Italian Science Fiction and the Environmental Humanities

Daniel A. Finch-Race is an Assistant Professor in Geography in the Department of History and Cultures at the University of Bologna. Emiliano Guaraldo is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Geography at the New Institute Centre for Environmental Humanities, Ca’ Foscari University, Venice. Marco Malvestio is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow in Comparative Literature in the Department of Linguistic and Literary Studies at the University of Padua.

• Introduction: Greening Italian Science Fiction – New Approaches to a Long-Lasting GenreDaniel A. Finch-Race, Emiliano Guaraldo, Marco MalvestioSection I: Science in the AnthropoceneHerbert Pagani’s Mégalopolis: A Rock Opera between Dystopian Science Fiction and Ecological UtopiaEleonora LimaCultural and Ecological Extinction in Primo Levi’s Science-FictionMichele MaiolaniWhat Kind of Science? Italian Science Fiction Writers against the Economic BoomDaniele ComberiatiSection II: Visions of ExtinctionEcofeminist Care at the End of the World: Collaborative Survival in Niccolò Ammaniti’s Anna and Maria Rosa Cutrufelli’s L’isola delle MadriRaffaella Baccolini and Chiara XausaBarbarism, Animalization, and the End of the World: Fantasies of Regression and Mutation in Italian Science FictionSimona MicaliA Post-Apocalyptic Garden of Eden. Marco Ferreri’s Il Seme dell’UomoEmiliano GuaraldoSection III: Urban Landscapes and Industrial Capitalism in a Rapidly Changing CountryIndustrial Wonders and Pitfalls in Émile Souvestre’s Le Monde tel qu’il sera en l’an 3000 (1846) and Agostino della Sala Spada’s Nel 2073! (1874)Daniel A. Finch-RaceSpaceships in the Anthropocene: Peter Kolosimo and the End of (Our) TimesMarco MalvestioUncanny Spaces in Inhuman Times: The Art of Giacomo CostaMatteo GilebbiAgainst Eco-Fascism: Space and Place in Tullio Avoledo’s FurlandFlorian MussgnugSection IV: Posthuman, More-than-Human, and Interspecies RelationsGreen Traces: Vegetal Imagination in Italian Science Fiction from Gilda Musa to SolarpunkEnrico CesarettiBonsai Children, Enchanted Gardens: Nature as Artifice in Paolo Zanotti’s Dystopian Fairy TaleValentina Fulginiti‘All We Need is Love’?: Eros, Agape, and Koinonia in the Time of Mass ExtinctionDanila CannamelaEco-Horror: Human-Animal Encounters in Italian Science-Fiction FilmsRobert A. RushingSolarpunk, or rather Solartivismo: An Interview with Francesco VersoArielle Saiber

‘This collection of essays takes the reader to the uncanny territory of Italian science fiction, a world animated by apocalyptic fantasies and ecological dystopias, consumerist annihilations and nonhuman socialities. In an epoch of multiple planetary crises, this revelatory book is a must-read for any archaeologist of the present.’ Federico Luisetti, University of St. Gallen