Chad Oliver

Chad Oliver (1928-1993) was an American science fiction and Western writer and anthropologist, born in Kenton, Ohio. He earned a doctorate in anthropology from UCLA in 1961 with a dissertation on the social organization of Plains Indians, and spent most of his academic career at the University of Texas at Austin, where he twice chaired the anthropology department. His science fiction, including The Winds of Time and the story "Blood's a Rover," was among the first to apply serious anthropological thinking to alien-contact and first-contact scenarios, part of a small subgenre now called anthropological science fiction. Oliver saw his two vocations as complementary, remarking that science fiction's open-minded perspective had made him a better anthropologist, and UT Austin's Plan II program still gives an annual teaching award in his name.