EcoSF investigates the prominence and distinctive representation of ecological issues in Italian science fiction (1952-2019). Through an extended comparative analysis, the research shows how science fiction is able to imagine and conceptualise the impact of human activities on the health of planetary ecosystems. By adopting an ecocritical perspective interrogating the relationship between literary imagination and the environment, this project highlights the extent to which the employment of these literary techniques is important to generate awareness of ecological issues and explore literary responses to the current ecological crisis. The estrangement techniques typical of science fiction contribute to contesting the axioms of our relationship with the environment, marked by anthropocentrism and a nature-culture dichotomy, and the conceptual categories that regulate it. Given its scope and purpose, EcoSF is a timely contribution to current ecological debates, and can offer significant insights on present environmental problems (including pollution, climate change and the over-intensive exploitation of land and resources). In coherence with EU’s recent proposals for climate action, the project provides a strategic rethinking of the cultural paradigms that generated these problems and outlines the possibility of forging a new, more sustainable relationship with the environment.
EcoSF has three main scientific objectives:
1) Highlight the continued presence of ecological issues in Italian science fiction and trace their evolution in relation to Italian history and culture;
2) Analyse the different forms of speculative and science fictional poetics in twentieth century and contemporary Italian literature;
3) Re-examine the debate surrounding the cultural status of science fiction through the innovative lens of ecocriticism, developing an interpretation of science fiction as a genre with stylistic and conceptual traits that are essential for understanding the present environmental crisis.
The history of Italian science fiction parallels the development of significant environmental problems in Italian history, connected to the modernization and industrialization of the country. Although sometimes derivative and, in its early phases, heavily influenced by Anglo-American authors, Italian science fiction testifies to precise national and historical anxieties during decades marked by increasing urban development, transformation of urban and natural landscapes, technological development, increasing presence of digital technologies in everyday life, migrations, and climate change.
The objectives have been fully achieved, and the results of the research have been disseminated in a variety of research papers, scientific events, and dissemination activities. EcoSF has proved the importance of Italian science fiction in the cultural context of twentieth- and twenty-first century Italy, especially in relation to the country’s environmental history. It has taken into account a wide, transmedial corpus that has proved the malleability and the ubiquity of science fiction in Italian contemporary imagery. Finally, it has complicated traditional divisions between high- and lowbrow fiction, affirming the importance of genre fiction in addressing the current challenges of the Anthropocene.
