Anthropological science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction that incorporates concepts and methods from anthropology, particularly the study of culture, society, and human evolution.Stover, Leon, E. "Anthropology and Science Fiction", Current Anthropology, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Oct., 1973) Writers in the genre frequently use speculative settings to examine social organization, cultural difference, religion, language, and human behavior, while drawing on anthropological ideas and research.Westfahl, Gary. "Hard Science Fiction" in Seed, David (ed.). A Companion to Science Fiction (Malden: Blackwell, 2008)
Definitions of anthropological science fiction vary, and critics have debated the boundaries of the subgenre.Sills, Yole, G. Review Apeman, Spaceman: Anthropological Science Fiction, Leon E. Stover and Harry Harrison (eds.), American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 71, No. 4 (Aug., 1969) Although it has often been described as a primarily late twentieth-century development associated with writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Michael Bishop, Joanna Russ, Ian Watson, and Chad Oliver,Collins, Samuel Gerald. "Scientifically Valid and Artistically True: Chad Oliver, Anthropology, and Anthropological SF", Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Jul., 2004) earlier works by authors such as H. G. Wells have also been identified as important precursors.
Anthropological themes in science fiction have included depictions of prehistoric humans, alternative models of social development, and encounters with non-human societies. Works by authors such as H. G. Wells, L. Sprague de Camp, Philip José Farmer, William Golding, and Robert J. Sawyer have been discussed as examples of the genre's engagement with anthropology, human evolution, and cultural difference.Barbour, Douglas. "Canadian Science Fiction" in Seed, David (ed.). A Companion to Science Fiction (Malden: Blackwell, 2008)
Overview The boundaries of anthropological science fiction as a subgenre have been debated by critics and scholars. A reviewer in American Anthropologist argued that stories featuring anthropologists or vague references to culture do not necessarily qualify as anthropological science fiction.Sills, Yole, G. Review Apeman, Spaceman: Anthropological Science Fiction, Leon E. Stover and Harry Harrison (eds.), American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 71, No. 4 (Aug., 1969) Critics have noted that the subgenre complicates distinctions between anthropological and hard science fiction, since anthropological approaches to speculative societies derive from the social sciences rather than the natural sciences.Westfahl, Gary. "Hard Science Fiction" in Seed, David (ed.). A Companion to Science Fiction (Malden: Blackwell, 2008)
The subgenre has been associated with speculative fiction about human evolution and prehistoric societies. H. G. Wells's "The Grisly Folk" has been identified as an early example because of its depiction of Neanderthals and early humans.Wells, H. G. "The grisly folk," in Selected short stories, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968 (1921), pp. 285-98)Stover, Leon, E. "Anthropology and Science Fiction", Current Anthropology, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Oct., 1973) Similar themes later appeared in works such as Robert J. Sawyer's The Neanderthal Parallax, which explores alternative forms of human evolution and social organization.Barbour, Douglas. "Canadian Science Fiction" in Seed, David (ed.). A Companion to Science Fiction (Malden: Blackwell, 2008)
The editors of a collection of anthropological SF stories observed that fiction writers are more free to speculate than scientists:
Charles F. Urbanowicz, Professor of Anthropology, California State University, Chico has said of anthropology and SF:
This difficulty of categorization explains the exclusions necessary when seeking the origins of the subgenre. Thus:
Again, questions of description are not simple as Gary Westfahl observes:
Authors and works Chad Oliver Anthropological science fiction is best exemplified by the work of writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Michael Bishop, Joanna Russ, Ian Watson, and Chad Oliver. Of this pantheon, Oliver is alone in being also a professional anthropologist, author of academic tomes such as Ecology and Cultural Continuity as Contributing Factors in the Social Organization of the Plains Indians (1962) and The Discovery of Anthropology (1981) in addition to his anthropologically inflected science fiction. Although he tried, in a superficial way, to separate these two aspects of his career, signing his anthropology texts with his given name "Symmes C. Oliver", he nonetheless saw them as productively interrelated. "I like to think," he commented in a 1984 interview, "that there's a kind of feedback ... that the kind of open-minded perspective in science fiction conceivably has made me a better anthropologist. And on the other side of the coin, the kind of rigor that anthropology has, conceivably has made me a better science fiction writer."
Thus "Oliver's Unearthly Neighbors (1960) highlights the methods of ethnographic fieldwork by imagining their application to a nonhuman race on another world. His Blood's a Rover (1955 ) spells out the problems of applied anthropology by sending a technical-assistance team to an underdeveloped planet. His Rite of Passage (1966 ) is a lesson in the patterning of culture, how humans everywhere unconsciously work out a blueprint for living. Anthropological wisdom is applied to the conscious design of a new blueprint for American society in his Mother of Necessity (1972 )".Stover, Leon E. "Anthropology and Science Fiction", Current Anthropology, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Oct., 1973), pp. 471-474 Oliver's The Winds of Time is a "science fiction novel giving an excellent introduction to the field methods of descriptive linguistics".Meyers, Walter E. "Linguistics and SF" Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Mar., 1976), pp. 96-97
In 1993, a journal of SF criticism requested from writers and critics of SF a list of their 'most neglected' writers,"Unjustly Neglected Works of Science Fiction", Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Nov., 1993), pp. 422-432 and Chad Oliver was listed in three replies. Among the works chosen were: Shadows in the Sun,Oliver, Chad. Shadows in the Sun. New York: Ballantine, 1954. Rpt. New York: Crown, 1985. Unearthly Neighbors,Oliver, Chad. Unearthly Neighbors. 1960. New York: Crown, 1984. and The Shores of Another Sea.Oliver, Chad. The Shores of Another Sea. 1971. New York: Crown, 1984
In Shadows in the Sun, the protagonist, anthropologist Paul Ellery, discovers extraterrestrials living in Jefferson Springs, Texas. The novel treats the aliens as societies that can be understood through anthropology rather than as technologically superior beings. Their weaknesses and social divisions make them vulnerable, and the solution to their colonization lies in cultural understanding rather than advanced technology.
A reviewer of The Shores of Another Sea finds the book "curiously flat despite its exploration of an almost mythical, and often horrific, theme".Barbour, Douglas. "Review: Crown's Classics of Modern Science Fiction" Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Jul., 1984), pp. 200-203 The reviewer's reaction is not surprising because, as Samuel Gerald Collins points out in the 'New Wave Anthropology' section of his comprehensive review of Chad Oliver's work: "In many ways, the novel is very much unlike Oliver's previous work; there is little moral resolution, nor is anthropology of much help in determining what motivates the aliens. In striking contrast to the familiar chumminess of the aliens in Shadows in the Sun and The Winds of Time, humans and aliens in Shores of Another Sea systematically misunderstand one another." At the conclusion of his essay, discussing Chad Oliver's legacy Collins says:
Ursula K. Le Guin It has often been observed that Ursula K. Le Guin's interest in anthropology and its influence on her fiction derives from the influence of both her mother Theodora Kroeber, and of her father, Alfred L. Kroeber.Rochelle, Warren G. "Ursula K. Le Guin" in David Seed (ed.) A companion to Science Fiction (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008)Fayad, Mona. "Aliens, androgynes, and anthropology: Le Guin's critique of representation in The Left Hand of Darkness", Mosaic: a Journal for the interdisciplinary Study of Literature. Winnipeg: Sep 1997.Vol. 30, Iss. 3Bucknall, Barbara J. Ursula K. Le Guin, (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1981)
Warren G. Rochelle in his essay on Le Guin notes that from her parents she:
Another critic has observed that Le Guin's "concern with cultural biases is evident throughout her literary career", and continues,
Le Guin's novel The Left Hand of DarknessLe Guin, Ursula K. The Left Hand of Darkness (New York: Ace, 1969) has been called "the most sophisticated and technically plausible work of anthropological science fiction, insofar as the relationship of culture and biology is concerned",Stover, Leon E. "Anthropology and Science Fiction" Current Anthropology, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Oct., 1973) and also rated as "perhaps her most notable book".Roberts, Adam. The History of Science Fiction, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) This novel forms part of Le Guin's Hainish Cycle (so termed because it develops as a whole "a vast story about diverse planets seeded with life by the ancient inhabitants of Hain").Harris-Fain, Darren. Understanding Contemporary American Science Fiction. The Age of Maturity, 1970-2000, (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2005)Hainish series of novels: Rocannon's World (1966), Planet of Exile (1966), City of Illusions (1967), The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), The Word for World is Forest (1972), The Dispossessed (1974) The series is "a densely textured anthropology, unfolding through a cycle of novels and stories and actually populated by several anthropologists and ethnologists"."Collins, Samuel Gerald. "Sail On! Sail On!: Anthropology, Science Fiction, and the Enticing Future", Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 30, No. 2, (Jul., 2003) Le Guin employs the SF trope of inter-stellar travel which allows for fictional human colonies on other worlds developing widely differing social systems.Samuel, Geoffrey."Inventing Real Cultures: Some Comments on Anthropology and Science Fiction. Part 2" For example, in The Left Hand of Darkness "a human envoy to the snowbound planet of Gethan struggles to understand its sexually ambivalent inhabitants".Pringle, David. The Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction, (London: Grafton Books, 1990)
Geoffery Samuel has pointed out some specific anthropological aspect to Le Guin's fiction, noting that:
However, Fredric Jameson says of The Left Hand of Darkness that the novel is "constructed from a heterogeneous group of narratives modes ...", and that:
Similarly Adam Roberts warns against a too narrow an interpretation of Le Guin's fiction, pointing out that her writing is always balanced and that "balance as such forms one of her major concerns. Both Left Hand and The Dispossessed (1974) balance form to theme, of symbol to narration, flawlessly". Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the novel The Left Hand of Darkness is steeped in anthropological thought, with one academic critic noting that "the theories of [French anthropologist] Claude Lévi-Strauss provide an access to understanding the workings of the myths" in the novel.Walker, Jeanne Murray. "Myth, Exchange and History in The Left Hand of Darkness", Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Jul., 1979), pp.180-189
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