The Montecristo Project Official Site
The Montecristo Project: A Few Words About the Project
Behind the scenes: the author’s point of view
Edoardo Volpi Kellermann tells the now thirty-year story of an “unusual” narrative universe,
from its inspiration to its development, through the methods and solutions gradually found to bring it to completion.
Introduction
I admit it: I am a strange person.
I have been working on the same story since 1993, and The Montecristo Project is only the first of at least three novels I have in mind to develop.
I do not deny that more than once I have asked myself whether it was worth continuing. It is not easy to write in Italy, and it is not easy to write science fiction in Italy. Among major publishers there is a proven prejudice, even though great authors such as Italo Calvino and Primo Levi wrote it, and even though in cinema and TV series it is more than a popular genre. Major publishers might reply that the prejudice derives first and foremost from readers, who do not buy works by Italian authors.
But when a story is restless to be told, there is very little one can do. One day, perhaps, certain prejudices will fall. Or perhaps someone outside this country will judge the story worthy of publication. In the meantime, fortunately, there are publishers such as Delos Digital and people such as Silvio Sosio, who keep going despite an editorial reality that is anything but simple.
The Inspiration Behind The Montecristo Project
My son Gabriele was born in 1993; today he is a theoretical physicist, a former student of the Ghislieri College of Merit in Pavia, and, as it happens, he works on Artificial Intelligence. A testa fina (fine mind), Andrea Camilleri would have said. Perhaps I sensed it when, in one burst, I wrote the short story from which everything later began. Yet it is not about my son, at least not directly.
Gabriele is also the scientific consultant for the novel, at least for the scientifically correct parts. As for the rest, I take full responsibility for any possible blunder, mistake, or exaggeration. After all, The Montecristo Project is science fiction.
Science fiction full of action and twists, but also rich in philosophical and scientific ideas.
In part, the story draws inspiration from the Orch-Or theory (ORCHestrated Objective Reduction) of Sir Roger Penrose, the mathematician, physicist, and cosmologist who worked for many years with Stephen Hawking and won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2020. I was also fortunate enough to meet an eminent experimental physicist, Cătălina Curceanu, who collaborates with Roger Penrose on the experimental verification of his theory and who greatly enjoyed the first book of the trilogy.
Since childhood, my imagination has been shaped by science fiction, and authors such as Clarke, Heinlein, Zelazny, Cordwainer Smith, and Asimov have influenced my writing, just as my musical works have been inspired by the language of Prokofiev, Bartók, and Stravinsky. At the same time, I have always been passionate about science, especially physics, cosmology, and mathematics.
I therefore tried to describe a not-too-distant future, relying as much as possible on established scientific principles, while taking them to their extreme consequences. After all, we are talking about scientific speculation.
The Content of The Montecristo Project
The story of The Montecristo Project is divided into three books: The First Colony – Storm – Awakening. It tells the birth of the first artificial consciousness, certainly one of the hottest – and most misunderstood – themes of recent times, with a plot development and an ending that already seemed to me, at the time, something new compared with what I had read or seen. In the years that followed I searched for similar plots, but so far I have not found any.
On the advice of knowledgeable friends, I registered the idea some time ago on copyright.gov, the official registry of the United States government: apparently the gentlemen in Hollywood check there before trying to steal your idea. Yes, the idea is rather strong and original, and it also leaves a very open ending. It would be perfect for a TV series. I am sorry, but you will have to reach the end of the third book to know it. To be honest, there would be a trick to anticipate it, but you have to discover it for yourselves.
An important Italian actor and director, Maurizio Nichetti, read my original short story a few years later and wanted to make a film from it: the money was not found, but it was a great confirmation for me. And this is one of the reasons why I have been working on it for so long.
The Form of The Montecristo Project
Another reason for the lengthening of the timeline is that I “had to” create an augmented book, capable of combining the simplicity of linear reading, both in the electronic and printed versions, with the multi-layered advantages of digital media. A meeting between two worlds, in short, because in the age of hypertext, “simple” text felt too narrow to me.
I have always loved digital technology; even as a boy I dreamed of having a computer at my disposal. The dream came true in 1983, when my father bought an Apple ][e for his home office, a truly exceptional machine for those days, on which I began to learn how software worked, the Applesoft Basic language, and the magical Assembly used for graphic routines, which in fact were laughable compared with what one can do today with a wristwatch. But back then it was like finding Harry Potter’s magic wand.
From the beginning I was fascinated by the possibility of automating and structuring repetitive processes (VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet), of being able to write without the nightmare of mistyping a letter – since one could print everything at the end, after checking it again – but above all by the fascination of exploring a “virtual world” with rules of its own. The year before, Disney’s revolutionary film Tron had been released.
For more than twenty years, before becoming a teacher, I worked in the field of IT (information technology). This has obviously influenced both my working method and my worldview. I believe that the form of a work, not only its content, is a mirror of its author.
A False Dichotomy
I have never seen information technology as a replacement for human beings or physical reality, but rather as a possible integration, reinforcement, and expansion of human abilities. The same is true, even more strongly, for current artificial intelligences. That is why I have always found the discussion “printed books vs. electronic books” ridiculous, just as I found equally ridiculous the dispute “classical musical instruments vs. electric/electronic instruments.” Dichotomy is not the path we need to follow.
When in 2010, following an email of interest from 20th Fox Italia, I began to develop the original short story into the novel The Montecristo Project, I very soon found myself managing an intricate plot, many characters, and times and places that somehow had to remain coherent. For this reason I devoted much of the work to creating an information system that would allow me to manage the complexity without losing myself in irreversible chaos.
In the meantime, I conceived an innovative system to apply the potential of multimedia hypertext to the printed book, without boring or disturbing the reader. It was not easy, but several experts in the field helped me, first among them the excellent writer and Italian guru of electronic literature Fabrizio Venerandi. I will discuss this more thoroughly on the page devoted to the concept of the augmented book.
So for The Montecristo Project, information technology has been essential. It has played multiple roles, and frankly I do not know whether I could have done it without it.
Perhaps yes, but certainly with different and more limited results.
Writers Become Writers; They Are Not Born
Finally, I am a perfectionist, a damned stickler. And I accept criticism, when it is well founded.
The first draft of The Montecristo Project was very different from what you can read now.
Every successful novel is a choral work: one encounters souls and people, learns humility, and writes, writes, and rewrites until style and plot have been refined. At the beginning, who knows why, we are all convinced that we have given birth to an untouchable masterpiece, one in which not even a single letter should be moved. And we all hit our noses against reality; but it is precisely at that moment that one decides whether to become a writer or remain deluded.
It would be a bit like claiming to stand before a great orchestra and conduct it without ever having learned the notes or conducting techniques: it may work in dreams, but in reality behind every concert there are years of hard work.
Writing is absolutely no exception to this general rule, whether for a novel or for a newspaper article. Practice, self-criticism, refinement, verification, more practice. And so on, until “the fingers go by themselves,” as my late piano teacher Antonio Bacchelli used to say. Then the characters come to life, situations develop naturally, scenes flow from the pen (or the keyboard) as if by “magic.” The craftsmanship that leads to art – if and when one succeeds.
And perhaps, after ten years of work, one discovers that one has left a plot hole as big as a house, only to find the perfect idea to solve it and then realize that this idea projects the story into a saga of many novels to come, Chronicles of the Rebirth.
This, in a few words, is The Montecristo Project. And if you would like to know more… please, come in!
Edoardo Volpi Kellermann
