De Bello Alieno

di Davide Del Popolo Riolo

44 B.C.. Rome is the capital of the civilized world, its hegemony stretching from the Ocean to Asia, from Gaul to Egypt. No army can stand against the might of the Roman legions and their guns… Motor chariots speed through the streets, steam trains connect the remotest provinces to the Eternal City. The architect of these conquests has a name: Gaius Julius Caesar, the brilliant scientist and entrepreneur who, forced by Sulla to abandon his political and military career, devoted all his ingenuity to science and its technical application…

But far away, beyond the dark and boundless night of space, an aged and dying Race peers, with mute hostility and envy, at planet Earth, scrutinizes Rome and its conquests… From their barren and arid world, buffeted by winds and storms and shaken by earthquakes, alien beings watch, with unmoving hatred, who has what they can no longer have… They see humans grow and multiply, tame animals and cultivate the land… And then they mine coal, ply the seas with motor ships and the earth with mechanical vehicles. And they make a decision: it is necessary to stop the earthlings before they become too dangerous.

It is necessary to destroy Rome.

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Heavenly Switchboard

di Alessandro Forlani

XXVII century: the mining ship Curiex, exploring the borders of the galaxy, runs into a celestial odd body of artificial origin: the object is going to be incredibly valuable and the largest relic of human history. The crew is in two minds about whether to take advantage of it or chase its mystery in the darkness of the cosmos: the journey will test the resources of Curiex on reaching the destination and the loyalty of the ship's officers to their commander Christopher Piccolomini. In an impossible place, deep inthe Milky Way, above all, the men of 2600 will rediscover their fear for the Divine, or the terror, probably bigger than it, for the absence of gods in the space's darkness.

From the winner of the Urania Prize 2011 and Double Star Award in 2013.

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Lady Sarara

di Claudio Cordella

In Ludosphere, Cephea meets a “Stone Angel”. Her fate has come to a turning point. The warrior must protect Sarara and the life she is carrying from ruthless, crazy, cunning creatures. The story runs along the border between sci-fi and fantasy, mixing together weird and space-opera, telling us our future as it was a legend belonging to our past.

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Protocol One

di Diego Bortolozzo

Takeri Ira crew, in search of new lands to colonize, reaches a planet that reflects the “Protocol One” directives.

Ground exploration gives discordant results: the supervisor of the implementation of the directives does not recommend the activation of the development program, whereas the chief doctor of planetary exploration believes to have found, finally, the place that their race had been looking for since millennia.

While on the background the various persons in charge politically struggle, spaceship commander decides to resolve, once and for all, the vain dispute.

The mission is declared over and Takeri Ira prepares to leave the Star System.

The small planet gets smaller while the ship moves away, but a strange asteroid enters the system and the crew decides to intercept it.

Nominated in the 38th edition of the “Nero Premio” Contest, this short story was selected and published in the anthology “Ceneri del Fantastico”.

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