RALF

RALF is an enthralling technological spy-story awarded in 2021 with the Vegetti Prize, as the best Italian science fiction novel. 
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RALF is set in the very near future, in university research environments. Although the plot is thrilling and fast-paced, with events and situations typical of a spy story, behind the book lie some fascinating theories which make it more interesting than a pure volume of Science Fiction.

From a narrative point of view, the novel tells two parallel stories which take place in two different universities, one is  in Italy and the other is in the United States, bound together by a common denominator. Both research groups are performing experiments on Artificial Intelligence, AI, even if applied to different fields: robotics in Italy and something akin to virtual reality in the United States. RALF is the name of the little robot made in Italy by the young engineer Marco Ranieri.

The disappearance of valuable information from the Italian laboratory, and the sabotage of the computer center in the U.S. suddenly reveal the young scholars who carry out the two searches, the unexpected interest of an unknown subject for their experiments, which is seemingly innocuous and purely academic. As you will then discover, the people who are interested in these researches are several distinct groups, all frightened by the idea that the great impetus given to research by scientists in artificial intelligence could rapidly lead to the creation of such realistic entities that would then be considered real forms of life: after all, a small robot that can seek by himself the energy it needs to survive and have a hundred virtual partners that can chat with a man sitting in front of the keyboard of a computer without him realizing that he is not talking with a human being, but with an intelligent software instead, aren’t to be considered alive?

The bad guys are afraid for different reasons, that if these beliefs become a worldly wisdom, the international authorities would be forced to regulate the use of such technologies and at the same time,  hugely restrict their usage with military purpose to protect and preserve these new forms of life born within these studies, as it was already done in the past for biogenetic and similar disciplines. It is precisely the fear of the birth of the so-called cyber-ethics to push these fanatics to sabotage the research, on the one hand, and to steal the results collected on the other. 

But, if the aims of the terrorist groups and of the usual fierce militarist groups are those that we have already learned to know from hundreds of Action-Books, the novelty of this work is the presence of an unusual and surprising secret organization, under the name of HOPE  an acronym for Hidden Organization for Peace on Earth, which doesn’t aim, usually for world domination like many others before, but rather to the seemingly nobler spread of peace on our planet. However, the good is never only on one side, and the reader soon discovers that the mysterious HOPE was not born for charitable purposes, but it has been wanted and designed from a handful of powerful industrialists around the world; these are manufacturers of refrigerators, mobile phones and I-Pods acting with the very less noble goal of spreading more and more the Western consumerism model, and thus to increase their markets, which can take root only where peace, tranquility and above all wellness can reign.

Another interesting feature of the novel is also the great attention to characters’ personality, so cured that sometimes the exciting events of the plot seem only a cunning expedient to enable the reader to meet the protagonists of the book and to fall in love with them. And among many characters, all of which are well designed, stands the interesting fresco of the complicated life of the couple composed by Mark and Lisa, two young Italian engineers who are looking for, not without some difficulty, to reconcile their strong personalities with the feeling that binds them and with the stubbornness of both, which lead them not to give up their habits and their aspirations, not even in the name of their love. 

Who will win? HOPE or researchers? Love or reason? 

Well, perhaps to know it, it's worth reading the book! A book that looks at a near future, and that proposes today’s issues which tomorrow could possibly become reality.