Italian Science Fiction 101

Science Fiction Studies #126 / Vol. 42.2 (2015), 2015

Science Fiction Studies #126 / Vol.42.2 (July 2015), 2015

THE ITALIAN (Milky)WAY TO SCIENCE FICTION Abstract of the paper read at the 2013 Global Science Fiction" symposium at Wellesley College", Boston, USA. by Jadel Andreetto Science Fiction is translated with the word “Fantascienza” a fusion of science and fantasy. This gap between definitions pigeonholed this literary genre with the status of children's or pulp fiction. Italy, until the end of World War II, was a rural country, literature was produced almost exclusively within the cultured ruling class and was almost always oriented towards introspective fiction or realism. After the war country's reconstruction Italy became an industrial power and the literature began to recount the horrors of war and the partisan resistance, choosing, as did cinema, a (neo)realist approach. The progressive politicization of the literary salons and the new cultural elite decreed the ultimate death of Fantascienza. The only Science Fiction "allowed" was the foreign one, which was, however, still considered a minor genre. After the economic boom, with the escalation of the Cold War and the Years of Lead, the “victory” of existentialism over idealism, Italian literature found a new way to express the issues related to the "uncanny" through the “purely fantastic,” but with few concessions to Sci-Fi. We have to wait the arrival of the middle nineties to separate Fantascienza from the "suspicion" that it was only pulp fiction. But it was only with the arrival of Valerio Evangelisti that Italian Sci-Fi and Fantasy begins to find its way. From Evangelisti on many writers have gone in search of a Sci-Fi fiction that eschews the duty to be Sci-Fi, a literary genre able to chart an unexplored course, an Italian way to Sci-Fi, Fantasy and New Weird, until the publishing industry destroy it all. The Italian (Milky)Way to Science Fiction, after a historical and critical introduction will focus on those interesting days of raise and fall.

This collection of essays explores how science fiction films and computer games attempt to come to grips with the changing conceptions of the world around us, and our identity within it. This book focuses on developments that have taken place in science fiction media over the last two decades. The central concern is with technology: special effects technology used to create the special effects in media such as films and computer games; and the way the media examples themselves image and thematize the role of new technology within their narratives. This book is concerned especially with exploring a diverse range of experiences that science fiction can offer its audience. Ranging from film examples such as Matrix Reloaded and Avatar to game examples such as Doom 3, one aim is to explore how similar themes of technological advancement in the hands of corporations and governments are conveyed across the different media technologies - the cinema and computer games. In addition, the book explores how film affects technologies and science fiction themes have begun to slip outside the boundaries of science fiction media and have entered the social realm - through 'special effects' that are rudimentary forms of artificial intelligence, through 'real' robots that are becoming a growing industry, and in the construction of our urban spaces which are deliberately modeled upon utopian images drawn from science fiction.

Proceedings of 37th International Cosmic Ray Conference — PoS(ICRC2021), 2021

Back in mid 2018, we were organizing eXtreme19, a conference on astro-particle physics held in Padova on the topic of extremely energetic emission from galaxies. For the preparation of the graphical material in support of the conference we seeked for a collaboration with talented art students. To this purpose, we joined the Italian programme ‘PCTO’ (Percorsi per le Competenze Trasversali e per l’Orientamento) of high school student stages in job centers. Emily, Beatrice, and Chiara from the high school “Liceo Artistico Statale Amedeo Modigliani” in Padova accepted our invitation and started a 6-month stage at the Padova University in close contact with us. The challenge was to interbreed our scientific description of a relativistic jet of a powerful galaxy and their artistic assimilation and subsequent representation of it. During this period, they elaborated outstanding and innovative graphical material used for the webpage as well as the conference poster. The quality of the graph...

Critical Quarterly, 2009

The field of science fiction studies has emerged fully fledged from a struggle for academic legitimation that began about 1970. Like other marginalised fields, SF benefited from the challenges to the canon mounted by literary theorists and supporters of cultural studies. Forty years ago instructors of SF required a tenured position and a thick skin against the barbs of their colleagues to teach and write about the field, whereas now most scholars enjoy the full apparatus necessary for research, teaching, and publication-professional societies, newsletters and newsgroups, journals, conferences, library collections, academic degree programmes, online sites, blogs, and more. There still remain some unresolved issues for the field in relation to academic hierarchy and recognition-it is unlikely that there will soon be chaired professors of science fiction at the most prestigious European and American universities, say Oxbridge and the Ivy League, and it remains a chancy proposition to enter the academic job market on either side of the Atlantic prepared only to teach and write about science fiction. It would be a safer bet for anyone with a PhD in SF seeking top-market positions to present their credentials as a Victorianist, modernist, postmodernist, film or media specialist, or critical theorist with interests and publications in science fiction. However, as evidenced by the institutional affiliations of contributors and editors of The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction, there are now many professional science fiction scholars in several disciplinary configurations within cultural studies and humanities departments in North America, Europe, New Zealand, and Australia. The editors of The Routledge Companion are notable members of this scholarly community: two of them, Andrew Butler and Sherryl Vint, are co-editors of the oldest scholarly journal of the field, Extrapolation, and scholars in SF literary and cultural studies, respectively. Mark Bould has written extensively on SF film and television. Adam Roberts, author of historical and critical studies of SF, is also a novelist. All four have academic positions, one in Canada and the other three in England.

2022

Conference organisers: Eleonora Lima (Trinity College Dublin); Michele Maiolani (University of Cambridge); Marco Malvestio (University of Padua / University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) EVENT OVERVIEW While Primo Levi is mainly known for his painstaking and harsh books about his imprisonment in Auschwitz, he also wrote two collections of short stories that can be labelled as science fiction: 'Storie naturali' (1966) and 'Vizio di forma' (1971). A chemist by training, Levi wrote these stories at a time when science fiction was still perceived as unworthy of attention by Italian intellectuals—to the extent that 'Storie naturali' was initially published under a pseudonym. In both books, Levi uses science fiction to investigate the ethical implications of technological progress and probe its hidden and inherent flaws while adopting a tone that was only apparently light. The eerie effect reached by many of these short stories is due to a strong clash: the literary genre was considered superficial and disengaged by the vast majority of Levi’s contemporaries, and yet the writer addresses crucial existential questions in his narrations of clones, intelligent technologies, mutant animals. By drawing attention to Levi’s contributions in science fiction, this one-day conference aims to contribute to reshaping the scholarly reputation of this genre within Italian Studies and to question Levi’s perception vis-à-vis his position within the hierarchy of genres. This event brings together some of the most renowned scholars who have explored the intersections between his work and science fiction. The speakers will dialogue with early-career researchers and established Levi scholars to foster the debate on this new area of research and explore it from an interdisciplinary perspective.

2003