“Federov’s spaceship is a tin whale, full of mysterious diverticulums and bulging trumpets, which we easily imagine as it sails melancholically in a Russian way towards other galaxies. Goddard’s lunar missile is a huge bullet, with no thrills, pragmatic and Yankee. Esnault-Pelterie’s aircrafts are butterflies with a French elegance about them, while the four-stages rocket with double reaction engines, by the Italian Gussalli, is baroque, starting from its very name”.

Interplanetary travels – which in Wu Ming’s new novel Proletkult intertwine with stories of missing parents and reappearing children, of robberies, blood transfusions, chess games and the Communism – will guide the time-tested meetings of Futurologia on the trail of alien life, in the universe and on the Earth, searching for inhabited (or inhabitable) planets for a human genre which in the future will need to colonize new worlds for its own survival. Indeed, our planet is threatened by climate changes and rising temperatures, and the warning coming from the scientific community is clear: the risks are great and there’s no time to lose.

Once again, thanks to Futurologia, the morning talks will explore the border between science, literature and science fiction, leading us to reflect on the growingly frequent short-circuit between fiction and reality, and on the innumerable connections between science fiction and scientific research. A typical example is the case of robotics and artificial intelligence. If in the past robots and intelligent machines were the protagonists of science fiction books and films, nowadays they are among us: in factories, houses, hospitals. And in the future, our everyday’s life will be more and more characterized by their presence. At the Italian Institute of Technology experts are already studying the features which robots will need to have to interact as positively as possible with the environment, with people and with each other.

However, not only is there a robotic revolution going on, but we are actually living a genetic revolution which holds the promise of a longer and better life thanks to the use of stem cells in the treatment of degenerated organs or damaged tissues, of innovative techniques to correct hereditary defects, and thanks to the exploitation of the genes as actual medicines.

Between docs & talks, in other words, with the contribution of experts and scientists and in collaboration with the scientific institutions of the Trieste System, we will reflect on the future of our species, a recurring issue in the films of official selection of the Trieste Science+Fiction Festival 2018.

IL PROGRAMMA DEGLI INCONTRI (CAFE’ ROSSETTI)

MERCOLEDì 31 OTTOBRE
10.00 — 2001: Odissea nello spazio. I primi 50 anni
con Umberto Guidoni, Lorenzo Codelli, Giuseppe Lippi, Fabio Pagan
11.30 — La Zona. Alla ricerca della stanza dei desideri
con Lorenzo Acquaviva, Giovanni Boni, Lorenzo Zuffi. Modera: Massimiliano Spanu

GIOVEDì 1 NOVEMBRE
10.00 — Frankenstein 200
con Alfredo Castelli. Modera: Fabio Pagan
11.00 — It’s alive! Alla ricerca del Sacro Graal
con Francesco Loffredo. Modera: Simona Regina
12.00 — Not — Sguardi sul contemporaneo per anticipare il futuro
con Valerio Mattioli. Modera: Loris Zecchin

VENERDì 2 NOVEMBRE
10.00 — Mondi da abitare e vite aliene
con Massimo Ramella, Jonathan Berman. Modera: Fabio Pagan
11.00 — Proletkult — Lavoratori di tutti i pianeti, unitevi!
con Wu Ming 2. Moderano: Andrea Olivieri, Simona Regina
12.00 — Fenomenologia degli zombi con Carlo Modesti Pauer

SABATO 3 NOVEMBRE
10.00 — Più umano dell’umano. Robotica e intelligenze artificiali
con Daniele Pucci Modera: Simona Regina
11.00 — Nuove eterotopie. I nuovi luoghi della fantascienza
con Roberto Furlani, Domenico Mastrapasqua, Alex Tonelli, Bruce Sterling. Moderano: Jasmina Tešanović, Gigi Funcis
12.00 — Trieste e la scienza. Una prospettiva cinematografica
con Davide Ludovisi, Federica Sgorbissa. Modera: Fabio Pagan

DOMENICA 4 NOVEMBRE
10.00 — Cambiamenti climatici, cloni e mammut
con Barbara Stenni Modera: Sergio Sichenze
11.00 — Un clima da catastrofe. La comunicazione del rischio ai tempi del riscaldamento globale con Giancarlo Sturloni. Moderano: Simona Regina, Paolo Fedrigo
12.00 — Nuove rotte interplanetarie. Percorsi fantascientifici italiani.
con gli autori dei cortometraggi in programma nella sezione “Spazio Corto”. Modera: Luca Luisa