In the book 'A Thousand Suns' I think it was there's talk of people sitting at a diner on Prospero having food brought to them, so yes. I'd say there are billions of average every day people in the 41st millennium, they just live with more of a threat of war than we ever have or will, and at the most random of times.

'How would you like your coffee today, Mitch?'

'double double...what's that shadow overhead?'

Hive fleet.

 

The waiters on prospero were psychic and They would predict what you wanted and brought it to you before you ordered it. Not exactly normal.

I did listen to a 40k audiobook tho which was about a bunch of hilly billies that lived on a planet on the outer rim that were farmers and none of them were warriors. They were deceived into allying with Horus by a single guy who was sent to their world.

I think it was called traitors due? I listen to a lot of 40k audio books.

 

"The Emperors Mercy" starts with people leading more or less normal lives.

I'd say the overwhelming majority of people in the 40k universe are very much just normal people, albeit leading very different lives to us.

 

However being a "normal" Person in 40k tends to end in an explosive or Alien related death.

 

OK, OK. The waiters on Prospero were psychic. But there were waiters, which means there's cooks and cleaners and business owners. Not EVERYTHING can be state run, although the economical aspect of the Imperium of Man is definitely NOT the focus of 40k. Maybe they are even more of a fascist dictatorship than I previously thought, but having all aspects of society government run would be a bit more of a communist ideal, lacking the competitive spirit of capitalism.

There's only so many guardsmen and space marines. There IS so many planets. Gotta be normal people. Must be diners on planets aside from Prospero. Just the example I thought of off the top of my head.

 

I think that's quite obvious - in Warhammer 40k "there's only war", so most of fiction is focused on it, but think about countles menial workers, citizens of hive worlds and others. The Imperial Guard is so ridiculously huge, but I can bet it's not very big when compared to humanity as a whole. Fiction is mostly about war, because it's WARhammer.

 

Of course there are 'normal' people in the Imperium. In fact the vast majority of Imperial citizens are your common workers, farmers, businessmen etc. By no means is everyone a soldier, servitor or Imperial bureaucrat.

There is no such thing as the 'average' Imperial citizen however. There are a million different worlds in the Imperium each with its own economy, culture, beliefs, priorities and threats. Some people live horrible lives of menial labour in never ceasing factories. Others live on pleasant civilised worlds, much like our own. Cadians live in a military state, the whole planet on a war footing.

Not every, or even most, Imperial planets are embroiled in war. They must all provide a tithe of course, but not every world has fighting in the streets.

You don't hear about the peaceful worlds, or happy citizens because this is 'the grim darkness of the far future where there is only war'. The novels are written about the trials of soldiers, not Bob the farmer's latest crop.

 

Abnett does a good job of dealing with the wider world of 40k in some of his books: notably Eisenhorn, Ravenor and Double Eagle. 15 Hours also hints at it.

 

One of the few books I've read that does show the larger world is the Enforcer trilogy. The main character transfers to a new world so you get to see normal citizens living "normal" lives as she is shown around (to familiarize herself with her new beat).

 

In the beginning of A thousand sons you meet the triad of friends whom are digging for artifacts. Notably they end up being psychic because one of them can touch an object and see it's past BUT IRRELEVANT. And there's a part where the same man is training with Ahriman and he's quite scared at the size of even a raw space marine without power armour.