1907. Kindle edition 2015
Le meraviglie del Duemila is a novel
by Emilio Salgari which might be seen as a predecessor of science fiction
proper in Italy in that it includes time travel, scientific and technological reference,
and anticipation of the future.
The plot
involves a scientist-character who has discovered a method to hibernate and
therefore be able to survive for several years in quasi-death state until being
revived. The scientist is accompanied in this adventure by a friend. Revived by
a relative in the year 2000 as indicated in the scientist’s testament, the
marvels of the future manifest themselves in terms of high developed technology
which allows speed, easiness and comfort in daily life, and an attempt to control
crime through Siberian as well as submarine prisons where inmates reform
voluntarily but are administered the death penalty if they rebel. This positivist, utopian
society reveals itself to be dystopian in the end – a rebellion in a prison becomes
extremely violent, and the travellers from the twentieth century go
insane due to excessive exposure to electricity, that is the main source of energy
imagined by Salgari on future planet Earth [1].
Aircrafts are foreseen by Salgari
as machines capable of flying at over 100 km per hour: “una specie di macchina
volante, fornita di quattro ali gigantesche e di eliche grandissime”. A “stoffa vegetale” replaces animal fabric. Agriculture has developed to the detriment of pastures due to the
extinction of several animal species, so vegetarianism is the diet of human beings. The
demographic problem is serious: “la popolazione del globo in questi ultimi anni
è enormemente cresciuta”. Life is hurried: “Erano molto più calmi gli uomini,
mentre ora vedo che perfino le signore marciano a passo di corsa, come se
avessero paura di perdere il treno”. Armies have disappeared. Socialism “è
scomparso dopo una serie di esperimenti che hanno scontentato tutti e
contentato nessuno”.
The problem of evil has been
controlled but not solved: “la scienza tutto ha perfezionato fuorché la razza,
e l’uomo malvagio è rimasto malvagio. Passeranno secoli e secoli ma, levato lo
strato di vernice datogli dalla civiltà, sotto si troverà sempre l’uomo
primitivo dagli istinti sanguinari”.
Contact has been made with Martians
depicted as different from human beings (“sono anfibi che rassomigliano alle
foche, con braccia cortissime, che terminano con dieci dita, e piedi molto
grandi e palmati” e “hanno delle teste quattro volte più grosse delle nostre”), but as competent as Earthlings in “civiltà e scienza”.
Some comparison
could be made with George Orwell’s The
Time Machine (1895) as the archetype of time travel in the time span of fin de siècle to the end of the 1910s, and with some of Jules Verne’s fiction (mostly,
perhaps, 1872 Le tour du monde en
quatre-vingt jours since the protagonists of Le meraviglie del Duemila travel the best part of the planet and
insist on the speed granted by modern means of transport, and a clear reference
to Verne is made in the statement of a character “Il giro del mondo in una
settimana!”).
Part of the
problems to be confronted in relation to Le
meraviglie del Duemila is the different approach to science in the early 1910s in further
industrially developed countries such as France and the United Kingdom if
compared to Italy, and the combination of fable and scientific narrative within
an adventurous structure - partly this also leads back to a stronger separation
at the time, in Italy, once again if compared to France and Great Britain, between the “two
cultures”.
Finally, one
could reflect on how from such premises Italian science fiction has evolved since
that old novel.
[Roberto
Bertoni]
