Pigmalione Sci-Fi: Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

After almost a century since their formulation, are Asimov’s Laws of Robotics still the foundation upon which to build our vision of the future?

Within the ROBOT Learn section of the ROBOT Festival, Sineglossa presents the second event of a new format designed to rewrite the future of science fiction. A talk in collaboration with 24Frame Future Film Fest, where authors will attempt to write the science fiction of tomorrow, the kind that will inspire future scientists to invent the technologies for the societies we desire.

Emanuele Rodolà is ordinary professor of Computer Science at La Sapienza University, and since 2018, he has led the largest AI team in Italy. He has worked in Israel, Japan, Germany, and Switzerland, and has become a Fellow of the Young Academy of Europe, ELLIS, Humboldt, and JSPS. Funded by the European Commission and Google, his work focuses on the interaction between AI, geometry, music, and language, with publications in leading international journals. His research has received prestigious awards and has been covered by RAI, Wired, and La Repubblica. A cinephile and electronic musician, he is fluent in Japanese and passionate about eclectic ideas and all things driven by creativity.

Musician, actor, director, and theater instructor Carlo Roselli has long written music reviews for fanzines and punk magazines, as well as articles under a pseudonym for libertarian newspapers and magazines. Since 2013, he has written and directed for teatrisospesi, a theater-dance project blending various artistic languages, and for Hartmann Ensemble (music and texts), a collective for contemporary modal music and art. Chronache dalla Deriva is his first novel.

Nicoletta Vallorani has been writing science fiction since the early 1990s, making her a veteran in the field, despite her insistence on always being ready to grow. An omnivorous reader and professor of English and Anglo-American Literature at the University of Milan, she debuted with Il cuore finto di DR (Urania Prize in 1993, translated in France by Rivages), and continued writing, blending the noir and sci-fi genres. Her novel La fidanzata di Zorro, the first of four “nomadic” novels (in terms of themes and publishers: Marcos y Marcos, Einaudi, VerdeNero), won the Zanclea Prize in 1996 and was published in France by Gallimard. Le madri cattive (Salani – Petrolio, 2011), a challenging and uncomfortable novel about infanticide, won the Maria Teresa Di Lascia Prize in 2012. Nicoletta Vallorani is also a Professor of English Literature and Cultural Studies in the Department of Languages, Literatures, Cultures, and Mediations (LLCM) at the University of Milan.

Alessandro Vietti was born just in time to witness the Moon landing, which may explain his lifelong interest in astronomy and the world of science fiction. An engineer, he lives and works in Genoa in the energy sector and is involved in scientific outreach and writing. His articles have appeared in Robot magazine and in the monthly publications Coelum, Le Stelle, and L’Astronomia. His first novel, Cyberworld, was published by Nord in the Cosmo Argento series in 1996. Nord also published his second novel, Il codice dell’invasore, in 1999. Both novels were reissued in 2015 by Delos Digital. For Zona 42, he published Real Mars (2016), which won the Italia Prize for best Italian science fiction novel, and the short story Gli uomini sui cavalcavia, featured in the anthology Propulsioni d’improbabilità (2017).