Today we are gathered here, at last, for a discussion centred on culture. Since I have been part of this Council, much has been spoken of, but the word "culture" has so far been heard little, and not always to the point.
I should like first of all to dwell for a few moments, if you will allow me, just to fill up nicely the twenty minutes at my disposal, on the important meaning of this word, so that the arguments that will follow, from all the participants in the discussion, do not lend themselves to misunderstandings and confusion.

THE IMPORTANCE OF CULTURE

We know that culture is important, since our very nature as human beings arises from the culture we have developed over the centuries. Take away culture, and it is well that this be clear, and there comes to the fore in Man the beast that he always was, for tens of millennia until, not too many thousands of years ago, culture made him emerge from his unaware survival, that is, from a condition hardly distinguishable from that of any other higher mammal. It was this most curious phenomenon, culture, that generated in us that prodigious representational system of reality which we call verbal language, which provided us, over time, with that complex criterion of relational analysis of contexts that made possible the arising in us of human awareness, as we experience it today. Ah, yes, culture then also made possible all the miraculous wonders of technology, but here we are more interested in the mind of Man than in his material consequences.

CULTURE IS THE PRINCIPLE OF EVOLUTION

Culture is therefore intrinsically the very principle of the evolution of life expressed... I would almost say "incarnated"... in the evolution of Man. Without culture, this chamber would today be a dark cave and we would be lolling about here and there with no projects, mumbling ill-articulated phonemes evoking few and confused tribal meanings.
Reality, as we experience and are aware of it, is therefore the direct product of culture, which has provided us with the words and the mental categories to distinguish and order and understand and be aware of all that exists, ourselves included.
Culture is therefore no small thing, if it has produced all this.

THE CULTURE THAT COMES FROM THE PAST AND THE CULTURE THAT CREATES THE FUTURE

Reality is generated by culture, but culture generates reality. What does this sentence mean? It means that we can divide culture into two categories quite different from each other. The culture that there has been and that produced what exists and what we are, and then the culture that there is now, that acts now, hic et nunc, which produces the new reality that marks the continuation of our evolution.
They are two aspects quite different, one from the other.
The culture that already exists, amassed by humanity over millennia of history, is stable, it does not change, it is written, it is known, it is recognised as such, it is in a certain sense the fossil of human evolution, but it is an active fossil, working and functional, which gives meaning to every thought and action of ours. It is not only useful, but fundamental for the maintenance of the mental and real civilisation we have inherited from our ancestors. It is the stabilising force both in the mind of each of us and in our social organisation, it keeps us human and allows us a more or less serene and civil and interesting coexistence. Any initiative that any administration of a human society undertakes, to protect, preserve, display, teach the existing cultural heritage, is precious, dutiful, blessed. But in itself, this is not enough.
It is not enough because there also exists that other category of culture, namely the culture that takes place NOW, the culture that not only maintains, but continues now, in these years, in these days, in this very moment, that evolutionary path that humanity has always travelled unstoppably. In this aspect, culture is unstable, unknown, rarely recognised as such; it is alive as much as and more than human life, since it is from it that human life — as we understand it — arises, and not vice versa. This culture in transformation is unstable and creates instability in the present, but it is a fertile instability, since it is building the stability of the future. In this aspect culture is not usually recognised as such, until one has managed to circumscribe and understand it, that is, until it has ceased to evolve, finally becoming the stable fossil of itself. A mature administration of a human society encourages and supports this second aspect of culture no less than it celebrates and reinforces the first.
The first category of culture we have defined is the expression of the stabilising influence of the past on our present.
The second category of culture we have defined is the expression of the creative and transforming and evolutionary action of the future on our present.
We must not shut our eyes to the past, nor to the future. This may be the ultimate synthesis that sums up in extreme simplicity the abstract disquisition just concluded.
But it is undoubtedly easier and more comfortable to tilt one's attention towards the contemplation of the past, rather than towards that of the future. This imbalance, in itself, is not bad, but it causes an increase of inertia in the process of evolution. There are circumstances in which such inertia may prove even fatal. It is well that we become aware of this.

THE PROBLEM OF GENOA

Genoa today undoubtedly suffers because of an inertia of this kind. It is palpable, in Genoa, a widespread difficulty in imagining a better future for those who reside in this otherwise admirable city. Many objective phenomena, such as for instance the well-known "brain drain", confirm this feeling. Before being economic, before being industrial, before being touristic, the problem of Genoa is therefore of a cultural kind, culture being, in its broadest sense, the very essence of the spirit of a people.
By this, nothing is meant to detract from the sublime value of the consolidated culture of this city. Genoa has a grandiose history and lofty traditions. It has a great culture of its own past, and it is well that this is so. But in terms of the culture of the future, of plasticity of adaptation to changing contexts, inertia prevails.
Against such sterile inertia, today, we must move. We must bring to bear, on our lives, for our city, the influence of the future as much as and more than that of the past. It is dynamic culture, culture in transformation that, on the foundations of established and consolidated culture, creates the new reality, and by creating the new reality solves the new problems. Every advance, every evolution in fact brings with it the burden of new problems, which can be faced and solved only with a new invention, only with a new step forward of human culture.
We find ourselves today, in Genoa, facing the malaise that follows from an insufficient ability of the city to position itself creatively in relation to the new problems generated by modern society. The world, which in the time when Genoa dominated was vast and fragmented, is today small and more unified. We live in a Global Village, as McLuhan defined modern society decades ago. And it is a wonderful and terrible Global Village, which offers much to those who wish and know how to be part of it with the strength of creativity, but which mercilessly marginalises those who instead do not know how to present themselves to it with the indispensable, fitting, brilliant visibility.
Recently, a substantial supplement on our city appeared in the New York Times, which extolled the splendours we know well. In the same article, however, it pointed out, with a certain dismay, what none of us can deny, namely that Genoa, even today, does very little if not nothing, compared to what it should do, to make its own graces visible to the world, to have full and fruitful citizenship in the Global Village.
There was perhaps a time when, to build an excellent present, for a city like Genoa, its own past was enough. Today it is no longer so. To build the better present that we all aspire to build — and it is for this, I want to hope, that we ritually gather in this chamber — today it is imperative to spur our consciences so that they energetically turn their attention to the future, and from the future draw the new ideas, the new culture and the new strength needed to create that new reality, that new and better present, which in words we all say we desire.

A GREAT CONGRESS ON THE FUTURE AND ON SCIENCE FICTION

For this reason it is of the utmost importance that a concrete and far-sighted project be carried out at once. We have proposed, in this motion, that the Council Executive commit itself to finding, among all the local bodies, institutions and associations, the forces capable of organising in Genoa a great congress centred on the future and on science fiction literature and cinema.
You see, science fiction, above all in its literary guise, more than any other intellectual product of this century, is the expression of the heightened sensitivity of the human being towards the upheaving transformations that progress dispenses to our society and our everyday life. Science fiction was born only at the end of the last century. Until then progress had proceeded with relative slowness, and it generally seemed scarcely reasonable, above all to ordinary people, to imagine that it could radically transform the future. Science fiction was born, and then grew and grew and grew, throughout this century, because ever more people discovered in the act of imagining the future that force which generates a new present. We all know that Jules Verne told of the journey to the moon more than half a century before it happened. But science fiction also told of atomic bombs before the Second World War, hypothesised black holes before the scientists, saw and foresaw thousands of the incredible technical miracles that are reality today, anticipated by lustres and decades the ethical debate regarding some of them. When in 1933 Aldous Huxley wrote "Brave New World", he narrated of television in every home, of the obsessive hammering of advertising, of tranquillising drugs. It was science fiction. Today it is the news.
To imagine a different future. This is what science fiction does. This is what Genoa sets out to do in order to give itself a reality more fitting to the world context of today and tomorrow.

AN IMPORTANT SIGNAL

The organisation in Genoa of a great congress centred on the future and on science fiction would be a fertile and important signal, both within and outside the city. It would bring to Genoa some of the world's most significant writers, whose contribution of discussion would provide a powerful stimulus of exchange and reflection for our culture. It would draw enthusiasts from all over Italy, with immediate positive returns of a touristic kind. Moreover, it would open up for Genoa concrete further opportunities in the longer term.

SCIENCE FICTION CONGRESSES IN THE WORLD

Because, you see, science fiction congresses are not a novelty in the world. The first conventions were organised in the United States, half a century ago. They were occasional, and attended by a few dozen people. One of them was called Isaac Asimov. Perhaps someone has already heard the name. But over the years these conventions have grown in number and in size. Today, in every nation where science fiction is widespread, at least one annual congress is held, and in every continent, at least one continental congress. If Genoa proved itself capable of organising a good congress, and I am certain that this is possible, it would not be difficult, in one of the coming years, to obtain the assignment of the European congress, and to repeat the experience with enhanced effectiveness and usefulness.

AN EXPO OF THE POSSIBLE FUTURE FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM

And finally... I do not know about you, but I like to dream. I am not the first, and I shall certainly not be the last. And I really do not see why in the future, perhaps at the beginning of the next millennium, Genoa could not prove itself worthy of obtaining even the assignment of the world congress. Because... you see: the turn of the millennium is not a frequent event, by our parameters. The turn of the millennium is a pivotal moment in the history of humanity. And the beginning of the third millennium now approaching is a crucial, inescapable and ideal moment to embark on a majestic reckoning of the events that have happened and to lay the foundations of future history. Here then is how such a world congress in Genoa, at the dawn of the third millennium, would overflow the already vast banks of science fiction, offering itself to the world as the ideal site of a more all-encompassing Expo of the Possible Future, a unique and grandiose occasion in the world for a meeting and an extrapolative comparison on the possible futures — urban, technological, ecological and social — where one could attempt a holistic synthesis of the problems of humanity, thus energetically repositioning Genoa among the living cities of the world.

THE WORLD SCIENCE FICTION CONGRESS IN EUROPE

This year the world congress was held in Scotland. Five years ago it was held in the Netherlands. A few years earlier it landed twice more in Europe, in Germany and in England respectively. I really do not see why it cannot be brought to Italy too, and then, why not to Genoa? Bear in mind that a world congress draws, from America alone, between 5 and 10,000 participants. It is superfluous to mention the advantages of such an eventuality.

GENOA CAPITAL OF THE FUTURE

But while we wait for the dream of making Genoa for one year the World Capital of the Future to take substance, let us come back down to earth. Genoa Capital of the Future must proceed by stages. We are certain that this Council Executive will be able to find, among all the forces acting in this city, those capable of giving shape and body to such an intention, and we are convinced that it must do so. Among all the priorities of the city, that of facing the future face to face, calling it by name, exploring it publicly, seems to us of no negligible urgency.
I do not know about you, but to me, to my ears, "Genoa Capital of the Future" sounds better than "Genoa Slave of the Past".

Roberto Quaglia, 1996

To the Honourable Mayor
of the Municipality of Genoa