The Year 3000 - (Bison Frontiers of Imagination) by Paolo Mantegazza (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

First published in 1897, The Year 3000 is the most daring and original work of fiction by the prominent Italian anthropologist Paolo Mantegazza. A futuristic utopian novel, the book follows two young lovers who, as they travel from Rome to the capital of the United Planetary States to celebrate their "mating union," encounter the marvels of cultural and scientific advances along the way. Intriguing in itself, The Year 3000 is also remarkable for both its vision of the future (predicting an astonishing array of phenomena from airplanes, artificial intelligence, CAT scans, and credit cards to controversies surrounding divorce, abortion, and euthanasia) and the window it opens on fin de siècle Europe. Published here for the first time in English, this richly annotated edition features an invaluable introductory essay that interprets the intertextual and intercultural connections within and beyond Mantegazza's work. For its critical contribution to early science fiction and for its insights into the hopes, fears, and clash of values in the Western world of both Mantegazza's time and our own, this book belongs among the visionary giants of speculative literature.

Review Quotes

"The Year 3000 is indeed an alternative universe where the world is a better place for all and true love is the most powerful force in the universe. Enjoy the trip."--Patricia Contino, Newpages.com-- (5/1/2011 12:00:00 AM)

"The Year 3000. A Dream constitutes an important addition to the relatively small number of nineteenth-century Italian novels available in English and is an invaluable text to add to any class, whether within a comparative context or not, teaching nineteenth-century Italian literature."--Gabriella Romani, Annali d'italianistica

"Thanks to the extensive introduction, The Year 3000: A Dream will appeal to anyone interested in the literary evolution of science fiction or the early contributions to the genre of one very talented and foresighted Italian fiction writer."--Alan J. Couture, ForeWord

"Two welcome surprises await readers of this book: the first is simply that a nineteenth-century masterpiece of utopian literature has been made available to them in a translation that reads like an original, and the second, that a great scholar has written a user-friendly, highly sophisticated, and passionate introduction shedding light on the times of neo-positivism, its antecedents, and its legacy."--Luigi Ballerini, professor of Italian, University of California at Los Angeles

About the Author

Paolo Mantegazza (1831-1910) was a prominent Italian neurologist, physiologist, anthropologist, defender and correspondent of Darwin, and fiction writer. Nicoletta Pireddu is the director of the comparative literature program and an associate professor of Italian and comparative literature at Georgetown University. She is the editor of Paolo Mantegazza's Physiology of Love and Other Writings. David Jacobson translated Mantegazza's Physiology of Love and Other Writings.