"To my mind science fiction has tremendous potential for being great literature, simply because you can do anything," Joan D. Vinge told Charles Platt in Dream Makers Volume II. "You can set up parameters which are totally unfamiliar. You can put characters into alien situations and run them through strange changes which still relate to universal problems that people face today." The author, who trained in anthropology, believes that her chosen genre is similarly suited for exploring human nature, as she once told Gale: "Archaeology is the anthropology of the past, science fiction is the anthropology of the future--and that continuum provides you with a parallax view of every imaginable experience a human being might share in. Seeing the world from a different viewpoint than your own is stimulating, exciting, breathtaking--even frightening. But always fascinating." In creating new worlds such as those contained in her Hugo-winning "Snow Queen...