BETWEEN POSSIBLE AND IMPOSSIBLE: THE CHARM OF SCIENCE FICTION

Maria Chiara Carrozza, Full Professor of Industrial Bioengineering, The Biorobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa; Sebastiano Fusco, Science fiction critic; Paolo Musso, Professor of Science and Science fiction at the University of Insubria. Introduced by Marco Bersanelli, Full Professor of Physics and Astrophysics at the University of Milan.

Scientific progress has made it possible to turn many ideas that were once considered as impossible into reality, while others have been proved as totally inconsistent. Free from the limits of what is within our technological and even conceptual reach, science fiction can grasp deep questions affecting our present and our condition as human beings, through stories that connect with our relationship to the unknown, to immensity, to the future, to the danger, to what is “radically different”. What is the relationship between science and science fiction? What is the secret of its charm?