Afterword: A Genre Across Cultures

Abstract

The book’s afterword rejects the perception of Italian science fiction as an imitative genre of US science fiction, and suggests that Italian science fiction is able to adapt and subvert foreign models as much as these foreign models had influence in Italy. The ways in which Italian movies and literary works modify the model text are active processes that can be seen in terms of resistance and collaboration with the dominant cultural hegemony. While science fiction in Italy has too often been perceived as a genre divorced from the identity politics narrated in coeval realist literature, this section argues that the science fiction genre is not isolated from social and political debates.