Aliens : The Anthropology of Science Fiction

How and when does there come to be an "an-thropology of the alien?" This set of essays, written for the eighth J.

Lloyd Eaton Confer-ence on Fantasy and Science Fiction, is con-cerned with the significance of that question. "[Anthropology] is the science that must desig-nate the alien ifit is to redefine a place for itself in the universe," according to the Introduction.The idea of the alien is not new.

In the Re-naissance, Montaigne's purpose in describing an alien encounter was excorporation--man-kind was the "savage" because the artificial devices of nature controlled him.

Shake-speare's version of the alien encounter was in-corporation; his character of Caliban is brought to the artificial, political world of man and incor-porated into the body politic"The essays in this volume . . . show, in their general orientation, that the tribe ofShakespeare still, in literary studies at least, outnumbers that of Montaigne." These essays show the interrelation of the excorporating pos-sibilities to the internal soundings of the alien encounter within the human mind and form.This book is divided into three parts: "Searchings: The Quest for the Alien" includes "The Aliens in Our Mind," by Larry Niven; "Effing the Ineffable," by Gregory Benford; "Border Patrols," by Michael Beehler; "Alien Aliens," by Pascal Ducommun; and "Metamorphoses of the Dragon," by George E.

Slusser."Sightings: The Aliens among Us" includes "Discriminating among Friends," by John Huntington; "Sex, Superman, Sociobiology," by Joseph D.

Miller; "Cowboys and Telepaths," by Eric S. Rabkin; "Robots," by Noel Perrin; "Aliens in the Supermarket," by George R.

Guffey; and "Aliens 'R' U.S.," by Zoe Sofia."Soundings: Man as the Alien" includes "H.

G. Wells' Familiar Aliens," by John R. Reed; "Inspiration and Possession," by Clayton Koelb; "Cybernauts in Cyberspace," by David Porush; "The Human Alien," by Leighton Brett Cooke; "From Astarte to Barbie," by Frank McConnell; and "An Indication of Monsters;" by Colin Greenland.