The Dark Side of Utopia

Science fiction has never had much success in Italy, despite the fact that the Urania series, published by Mondadori since 1952, has existed in our country for decades. Science fiction works in the cinema and in TV series, but it remains a niche product in print, where other genres, such as fantasy, detective fiction and romance, are all the rage. A real shame because through science fiction, burning issues such as environmental risks, the dangers of war and the importance of putting an end to inequality can be addressed in a totally free manner, without the constraints dictated by realism at all costs.

A demonstration of how science fiction can involve and at the same time make us reflect comes from Le Cronache di Gaia (PubMe, 2025, pp. 821), a saga that develops in three episodes born from the imagination of Claudia Tonin . Le Cronache di Gaia, in fact, tells of a dystopian future of the Earth through three generations of women who move in a new world, Gaia, governed by a female predominance, where individual freedom is sacrificed in the name of a social utopia.

Claudia Tonin's saga begins in 2109, when seven world leaders meet to discuss the fate of the Earth . They are not just any politicians, but women destined to become the Seven Founding Sisters . That meeting will change the future of the planet, laying the foundations for the beginning of a new Era, in which male hegemony over the human race will cease. Fifty years later, the Earth has become Gaia. There are no more wars or violence, peace reigns over the entire planet, reunited under a single federal government presided over by Han Chan Mei. The social structure has changed and family structures have been broken up. The few surviving men live in protected colonies in New Zealand and on Mars.

But not everything works as it should. Moira has just had a son, whom she is not willing to abandon as the rules imposed on society by the Seven Founding Sisters would like. She then decides to leave for Mars, with her son, pursued by her best friend, Commander Nancy Freeman. Amélie, on the other hand, is a brilliant journalist who feels like the luckiest woman in Gaia when she is chosen to write the story of the birth of their world through interviews with the seven founding sisters. For her, raised in the cult of Han Chan Mei, Gaia's world leader, this assignment is an immense honor, but her work leads her to make terrible discoveries and to question all her certainties and to see many cracks in Gaia's perfect world. The destinies of these three women are about to be forever tied to the brilliant Andrej Kurikov, the most brilliant scientist Gaia has ever had, the man who swore to destroy the Seven Founding Sisters and the world they created.

With Le Cronache di Gaia Claudia Tonin offers us a non-trivial reflection on the dangers of authoritarianism, of whatever kind and whatever its intentions . An example of how the use of dystopia is one of the formulas used by science fiction to lead us to reflect on the present.

A formula that is not the only one as Claudia Tonin herself tells us:
"After many years in which science fiction has been dominated by dystopia, today new trends are emerging, linked to the theme of environmental protection. So stories that talk about environmental catastrophes on our planet or on other planets that want to draw attention to the importance of finding the right balance between human beings, animals, nature. These are themes at the center of the novels of a writer like Franci Conforti, who has a background as a biologist and puts it at the service of science fiction narrative. Or again the trilogy of the Chinese writer Liu Cixin, author of The Three-Body Problem, which was recently adapted into a Netflix series."

Many female writers try their hand at science fiction. Is there such a thing as female science fiction?

«I tend to say no. Is there such a thing as a female narrative? A female mystery novel? There are no such clear-cut divisions. Maybe there is a female propensity to deal with certain themes, but more than anything I believe that there are cultural differences in the way of approaching writing, even in a genre with well-defined peculiarities like science fiction. A writer born in America tends to resemble each other more than two writers born in China and Mexico. A book like How the Time War Is Lost is affected, and I say this in a positive sense, by the fact that one of the authors, Amal El-Mohtar, is of Lebanese origin and culture. For the rest, science fiction is a genre that has fixed rules that go beyond genres, latitudes and longitudes. It talks to us about technology, science, the limits we must set for ourselves».

But in Italy, why doesn't science fiction work like in other countries?

"In reality, science fiction has its fans, even if not as numerous as in other countries. As already mentioned, the Urania series by Mondadori has existed for more than seventy years and the World SF Italia association chaired by Donato Altomare is very active. This association has done a lot to spread science fiction in our country in the last ten years. We must also keep in mind that science fiction fiction often poses challenging questions, it is not pure entertainment. You have to be a little trained in science fiction. For example, there are countless TV detective series, while science fiction is lacking, apart from a few blockbusters on the big screen. And this gap does not favor the approach of the younger generations to science fiction. Having said that, science fiction fiction resists, thanks to Urania, to publishers like Fanucci, Zona 42 and others who have invested a lot in the genre, to new protagonists like Franci Conforti, precisely, or Francesca Cavallero".