Luigi Motta
Luigi Motta was an Italian author born on July 11, 1881, in Bussolengo, near Verona, who made significant contributions to adventure fiction and science fiction. Influenced by adventure writers like Jules Verne and Emilio Salgari, Motta initially aspired to be a naval captain but became a prolific writer targeting a teenage audience. His works include adventure novels such as *I misteri del Mare Indiano* and *Il dominatore della Malesia*, where he explored themes set in exotic locations. Motta also edited several periodicals, including *L'oceano*, and wrote under the posthumous influence of Salgari, creating sequels to popular series featuring characters like Sandokan.
In addition to his adventure narratives, Motta is noted as a pioneering figure in Italian science fiction, with works like *I flagellatori dell'oceano* that incorporated imaginative technologies. His writing style blended melodrama with action, earning him popularity not only in Italy but also in France, where he was more widely read than many of Verne’s contemporaries. Despite facing political challenges, including arrests for his anti-Fascist stance, Motta continued to produce literature until his death in 1955. His legacy encompasses a diverse range of genres and reflects a complex engagement with both adventure and speculative fiction.
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Luigi Motta
Writer
- Born: July 11, 1881
- Birthplace: Bussolengo, near Verona, Italy
- Died: 1955
- Place of death: Milan, Italy
Biography
Luigi Motta was born on July 11, 1881, in Bussolengo, near Verona. In his youth, he was an enthusiastic reader of the adventure stories of Jules Verne, and the similar works of his countryman Emilio Salgari. He followed in their footsteps, initially attempting to become a naval captain like Salgari but eventually settling for becoming a prolific writer of adventure fiction primarily aimed at teenage boys.
Motta dedicated hisimitative pirate romance I misteri del Mare Indiano, to Salgari and continued to write in the same vein in Il dominatore della Malesia and Le Tigri del Gange, which were similarly set in the Far East. I drammi dell’Africa Australe, Il secreto dei Re Bassutos, and Gli abandonati del Galveston widened his geographical range. He was a contributor to Salgari’s magazine Per terra e per Mare, and went on to edit two similar periodicals, Intorno al mondo and the successful L’oceano, launched in 1906. Motta eventually extrapolated his homage to the point of publishing several novels under a joint byline, pretending to write under the earlier author’s posthumous influence; these included La tigre della Malesia, Lo scettro di Sandokan, La gloria di Yanez and Addio Mompracem, which continued Salgari’s most famous series. He continued to work in that vein until the twilight of his career adding Sandokan il rajah della jungla nera at a much later date.
Alongside this work, the Vernian influences that Motta absorbed established him as the father of Italian science fiction. The first of his explicitly Vernian novels was I flagellatori dell’oceano; he followed it with Il raggio naufragatire, L’onda turbinosa, La principesa delle Rose, and Il vascello aereo, which grew more distinctive by degrees, making more lavish use of imaginary technology—he was particularly fond of flying machines and death-rays—and taking a more radical political stance. Motta’s enduring fascination for melodramatic scenes involving corpses, skeletons, torture, massacres, secret passages, and mysterious documents also infected his Vernian fiction, appealing to the French taste for frenetic novels to the extent that he became more popular in France than any of Verne’s native followers. He was a close friend of the French writer Louis Boussenard, featuring him as a character in his story “Il devastatore della jugla.” Motta also edited a notable anthology of supernatural fiction, dabbled in Westerns inspired by Bufalo Bill’s European tour, and contributed scripts to early Italian comic books.
Motta carried Italian science fiction into new ideological territory in the future war novel I giganti dell’infinito, which bears a close resemblance to the future war novels that formed the core of the British genre of scientific romance in the 1930’s. Although his heroes were very often foreign—frequently English or Spanish—and in spite of his left-wing political sympathies, he remained popular as Italy was overtaken by Fascism. He probably participated in anti-Fascist activities, and was arrested in 1939 for his opposition to Benito Mussolini’s regime. He was imprisoned again in 1945 for having harbored an escaped English prisoner. He did not manage to publish his autobiographical novel La grande tormenta before he died in Milan in 1955, at the age of seventy-four.