Publisher's Synopsis
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 of
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.
