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Rating: 'The Seal of the Feathered Serpent' is the novel that won the Urania Award in 2016. The author is Piero Schiavo Campo from Palermo (who already won the award in 2013), an astrophysicist and professor of Theory and Techniques of New Media at the University of Milan Bicocca.
For me, Piero is undoubtedly one of the best Italian science fiction authors. A capable writer with a fluent style, endowed with great creativity but also solid technical knowledge, particularly in the field of astrophysics, which is definitely something that aids him in unfolding the narrative plan according to his proposed schemes and suggesting the proposition of theories, particularly in the space-time field, that are at least plausible.
'The Seal of the Feathered Serpent' is, however, a very particular work full of content that prevents the novel from being classified under a single sci-fi 'subgenre'. Initially, taking up a certain tradition of 'fantasy-chivalric' novels akin to some productions by literary authors such as, for example, Robert Sheckley or the usual imaginative Jack Vance, the story actually begins by narrating the exploits of Ivan Korvich aka Johnny Cowson, who from Earth will move around the galaxy determined at all costs to win the heart of the singer Jane Ross, whom he sees one evening participating in a show broadcasted by holographic TV.
Driven by this ardor, Cowson will perform various heroic acts, ultimately earning Jane's attention and love. The two thus entertain a relationship and live together on the planet Parvati, where she continues her singing career, and he finds work as a trainer of pithecanthropes, an orangutan-like species trained to perform security and police tasks on different planets. At this point, everything seems to run smoothly between the couple until one day, returning home, Johnny doesn't find Jane, who has left him a note in which, with a few lines, she informs him that she had to leave and asks him not to look for her.
Clearly, this will not deter a passionate heart like Johnny's from his impetuous passions, and he will immediately set off on a journey throughout the galaxy in search of her, but unforeseen events (or perhaps already marked by a superior will) await him and require his direct intervention before he can finally reunite with the woman he loves.
By narrating a love story and particularly the heroic feats of Johnny Cowson, in an instrumental manner, Piero Schiavo Campo introduces into the plot other elements of a scientific and science-fiction nature, relating to the complex system of meta-worlds and principles of philosophy based on Zarathustra's thought, which are fundamental in perfectly centering the content of the novel. If we want to find a weak point, it lies perhaps in the swiftness with which the events conclude in the final part, a part that deserved, in my opinion, to be further elaborated with the narrative richness that, moreover, the author demonstrates in the rest of the work's content. Just as the title itself, despite being evocative and able to immediately refer to that fantasy-chivalric genre we mentioned, would have deserved a more detailed argumentation.
What to say. As far as I am concerned, the judgment is still very positive, and I feel it's worth forgiving what might have been both shortcomings and painful cuts or deliberate narrative choices (but to know that, you should try reading it). The fact remains that it appears that, even in the face of a readership considered absent or generally disinterested, a Made in Italy science fiction continues to flourish, which sincerely pleases us greatly.
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