Mike Resnick
Inferno: A Chronicle Of A Distant World

The last century in particular is rich with dramatic stories related to colonialism and post-colonialism. We are talking about tragic events where the responsibilities are manifold and were clearly amplified depending on the international geopolitical contexts. Besides the distorted vision of the white man and his perversion and inadequacy in introducing more or less instrumental "modern" lifestyles in contexts and civilizations that were objectively unprepared and had no perception of how to handle these novelties. Mike Resnick, one of the greatest contemporary science fiction authors and a great scholar of colonialism in particular (he knows the reality of the African continent firsthand and is also an essayist) concludes his trilogy ("A Chronicle Of A Distant World") dedicated to "Inferno" and more specifically on the world of Faligor, where the cartographer Arthur Cartright obtains from his department the possibility of establishing a collaboration with the indigenous population (the "jasons", so called for their characteristic gold-colored fur) for the setup of a small agricultural colony. Driven by the best intentions and mindful of dramatic previous experiences, Cartright dreams of making Faligor what he defines as a true "diamond," but once again the man will make irreparable mistakes and will trigger a series of events leading to tragic consequences.

After an initial positive phase, the introduction of schools and universities, medicines and hospitals, and the spread of modern agricultural systems and the discovery of valuable mines (exploited by hiring qualified labor, the inhabitants of an "underground" planet, commonly called the "moles") and clearly the introduction of the monetary system, due to internal pressures, a democratic push, and the desire to become a fully-fledged part of the "Republic" worlds, the first elections are called and the first planetary government (in a historically divided world of tribes strongly opposed to each other) is established, which soon degenerates into corruption and excesses of personalism and then into a bloody military dictatorship. Cartright, who experiences each event firsthand, will convince himself every time that he can remedy his mistakes and his misjudgments, even by committing himself personally and until the end of his existence on a planet now devastated and where the few survivors will find themselves living in conditions of extreme poverty and after having lost within a single generation every identity and awareness of their own nature, as well as every advantage gained in the first phase of contact with humans.

Clearly another extraordinary achievement by Mike Resnick, the story told here, more than the others in the preceding two chapters, appears so "concrete," even dense, due to its short time frame and because it is so bloody, that it makes us forget we are reading a work of science fiction. The situations recounted evoke typical events that systematically occurred in post-colonial Africa: the persecution of the "moles," accused of enriching themselves in a conspiratorial manner to the detriment of the Faligorians, for propagandistic purposes and in the obsessive search for continuous enemies to fight, is just one of the author's brilliant reconstructions. How can one not consider the perfect portrayal of Idi Amin Dada ("The Last King of Scotland", which is also a beautiful film starring a magnificent Forest Whitaker) in his Faligorian version, the dictator Gama Labu, gigantic and powerful, as greedy and ruthless as he is, endowed with cunning and a magnetic charm that Amin was at least defined as a "peasant". Such cunning does not equate with intelligence but is due to innate psychological abilities and dictated by an almost ancestral magnetism that perhaps in the end even the most significant yet crude character of the worst page of our history possessed. It's hard to make a choice, but perhaps this concluding chapter truly represents hell, and ideally in its very conclusion, we can recognize that "misery" of the end of the colonial experience and its legacy of devastation and disorientation that still persists today in many regions of our planet.