Cosmicomics Paperback – October 4, 1976

I had never read Calvino before but I was interested in the idea of science principles embodied as characters. I'm not a "science person" but I think he makes the material accessible in that it isn't as much about the science as it is using these phenomena to explain very human experiences.I did think "The Distance of the Moon" was a bad story to put at the very beginning. I felt every other story in the collection had the same basic feel to it, except that one. I would recommend coming back to that one after you have read a few.As far as my favorites:"A Sign in Space" is very focused in semiotics, or the meaning and nature of signs and symbols."The Aquatic Uncle" deals with the "problem of the older generation" and also has an ending that questions if it is worth being old and unchanging."The Dinosaurs" was the strongest to me. It focuses on how perceptions of events or people groups change through time and how they can become untrue to the original event or people group. Also addresses how our understanding of history is subjective and interpretive."The Light-Years" was also extremely strong and to me one of the most human ones in the collection. The narrator deals with the conflict of a bad first impression but being unable to correct it and how his overcompensation often leads to more problems than it solves. It also deals with our image of ourselves and if this is consistent with what others see of us.I would highly recommend this collection. It was a great read and my husband (who doesn't do as much magic realism as I do) read the ones above and liked them as well. :-)

I recently obtained a new copy of COSMICOMICS after having lost my old, tattered paperback which someone borrowed and forgot to return back in the 1980s. On this rereading, I was amazed at how many of the wondrous stories I remembered, along with the gorgeous writing (in William Weaver's colloquial translation), the irony, the frequent hilarity, the many adroit and startling insights. The two tales I'd taken to heart back in the 80s, THE DINOSAURS and THE SPIRAL, turned out to be my favorites still.The first, with its wrenching surreal last line, you might call an "animal fable," but it's not so much about the last dinosaur living among mammalian critters as it is about the eternal outsider, the stranger in a strange land. Most of Calvino's stories have as their protagonist a shy, fumbling, fussy, nerdy sort of being, the eternal academic male whom the author names "Qfwfq," an unpronounceable palindrome that is a witty lampoon of alien names in 1930s pulp magazine space opera. Whether in the form of protean energy, protoplasm or dinosaurian scales, Qfwfq is different from everyone else--sometimes selfish, irascible, petty, revenge-plotting and jealous--but always different. And recognizable. And despite all his faults, worth forgiving and loving.In THE SPIRAL our eternal being is a conch under a shallow sea, who under a compulsion both joyous and anxious builds around himself the universe's first shell, demonstrating that art combines showing-off with longing and desire, and that love expressed as desire is the source of great art. Love is Calvino's other great theme. His lover (Qfwfq) is often fatuous, frequently engaged in futile pursuits, sometimes (I say regretfully, being a woman) sexist, but more than anything steadfast. I am reasonably sure, having read other books of his, that during his lifetime he believed that the universe was born from love and longing. Though shapes and intelligences, comprehensions and artifacts have evolved, love somehow manifests itself up through time in much the same as-yet unfulfilled and puzzling way. No orthodox theology can explain this--but only a theology called "panentheism" or process philosophy, that I believe Calvino and I share. The only God I (and, I presume, Calvino) could believe in is one that gave life to a universe in continual evolution--otherwise, how to explain art, science, free will--and love?

When I read the description for Cavlino's collection of science fiction stories inspired by the origins of the universe, I was immediately intrigued. As a writer who often uses math and science as a basis for my fiction I love to see what others have already done. The author spins his brief tales over many millennia, but the scope of time is not overwhelming for the characters or the reader, nor is the breadth of the expanding universe it takes place in. Each piece is spun out of a scientific theory but with a whimsy that is both endearing and a bit precious. It is his adherence to the theory within the fictional construct that I found fascinating, and having read Hawking and Sagan I know Calvino has a lot of the right elements (quite literally). Many of the characters, including the narrator of the majority of the stories, are taken from formulas, and part of the fun is figuring out which. There is a playful inquisitiveness in each piece, and a love of women and their bewitching behinds, that make for entertaining reading.

One of my favorite books, unlike any other. It's both science fiction and fairytale-like, with both funny, melancholic and light-hearted stories.

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