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It's not easy to be an anthropologist in the 21st Century. All the primitive cultures are gone, assimilated into a neo-Western global socio-economic sameness. Professor Thomas Schwartz is that useless anthropologist, globe-hopping from lecture to lecture, from Montevideo to Port Moresby, New Guinea, and all the cities are the same. But in his fantasies, he travels on a great interstellar liner surrounded by the representatives of many alien cultures—something to study!
A thoughtful rumination on the possible demise of cultural diversity written for Judy-Lynn del Rey's first Stellar anthology. The story was a conscious effort at 1950s-style conservative
storytelling, and earned a Hugo nomination.
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