Anthropological science fiction

The American Anthropological Association defines anthropology as “the study of humans, past and present. To understand the full sweep and complexity of cultures across all of human history, anthropology draws upon knowledge from the social and biological sciences as well as the humanities and physical sciences.” However, Samuel Gerald Collins of the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice, Towson University, writing in the journal Science Fiction Studies has pointed out that:

In 1978, Margaret Mead, empathizing with the concerns of the 60s' counterculture, pointed to a grave deficiency in the science of anthropology: "Anthropology has to date made very meager contributions to man's developing concern with the future" ("Contribution" 3). Two decades later, the American Anthropological Association began awarding an annual prize for "Anticipatory Anthropology" in order to ameliorate this shortcoming, what Robert Textor (who sponsored the award and for whom it is named) called the discipline's "tempocentrism"- i.e., its concern only "with the past, the ethnographic present, and the actual present"

The anthropologist Leon E. Stover says of science fiction's relationship to anthropology: "Anthropological science fiction enjoys the philosophical luxury of providing answers to the question "What is man?" while anthropology the science is still learning how to frame it". The editors of a collection of anthropological SF stories observed:

Anthropology is the science of man. It tells the story from ape-man to spaceman, attempting to describe in detail all the epochs of this continuing history. Writers of fiction, and in particular science fiction, peer over the anthropologists’ shoulders as the discoveries are made, then utilize the material in fictional works. Where the scientist must speculate reservedly from known fact and make a small leap into the unknown, the writer is free to soar high on the wings of fancy.

Charles F. Urbanowicz, Professor of Anthropology, California State University, Chico has said of anthropology and SF:

Anthropology and science fiction often present data and ideas so bizarre and unusual that readers, in their first confrontation with both, often fail to appreciate either science fiction or anthropology. Intelligence does not merely consist of fact, but in the integration of ideas -- and ideas can come from anywhere, especially good science fiction!

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