Italian Science Fiction and the Environmental Humanities

‘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

‘If Italian culture has an ecological unconscious, that unconscious is embodied in science fiction. Rarely do so many creative motifs converge in the imagination of our species and the planet within a single literary genre: there are the anxieties of the automaton as an other-than-human, encounters with our spatio-temporal otherness, technological apocalypses, dilemmas of hybridity with real and imaginary life forms, and the desires of new socio-energetic utopias. With a perspective that encompasses cinema, art, and literature, ranging from great classics like Buzzati, Levi, Calvino, and Scerbanenco to “alien archaeologies” and solarpunk, Italian Science Fiction and the Environmental Humanities retrieves this unconscious and inaugurates the entrance of Italian science fiction into the international eco-literary canon. A futuristic and pioneering book that rightfully joins the essential references of environmental humanities studies.’ Serenella Iovino, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill