The issue 126/2015 of the prestigious American academic quarterly Science Fiction Studies is dedicated to the Italian science fiction (fantascienza), a summary coordinated by Arielle Saiber (Bowdoin College, MA, USA), Umberto Rossi, and Salvatore Proietti.
From left : Arielle Saiber, Umberto Rossi, Salvatore Proietti
This special issue contains articles by Arielle Saiber, Umberto Rossi, Salvatore Proietti, Valerio Evangelisti, Domenico Gallo, Roberta Mori, Luca Somigli, Simone Brioni, Eliot Chayt, Robert Rushing, Felice Beneduce.
“The whole issue is extremely interesting and demonstrates that the contempt that the “Italian high literature” still has on SF is a sad evidence of provincialism.” – Valerio Evangelisti
Science Fiction Studies #126 = Volume 42, Part 2 = July 2015
“Science Fiction Studies is published three times a year (March, July, November) by SF-TH Inc. at DePauw University. The Science Fiction Studies Website publishes abstracts of all articles, as well as the full texts of all reviews, historical documents, and selected essays appearing in the journal since its founding in 1973 by R.D. Mullen. A three-year blackout is maintained before reviews published in the journal appear on the website. Full texts of articles are posted only after an issue has been sold out and after the three-year blackout period has expired.”
SPECIAL ISSUE ON ITALIAN SCIENCE FICTION
Edited by
Introduction: Italian SF: Dark Matter or Black Hole? – Arielle Saiber and Umberto Rossi
The Field of Italian Science Fiction – Salvatore Proietti
Symposium on Italian SF
Valerio Evangelisti. Science Fiction: A Narrative in Line With the Times
Domenico Gallo. Fantascienza Outside the Ghetto: The Science-Fictional Writings of Italian Mainstream Authors
Roberta Mori. Worlds of “Un-knowledge”: Dystopian Patterns in Primo Levi’s Short Stories
Luca Somigli. My Name Is Pantera: On Valerio Evangelisti’s “Slipstream” Western Fiction
Simone Brioni. Fantahistorical vs. Fantafascist Epic: “Contemporary” Alternative Italian Colonial Histories
Eliot Chayt. Revisiting Italian Post-Neorealist SF Cinema (1963-74)
Robert Rushing. The Weight of History: Immunity and the Nation in Italian SF Cinema
Arielle Saiber and Salvatore Proietti. A Selection of Italian SF Novels and Short Stories Translated and Published in English
REVIEW-ESSAYS
Felice Beneduce. Progress and Reaction in Early Italian SF: A New Translation of Paolo Mantegazza’s The Year 3000: A Dream
Paweł Frelik. Greener Than You Think: Canavan and Robinson’s Green Planets: Ecology and Science Fiction
BOOKS IN REVIEW
Burnham’s Greg Egan (Graham J. Murphy)
Chapman/Cull’s SF and Popular Cinema (Sonja Fritzsche)
Clarke’s Neocybernetics and Narrative (Walter Merryman)
Germaná/Mousoutzanis’s Apocalyptic Discourse in Contemporary Culture (Malisa Kurtz)
Gomel’s Science Fiction, Alien Encounters, and the Ethics of Posthumanism (Seo-Young Chu)
Hrotic’s Religion in Science Fiction (Gerry Canavan)
Kakoudaki’s Anatomy of a Robot (Lisa Swanstrom)
Kerman/Browning’s The Fantastic in Holocaust Literature and Film (Elana Gomel)
Kincaid’s Call and Response (Gary K. Wolfe)
McGrath’s Deep Ends: The J.G. Ballard Anthology 2014 (Michael Jarvis)
McMillan’s Orbiting Ray Bradbury’s Mars (Paris Brown)
Ranisch/Sorgner’s Post- and Transhumanism (Hallvard Haug)
Vas-Deyres/Bergeron/Guay/Plet-Nicolas/André’s Les Dieux cachés de la science-fiction française et francophone (1950-2010) (Arthur B. Evans)
NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE
George Edgar Slusser (1939-2014) (Arthur B. Evans)
ICFA 36 (Graham Hall)
http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/covers/cov126.html
“So Say We All: The Fiction of World Science Fiction,” Arielle Saiber, Bowdoin College:
“Environmental change and disaster. The evolution and fate of the human race. Understanding the Other (gender, race, sexuality, class, belief, the alien). The ethics of technoscience. The possibility of space and/or time travel. Issues of extra-Terran colonization and colonialism. Future world wars. Dystopias and utopias. What/where is reality? What if X had happened, instead of Y? In many of its questions and critiques the genre of science fiction (SF) is, per force, global.” – Arielle Saiber
Arielle Saber is Associate Professor of Italian, Bowdoin College (Ph.D., Italian Literature, Yale, 1999). She has published articles on medieval and early modern Italian literature; early modern mathematics, print history, and advice manuals; literature & science studies; genre theory and experimental electronic music; and Dante in contemporary culture. Her book Giordano Bruno and the Geometry of Language came out in 2005 (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate Press), and her co-edited anthology Images of Quattrocento Florence: Writings on Literature, History and Art in 2000 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). She has also co-edited special issues of Configurations (“Mathematics and the Imagination”), Dante Studies, and California Italian Studies.
World Science Fiction Course (2015) (Link) – Arielle Saiber
2015
“This course explores the local, global, and universal natures of the speculative genre of science fiction (SF) from the early twentieth century through the present. It highlights works from the Golden Age (late 1930s-’50s), the New Wave of the 1960s and ’70s, cyberpunk in the 1980s, and today’s various sub-genres and cross-over incarnations. We will approach the genre as a mode of thought-experimentation and world-building that problematizes actual and possible political, cultural, natural, human, and techno-scientific realities. Among the themes included are the human-machine interface, environmental apocalypse, the alien, and time travel.
Readings include short stories from nearly every continent (a number of which will be accompanied by a short film or other media) and literary criticism. Integral to the course is an exhibition of Latin American SF at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art and a number of conversations with writers, artists, filmmakers, and scholars of SF from around the world.”
