Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Collier Books (1970), Paperback, 160 pages
Description
A collection of stories about time, space, and the evolution of the universe in which the author blends mathematics with poetic imagination. “Calvino does what very few writers can do: he describes imaginary worlds with the most extraordinary precision and beauty” (Gore Vidal, New York Review of Books). Translated by William Weaver. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book
User reviews
LibraryThing member AllieW
I had never encountered the work of Italo Calvino before I read this intriguing collection of interconnected short stories, and I must say they were a revelation. Truly this man is a wordsmith of the highest order. He will have you often hurrying to the dictionary, but, given the sheer beauty of
The short stories contained in this slim volume are divided into three sections. Within the first two parts, each of the well-crafted miniatures is narrated by an obscure character known to us only as Ofwfq, who seems to take many forms. Essentially they are a series of what ifs (as, I guess, is most fiction); each takes an interesting scientific theory and runs away with it in an imaginative and figurative sense. So, for example, the first tale deals with an Earth where the Moon is not yet her satellite, but a planet in her own right and how our present state of affairs came to be. Similarly, the second tale deals with the origin of birds, the third the development of gemstones, the fourth our evolution from creatures of the sea to land dwellers (where he speculates that the blood that flows inside us is actually the equivalent of the sea that surrounded us before) and so on and so forth. Thus they all deal with themes of change, of order arising from chaos (including speculation about what exactly consitutes order) and the inadequacy of mere words in describing these wondrous things. For, it can be clearly seen, Calvino has never lost his sense of wonder at our world and the way it came to be.
To read each of these stories, then, is to enter another, parallel universe where things are similar to our familiar surroundings and yet wholly different. Calvino's imaginative range is extraordinary - it covers the whole of time and space! Clearly, he is a deep philosopher and an intelligent scientific thinker, for logic and philosophical conjecture feature highly in each of these tales. Especially, perhaps, in tzero. Here, he expertly builds up the tension in that moment between a hunter letting an arrow fly and it possibly hitting its leonine target, while also speculating about parallel universes and whether or not if an event happens in a place often enough it leaves some sort of echo causing déjà vu in those who recreate it. While the philosophy and the science can be difficult, it is certainly worth the perseverance as this volume of stories is a very rewarding reading experience.
In the last part he changes tack slightly. While considering relativity and our concepts of the space that surrounds us, he deftly throws in a story about a thwarted car chase (they are in a traffic jam) where the murderer has to just sit tight until the traffic flows freely once more (with a neat twist at the end) and a retelling of the Count of Monte Cristo. These last two read much more easily than the preceding stories and so provide some form of light relief which you may well require by this point.
I have never read more literate, lyrical, thought provoking science fiction. These stories are quite, quite stunning. Step into the world of Calvino, you will be pleasantly surprised.
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his prose, it will be a joyful task.The short stories contained in this slim volume are divided into three sections. Within the first two parts, each of the well-crafted miniatures is narrated by an obscure character known to us only as Ofwfq, who seems to take many forms. Essentially they are a series of what ifs (as, I guess, is most fiction); each takes an interesting scientific theory and runs away with it in an imaginative and figurative sense. So, for example, the first tale deals with an Earth where the Moon is not yet her satellite, but a planet in her own right and how our present state of affairs came to be. Similarly, the second tale deals with the origin of birds, the third the development of gemstones, the fourth our evolution from creatures of the sea to land dwellers (where he speculates that the blood that flows inside us is actually the equivalent of the sea that surrounded us before) and so on and so forth. Thus they all deal with themes of change, of order arising from chaos (including speculation about what exactly consitutes order) and the inadequacy of mere words in describing these wondrous things. For, it can be clearly seen, Calvino has never lost his sense of wonder at our world and the way it came to be.
To read each of these stories, then, is to enter another, parallel universe where things are similar to our familiar surroundings and yet wholly different. Calvino's imaginative range is extraordinary - it covers the whole of time and space! Clearly, he is a deep philosopher and an intelligent scientific thinker, for logic and philosophical conjecture feature highly in each of these tales. Especially, perhaps, in tzero. Here, he expertly builds up the tension in that moment between a hunter letting an arrow fly and it possibly hitting its leonine target, while also speculating about parallel universes and whether or not if an event happens in a place often enough it leaves some sort of echo causing déjà vu in those who recreate it. While the philosophy and the science can be difficult, it is certainly worth the perseverance as this volume of stories is a very rewarding reading experience.
In the last part he changes tack slightly. While considering relativity and our concepts of the space that surrounds us, he deftly throws in a story about a thwarted car chase (they are in a traffic jam) where the murderer has to just sit tight until the traffic flows freely once more (with a neat twist at the end) and a retelling of the Count of Monte Cristo. These last two read much more easily than the preceding stories and so provide some form of light relief which you may well require by this point.
I have never read more literate, lyrical, thought provoking science fiction. These stories are quite, quite stunning. Step into the world of Calvino, you will be pleasantly surprised.
Show Less
LibraryThing member AndrewBlackman
This is a bit of a strange mix of stories. Some are narrated by Qfwfq, who tells in first person stories of his experiences as various entities such as a unicellular organism at the creation of the universe. Others read like a well-written, literary version of a physicist's thought experiments.
All
I very much liked the imagery of the blood and the sea - the sea being the place where our lives originated, and the blood being the life inside us now. The external becomes internal, the shared becomes separate, cut off from each other. The closest we get to return is death, but even that cannot get us back to the shared, mixed sea in which we all once swam.
The title comes not from the beginning of the universe, as I at first thought, but from one of the 'thought experiments' towards the end. A hunter is shooting an arrow at an attacking lion, and Calvino freezes the action at the moment when the arrow is unleashed but the outcome is still unclear - will it hit the lion, killing it and making the hunter famous, or will it miss, allowing the lion to pounce on the hunter and tear him to pieces?
With time paused, the hunter has time to consider the philosophical implications of his situation. He has a feeling he has been in this situation before, and attributes it to the theory in astrophysics that the universe is currently expanding, but will at some point start to contract again back to a single tiny point, before expanding again. The process is not one of continuous expansion, then, but of a regular pulse, in and out, in and out. To complicate things, it's not just space that contracts and expands, but space-time. So as space contracts, time will also go backwards. In theory, then, the hunter will experience this situation with the lion not just at the current point t zero, but again in reverse, and again as the universe expands again and contracts again (t1, t2, t3, etc.). And he might already have experienced it in past cycles (t-1, t-2, t-3, etc.) In fact, he has no way of knowing whether he is going backwards or forwards in time.
It's all interesting stuff, and I think it's the use of this algebraic notation which gives it a physics thought experiment feel. Even when describing a night-time drive to meet his girlfriend, he calls the girlfriend Y and his potential rival Z, and the towns between which he is driving A and B. The result is a weird, heady mixture, not always entirely satisfying but always innovative and thought-provoking.
All
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are interesting and thought-provoking, but get a little bogged down in places because of the very foreignness of the experiences Calvino is describing. In "Mitosis", for example, Qfwfq is telling of his time as a unicellular organism, but at every word he uses he must stop and explain that really, of course, time, space, identity and other things had no meaning for him then, as he was unaware of anything beyond his own being. Even to speak of being unaware doesn't make sense because it implies an awareness of being unaware, etc etc etc. Basically nothing can be said to really exist or happen in the way we understand things, so it makes it very difficult to tell the story. Good on Calvino for trying, and it mostly comes off, but not always.I very much liked the imagery of the blood and the sea - the sea being the place where our lives originated, and the blood being the life inside us now. The external becomes internal, the shared becomes separate, cut off from each other. The closest we get to return is death, but even that cannot get us back to the shared, mixed sea in which we all once swam.
The title comes not from the beginning of the universe, as I at first thought, but from one of the 'thought experiments' towards the end. A hunter is shooting an arrow at an attacking lion, and Calvino freezes the action at the moment when the arrow is unleashed but the outcome is still unclear - will it hit the lion, killing it and making the hunter famous, or will it miss, allowing the lion to pounce on the hunter and tear him to pieces?
With time paused, the hunter has time to consider the philosophical implications of his situation. He has a feeling he has been in this situation before, and attributes it to the theory in astrophysics that the universe is currently expanding, but will at some point start to contract again back to a single tiny point, before expanding again. The process is not one of continuous expansion, then, but of a regular pulse, in and out, in and out. To complicate things, it's not just space that contracts and expands, but space-time. So as space contracts, time will also go backwards. In theory, then, the hunter will experience this situation with the lion not just at the current point t zero, but again in reverse, and again as the universe expands again and contracts again (t1, t2, t3, etc.). And he might already have experienced it in past cycles (t-1, t-2, t-3, etc.) In fact, he has no way of knowing whether he is going backwards or forwards in time.
It's all interesting stuff, and I think it's the use of this algebraic notation which gives it a physics thought experiment feel. Even when describing a night-time drive to meet his girlfriend, he calls the girlfriend Y and his potential rival Z, and the towns between which he is driving A and B. The result is a weird, heady mixture, not always entirely satisfying but always innovative and thought-provoking.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Stevil2001
The first two sections of this book are essentially a reprise of Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics, with more adventures of Qfwfq. The first four stories are the same as most of those in Cosmicomics: Qfwfq narrates an episode from his life, inspired by an over-the-top interpretation of contemporary
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science. (Someday I will write a paper about his portrayal of science, arguing that he is an sf writer at heart.) These manage to be fun satires of scientific principles at the same time they are serious depictions of life, dying, and love. I liked "The Soft Moon," but "The Origin of Birds," which is done in the form of a described comic book, is even better-- it shouldn't work, but does anyway. The adventures of Qfwfq in the middle section, three linked stories, are about his (its?) romance with Priscilla, formed from himself after asexual reproduction. This didn't really engage me. The last section consists of four weird stories of people overthinking their current situations when they are trapped in one moment in time, and I liked these a lot. Especially good were "The Chase," where a man is in a car chase but gets stuck at an awkward traffic light, and "The Night Driver," about a man driving to his lover's home worried that his lover may be driving to him. As always, Calvino mixes science with whimsy and serious meditations with postmodernism to create something (usually) delightful. Show Less
LibraryThing member iayork
I liked it but.........: Not surprisingly the two early reviews give it 1 and 5 respectively: a book about which it is impossible to be neutral. Confusing,dense, boring writing there is - but also some amazing mathematic/scietific concepts whch Calvino masterly spins into stories - the
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logic/illogic (which are probably simultaneously both the same and opposite) outcomes baffle and amaze. The final section was more rewarding (being more time-space maths based) - couldn't get a handle on the evolutionary/biological stuff. I also suspect I want to read more about the text and continually get beneath its skin. Will read bits again and again and again. (Not a tour de force of narrative analysis compared to "if on a winter's night..." and castle of crossed destinies) Show Less
LibraryThing member VeritysVeranda
I never know where I will end up when reading anything by Italo Calvino, but I do know that I will be in for an interesting journey. Having studied way too much physics and math for most anthropologists, I enjoyed letting my mind wander through Calvino's earthly evolution. The part that always
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seems to stick out in my mind of this book is when the narrator and Sybil are sitting on the back porch watching the moon disintegrate. Show Less
Awards
John Florio Prize for Italian Translation (Winner — 1971)
Language
Original language
Italian
Original publication date
1967 (original Italian)
1969 (English: Weaver)
Physical description
160 p.; 17.8 cm
Local notes
Omslag: Ikke angivet
Omslaget viser en menneskelignende skikkelse med fødderne plantet på to kugler, måske planeter
Indskannet omslag - N650U - 150 dpi
Omslaget viser en menneskelignende skikkelse med fødderne plantet på to kugler, måske planeter
Indskannet omslag - N650U - 150 dpi
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Pages
160
DDC/MDS
| 853.914 |