the end, they managed to use a device to change the surrounding area to their home world's gravity. Unused to it, the mooks helplessly flopped around and flew through the air whenever they tried to move, while the prince and princess picked them apart, demonstrating great speed and strength.
* ''WesternAnimation/Phantom2040'''s Sean One, who might not live on an actual ''world'', but was born and raised on an orbital colony. He's much taller and thinner than the other characters, is weaker on Earth due to our heavier gravity, and is an absolute ''bastard''.
* ''WesternAnimation/InsideJob2021'': It turns out that when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon they formed a prosperous space colony of [[ExtremeLibido sex addicts]] with prolonged lives from living in a low-gravity environment. Though overtime, said low-gravity also caused their muscles to degenerate and render them weak compared people on Earth, [[spoiler:which helps Brett [[CurbStompBattle beat their soldiers up]], as he is superhuman compared to them.]]

** Subverted with voidborn humans (those born and usually raise on spaceships): They tend to prefer being on ships than on solid ground, but seem no different from other people (possibly due to ArtificialGravity).

* ''Anime/{{Planetes}}'':

* ''Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds'': The Martians are massive, octopus-like beings who could walk on their tentacles on their home planet, but can only drag themselves on their bellies on Earth.

* ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' gives a Lightworlder in Ensign Melora Pazlar, the only Elaysian in Starfleet. She is mostly bound to a wheelchair (or a quite clumsy "exoskeleton" harness) because of her difficulties in adapting to standard gravity. In her quarters, she turns the artificial gravity to that of her world. Dr. Bashir tries a strengthening regimen, but when told it would be irreversible (thus making it impossible for her to return to her homeworld), she declines. Eventually, Melora beat some bad guys by ''turning off the artificial gravity'' and being the only one who could easily maneouver. She goes on to be a main character in the ''Literature/StarTrekTitan'' novels.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

Ordinary humans who ''visit'' low-gravity planets, and [[NormalFishInATinyPond seem much stronger there than on Earth]] becoming {{Heavyworlder}}s in comparison, are a HumanityIsSuperior variant dating back at least to the 1912 novel ''[[Literature/JohnCarterOfMars A Princess of Mars]]''. While this variant is common in vintage scifi, the natives of such worlds are seldom portrayed as skinny, fragile versions of this trope. That's probably because it makes for poor {{fanservice}} if the DistressedDamsel rescued by the "incredibly strong" human hero makes [[ComicStrip/{{Popeye}} Olive Oyl]] look like Creator/PamelaAnderson.

* ''WesternAnimation/InsideJob2021'': It turns out that when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon they formed a prosperous space colony of [[SexAddict sex addicts]] with prolonged lives from living in a low-gravity environment. Though overtime, said low-gravity also caused their muscles to degenerate and render them weak compared people on Earth, [[spoiler:which helps Brett [[CurbStompBattle beat their soldiers up]], as he is superhuman compared to them.]]

* ''Literature/TheBarsoomProject'': Charlene Dula grew up in the orbital colony Falling Angels. Her elongated frame reminds people of a Tolkien elf, and she has a hard time with Earth gravity despite months of intensive exercise before coming to Earth.

-->-- '''Chrisjen Avasarala''', ''Series/TheExpanse'', "[[Recap/TheExpanseS01E01Dulcinea Dulcinea]"

->''"I'm sorry the gravity of a ''real'' planet hurts. But it's appropriate. You wish to hurt Earth, the Earth that is now crushing your ''weak'' Belter lungs and your ''fragile'' Belter bones."''
-->-- '''Chrisjen Avasarala''', ''Series/TheExpanse'' ("Dulcinea")

* ''Literature/TheMoonIsAHarshMistress'' uses a related idea -- the tendency of muscles to atrophy in lower gravity -- as a major obstacle in [[spoiler:Mannie and Prof's trip to Earth]]. It even goes to the point of saying that living on the Moon for more than a few weeks can cause "irreversible physiological changes", to the point that a person who has lived their whole lives on Earth will be unable to handle Earth's gravity after about six weeks in the Moon, unless they exercise regularly and "stretch time" by using centrifuges to keep their bodies adjusted to 1g. Even then, it's chancy. In the RealLife it's [[ScienceMarchesOn a quite large stretch]], actually. 0G ''does'' have an adverse effect on the muscle strength and bone composition, but it's completely reversible, and can be quite easily mitigated by the special diet and exercises, though the ''amount'' of exercise is quite considerable (2 hours per day is usually seen as a minimum). The record so far stays at a year and a two months (Russian physician Valery Polyakov during his '94–'95 flight, he also posted 8 months in orbit in '88) without any ill effects, though the cosmonaut in question could barely walk for a couple of months even ''with'' the exercise. Of course, all this is about 0G/microgravity; even lunar gravity, while much weaker than Earth's, is substantial (0.165 ''g'') would mitigate these problems to some extent.

* ''Literature/ParadoxUniverse'': The [[SpaceElves Eldritch]] are from a planet with significantly lower gravity than Alliance average, they tend to be six-seven feet tall and thin, with noticeably elongated limbs. And they're notably fragile, in ''Mindtouch'' Jahir passes out from the strain Seersana's standard strength gravity puts on his body, though he goes on medication to help strengthen his skeleton and cardiovascular system.
* In ''{{Literature/Pellucidar}}'', another series by Edgar Rice Burroughs, gravity is slightly lighter on the interior of the [[HollowWorld hollow Earth]] than on the exterior due to tidal forces from the other side of the sphere. Which might explain how the surface-worlder protagonists often beat the crap out of natives.

* ''Anime/{{Planetes}}'': Nono. She's two meters tall. She's ''[[HugeSchoolgirl twelve]]''. She was born on the Moon. However, since the human body wasn't designed for this sort of environment, the effects of lunar gravity to her physiology lead to her living permanently in a hospital, both to monitor her health as well as to aid medical research into the effects of low-gravity environments on humans -- which is vital for deep-space missions like the Jupiter-bound Von Braun expedition. There is also a subversion of the "Earthborn protagonists are stronger" aspect of the trope in that professional astronauts who spend too much time in zero-G will suffer muscular atrophy and a form of osteoporosis. This is shown explicitly when the elderly Harry Roland easily overpowers the 25 year-old Hachimaki because the veteran astronaut actually made a substantial effort to maintain his muscle mass and bone density. Hachi is inspired to do the same after the incident.

* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'':
** One of the Tau's subspecies is the Air Caste, Tau who crew the empire's spacefleet. As they have lived almost exclusively in a low-gravity environment for generations, they are described as having developed very fragile, lightly-built bodies. This may actually be an inversion; in some versions of the Tau backstory the tribes that became the Air Caste could fly under their own power even before the race moved into space and so has nothing to do with their environment.
** The Longshanks are a variety of abhumans (officially recognized and approved stable HumanSubspecies who diverged from baseline humanity through natural evolution and/or ancient genetic engineering rather than Chaos corrupted mutants) descended from colonists who settled low-gravity worlds in the time of the ancient, advanced human civilization tens of thousands of years in the past. As a result, they became extremely tall, thin and delicate. In older material, this is to the point that they're unable to endure Earth-normal gravity or the rigors of a spaceships' takeoff. Longshanks are effectively stuck on their homeworlds, so they, like many other varieties of abhuman, are essentially just background fluff that almost never appears in an important capacity. Modern lore has them able to survive higher gravity if provided with sufficient armor and support; they can be valuable recruits for the Imperial Guard due to their high vantage points and ability to cross difficult terrain at speed with their long strides, but they're also easy targets for enemy fire due to how much they stick out.

* In ''TabletopGame/HcSvntDracones Core: Extended'' Cogsune are designed for life in space stations with microgravity. Their "field agents" need to have augmented musculatures to survive planetary gravity and even then they have minimal Body: Strength and Resilience stats.
* ''TabletopGame/CallOfCthulhu'' points out that the Martians of ''Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds'' are actually this, and the fact that they can move relatively well unassisted on a planet that is ''triple'' their normal gravity means that, despite their vulnerability to Earth diseases, they are not the feeble beings that H.G. Wells portrayed, but ''immensely'' strong. This is reflected in their stat block.

%% * ''Series/TheExpanse'', the TV adaptation of the book series above.

** The Longshanks are a variety of abhumans (officially recognized and approved stable HumanSubspecies who diverged from baseline humanity through natural evolution and/or ancient genetic engineering rather than Chaos corrupted mutants) descended from colonists who settled low-gravity worlds in the time of the ancient, advanced human civilization tens of thousands of years in the past. As a result, they became extremely tall, thin and delicate, to the point that they're unable to endure Earth-normal gravity or the rigors of a spaceships' takeoff. Longshanks are effectively stuck on their homeworlds, so they, like many other varieties of abhuman, are essentially just background fluff that almost never appears in an important capacity.

* The protagonist of Gerard Klein's short story "Jonah" was born and grew up in zero-g, and is very lonely.