The standard, however, which causes more than one Philip Dick style déjà vu, was a typically cyberpunk one. The subjects and settings, even if the characters are Italian, were not so different from those of Anglo-Saxons novels, and we had to wait until 1992 for Nicoletta Vallerani’s Il cuore finto di DR to glimpse a glimmer of originality. The sales of Cattani’s novel seemed encouraging, perhaps on account of the novelty for Urania readers to read an Italian novel, but the winners of the two later editions of the prize (19), Luna di fuoco, a classic adventure set in space, by Virginio Marafante and Ai due lati del muro, a claustrophobic cyberpunk by Francesco Grasso, didn’t repeat the success of Gli universi di Moras. The first book that won the Urania prize was Gli universi di Moras by Vittorio Catani, a novel about parallel worlds in which the real novelty was the origin of the protagonist, Antonio Moras, a dimensional traveler from the Southern Italian city of Bari, forced to jump between universes, and who after “losing his bearings” contracts Necro, a disease that manifests itself as a rejection of the native universe, and that forces Moras to slip continuously between dimensions causing a catastrophic paradox… The writing was flowing with some psychological components.

After 1985 the publishers seemed to backtrack to the so-called literature of mimesis, realism, leaving fantastic fiction to sci-fi dedicated collections or to minor publishers who however didn’t seem at all interested in publishing Italians until 1989 when Urania announced a contest dedicated to Italian authors: the winner was to be published in the collection alongside the biggest international names, so entering into the houses of eight – ten thousand loyal readers. So, books like La casa sul lago della luna by Francesca Duranti (Rizzoli), Dio e il computer by Roberto Vacca (Bompiani), Cercando L’imperatore by Roberto Pazzi (Marietti), Concerto Rosso by Pier Luigi Berbotto (Mondadori), Palladion by Valerio Massimo Manfredi (Mondadori), Partiranno by Luce D’ Eramo (Mondadori), Di bestia in bestia by Michele Mari (Longanesi) popped up on library and bookshop shelves.

Maybe that’s why, due to a series of coincidences and circumstances, some big Italian publishers gave room to some sci-fi and fantastic authors in their general collections. 1984 is the Orwellian year par excellence.

I biplani di d'Annunzio by Luca Masali