Over the past months, I have been trying to decide (if only in my own mind) what anthropological science fiction looks like today. After all, if you're looking for "fully realized worlds" in the style of 1960's and 1970's fiction, you'll not find it. Even authors synonymous with "anthropological science fiction" (e.g., Ursula K. Le Guin) have moved away from that style towards something more like what James Clifford has called "partial truths". "Ethnographic truths are thus inherently partial – committed and incomplete” (7). But, that said, anthropological science fiction still exists, albeit not by that name. Or, rather, what's produced today is a kind of anthropological science fiction under erasure. That is, rather than the full (and functionalist) anthropological sf of the 20th century, what seems "anthropological" about sf today are exactly those partial, contradiction-ridden evocations of difference and al...
Occasional posts on anthropologically interesting science fiction, anthropological futures and my own future as an anthropologist.