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Cosmicomics

4.17 of 5 stars 4.17 · rating details · 6,162 ratings · 430 reviews

Enchanting stories about the evolution of the universe, with characters that are fashioned from mathematical formulae and cellular structures. Naturally, we were all there, - old Qfwfq said, - where else could we have been? Nobody knew then that there could be space. Or time either: what use did we have for time, packed in there like sardines??

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Published by Macmillan Pub Co (first published 1965)

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Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne

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Sep 25, 2012 Nilesh Kashyap rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: short-story, translated

“FUCKING MINDFUCK!”

I became aware of two facts after reading this book
-Sometime people can be way over-creative
-And sometime this over-creativity can be real pain in the... umm... let’s go with ‘rear’.

So, what is cosmicomics?
I may say it is comics of the universe; it is book of twelve short stories, with setting in all across the universe and from time even before big-bang to present day, and telling us the story of evolution of the universe.
But that is about something written on the pages of th...more

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Jun 28, 2011 K.D. Oliveros rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to K.D. by: 501 Must Read Books (Science Fiction)

Shelves: 501, sci-fi

Twelve totally enchanting tales about the evolution of the universe. This book is a good set of fanciful stories that a father can use to answer his son’s never-ending questions about the moon, the sun and everything up in the sky.

This is my third book by Italo Calvino and he still to disappoint me. Like Milan Kundera, he also does not re-write himself. He was a league of his own - writing about a unfinished manuscript being read by you, the reader - in If on a winter’s night a traveler. He loo...more Twelve totally enchanting tales about the evolution of the universe. This book is a good set of fanciful stories that a father can use to answer his son’s never-ending questions about the moon, the sun and everything up in the sky.

This is my third book by Italo Calvino and he still to disappoint me. Like Milan Kundera, he also does not re-write himself. He was a league of his own - writing about a unfinished manuscript being read by you, the reader - in If on a winter’s night a traveler. He looked back and went medieval and talked about tarot cards in A Castle of Crossed Destinies. Now, he looked up in the sky, brought out his astronomy book and wrote a book belonging to a sci-fi sub-genre called intellectual fantasy: his 1965 collection of short stories, Cosmicomics.

In the beginning, before the Big Bang, all the matter in the universe was concentrated in a single point. As his narrator Qfwfq says: ”Where else could we have been? Nobody knew then that there could be space. Or time either: what use did we have for time, packed in there like sardines?” Then Calvino tells his story about the creation of the universe just like the story in Genesis not in the way Moses (Genesis being the first book of Moses) but in a playful manner with his non-human characters whose names are mathematical symbols or algorithms doing out-of-this-world activities like putting ladder to climb up to the moon or throwing atoms just like how we threw balls up in the sky when we were kids. Calvino’s style here reminds me a lot of Salman Rushdie’s brand of magical realism not using real people (like G. G. Marquez) but more of make-believe characters that adds to the magic and uniqueness of the story. In fact, this is what Salman says about the book:

“I first read Cosmicomics in my early 20s, and it's a book I've gone back to again and again. It is possibly the most enjoyable story collection ever written, a book that will frequently make you laugh out loud at its mischievous mastery, capricious ingenuity and nerve.”

My favorite among the 12 stories is the first one: The Distance of the Moon where the moon and earth are still closed to each other and men can put up a ladder to climb to the moon. The close proximity of the moon and earth reminded me of the local legend told to us by our teachers here in the Philippines: that there was a man who had to use a wooden mortar and pestle to remove husk from the palay and produce rice. That every time he did that the sky became high and high until it became as far and high as it appears now.

The books reminds me that there is no boring topic only boring novelists. Who would have thought that there could still be interesting stories that can be told about the sky? Especially at night, when you look up and all you can see are darkness and some small blinking tired stars? There is nothing dated about the stories and because he based each story on actual astronomical facts, everything makes sense. Just use your imagination and ride with Calvino in his make-believe flight. Probably humming a bit of Sinatra’s Fly Me to the Moon might also add some spice while reading some of the stories.
(less)

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Nov 23, 2012 Paul rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: whats-all-the-fuss-about, really-terrible-novels

I guess if there was nothing on tv and you were bored your mind might start wandering and you might possibly conceive that a civilisation of very tiny unicorns called Gzz and Tjsdfh might live up my arse but you wouldn't want to write a damn book about it, would you. However thin the book might be.

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Mar 06, 2013 Madeleine rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, our-libeary, mmxiii

Calvino opened this beautiful little collection with "The Distance of the Moon," a tale from the days when the lunar landscape could be reached with nothing more than a ladder and some well-timed gymnastics, so it struck me as appropriate that I began reading “Cosmicomics” on the night of a full moon.

I had its richly resonant first two stories running through my head while driving home from work that evening. The first half of my commute is a journey illuminated by the artificial lights of both...more Calvino opened this beautiful little collection with "The Distance of the Moon," a tale from the days when the lunar landscape could be reached with nothing more than a ladder and some well-timed gymnastics, so it struck me as appropriate that I began reading “Cosmicomics” on the night of a full moon.

I had its richly resonant first two stories running through my head while driving home from work that evening. The first half of my commute is a journey illuminated by the artificial lights of both commerce and my fellow impatient motorists before giving way to a monotonous stretch of interstate road, offering precious few spots of gap-toothed skyline that allow the evening sky to break through; one of these infrequent openings offered a glimpse of the looming, swollen moon. The distortion of a full lunar sphere just beginning its ascent, an engorged orb hanging so low and heavy that she could pass for the grandest part of the man-made horizon, is one of my favorite displays offered by my favorite celestial phenomenon: I’ve had a particular affinity for the full moon ever since I discovered that unusually well-lit nighttime walks were the most reliable antidote for my teenage moodiness. The optical illusion that makes a low moon loom gigantically renders a familiar sight unusual, and stealing a few glances of it during my daily trek lent a tangibility to Calvino's story I wasn't expecting but didn't really surprise me. This would not be the first (and I sincerely doubt the last) time I couldn't help but apply Calvino's vision to a real-world occurrence.

These stories make the kind of sense that dreams do, in a way. While clearly mismatched words don’t rhyme upon waking as they do in nocturnal narratives and the person who represents a singular entity in sleep becomes an obviously symbolic amalgamation of strangers and forgotten friends once the dreamer is jarred into consciousness, the creation myths Calvino weaves into dazzling truths actually do hold up upon further examination, even if they do require the occasional suspension of disbelief; still, who’s to say the cosmos and the population that arose with it adhere to the same stringent reality we’ve come to accept?

While the formative years of the cosmic terrain -- the Earth and its lunar satellite included -- are decidedly alien in their lack of familiar concepts (just as our commonalities were novel then: "You understand? It was the first time. There had never been things to play with before. And how could we have played? With that pap of gaseous matter?"), the inhabitants' stumbling confusion about what's going on but solid certainty that whatever's happening is important didn't require a leap of imagination to understand. Calvino imbued his cast of nonhuman characters with decidedly human curiosity and incredibly human failings, which helps to ground an otherwise ethereal collection of interweaving tales in achingly relatable terms.

What struck me most about this book is how actively shameful impulses have shaped and driven self-aware creatures since, quite literally, there have been self-aware beings in a position to affect their environment. Those jealousies, those prejudices, and most of all those proud insecurities were allowed to reach a boiling point and bubbled into the external world. The effects weren't always catastrophic but they did leave lasting marks on the nascent universe. To consider that the universe as we know it (what we know of it, anyway) was crafted neither by a happy, scientifically explained accident nor the whim of just but avuncular deities, but rather some ordinary guy's selfish motives and a need to leave a cosmic "I wuz here" smear of existential proof is a perspective shift worth mulling over.

I still maintain that this is perfection in 153 pages. My second encounter with Calvino was just as fortuitous and spilled off the page into real life just as much as my first -- so much, in fact, that I bought another one of this books almost immediately upon finishing this one because I just want to glut myself on Calvino's unequaled prose. Simply, the man reminds me of what a magical experience a good book is and why reading has been one of my favorite pastimes for as long as it has. This is a quick read that demands the reader to pace him/herself to properly dwell on the densely packed splendor within.(less)

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Mar 02, 2013 Garima rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: italo-calvino-magiciano, favorites, short-stories, sui-generis

Qfwfq : Been there, Seen that, done that.

Been where? Where the distance of the moon from the ocean was just a ladder away.

Seen what? The formation of galaxies, A colorless world, A time when there was no concept of time.

Done what? Lived on the nebulae, Lived as a dinosaur, fallen in love with a tadpole.

A literary cosmos made up of staggering imagination, Calvino’s Cosmicomics exceeded the expectations I always have before reading any of his books and it makes me even more proud of declaring him...more

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Jan 26, 2010 Ellen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, sci-fi-fantasy, postmodernism

Italo Calvino, in Cosmicomics, writes a philosophical, pseudo-scientific fantasy that attempts, somewhat whimsically, to answer the kind of questions a child might pose: How did the earth begin? Where do we come from? How did language begin? The book charts the path of a character named Qfwfq who roams through emerging galaxies, romps with hydrogen atoms, and, in general, makes observations about an evolving universe.

Calvino’s book, a landmark of postmodern fiction, depicts a common postmoderni...more Italo Calvino, in Cosmicomics, writes a philosophical, pseudo-scientific fantasy that attempts, somewhat whimsically, to answer the kind of questions a child might pose: How did the earth begin? Where do we come from? How did language begin? The book charts the path of a character named Qfwfq who roams through emerging galaxies, romps with hydrogen atoms, and, in general, makes observations about an evolving universe.

Calvino’s book, a landmark of postmodern fiction, depicts a common postmodernist theme: i.e., the “literature of exhaustion,” the sense that we are surrounded by words, drowning in words, and—as a consequence—words are all used up and devoid of meaning. However, Calvino, writing back in the 1960s could hardly have known how prophetic his words would be when related to cyber-space.

In a chapter entitled “A Sign in Space,” Qfwfq, who is in the midst of whisking through the Milky Way, stops and innocently draws a sign, the first sign, in fact, at a point in space, so that he can find his way when he comes around again in about two hundred million years. Qfwfq points out that just the process of making the first sign itself involved considerable leaps of thought. He states that we think of a sign as “something that can be distinguished from something else” when, at that point in existence “nothing could be distinguished from anything …” and there were no previous examples to suggest what a sign might even be.

Qfwfq’s sign, though, creates difference. Where there had been empty space there was now a something, a sign, a symbol that had to be reckoned with. For a long time, his sign remains untarnished. Then, some 600 million years later, as Qfwfq makes his third circuit, he sees that his sign has been crossed out and another sign put next to it, a sign that was obviously a copy of Qfwfq’s original sign. With the sign, its erasure, and the counterfeit sign, the universe’s first dialogue begins. One-upmanship takes over and soon—at least in terms of galactic years—the signs and countersigns begin proliferating at a rapidly escalating pace. Finally, Qfwfq remarks nostalgically:

“In the universe now there was no longer a container and a thing contained, but only a general thickness of signs superimposed and coagulated, occupying the whole volume of space; it was constantly being dotted, minutely, a network of lines and scratches and reliefs and engravings; the universe was scrawled over on all sides, along all its dimensions. There was no longer any way to establish a point of reference.”

In 1965, Calvino could not have known that the mass of signs he describes clogging the universe was an uncanny prediction of the Internet itself where signs and sights/sites grow in increasing numbers in cyber-space. Calvino's tale parallels the type of world in which we now live. The Internet, without exaggeration, really is like a system of signs “superimposed and coagulated, occupying the whole volume of space.” While terms such as the "information highway" imply that the Internet is a gateway to knowledge, I wonder about the ability to concentrate, and achieve any type of knowledge - much less wisdom - in our tech-laden, data-riddled world.

From a prior publication(less)

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Jan 28, 2008 Tom rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: general-fiction, short-stories, scifi-fantasy

The concept is simple: take an abstract scientific concept and bring it to life through the art of the short story. Yet what Calvino achieves in Cosmicomics is unparalleled.

The collection contains twelve short stories, each beginning with a short statement describing a scientific theory, a dry, explanatory piece of writing that feels like it could've been pulled out of an introductory astronomy (or biology) textbook. For example, the first story, "The Distance of the Moon," begins with the follo...more The concept is simple: take an abstract scientific concept and bring it to life through the art of the short story. Yet what Calvino achieves in Cosmicomics is unparalleled.

The collection contains twelve short stories, each beginning with a short statement describing a scientific theory, a dry, explanatory piece of writing that feels like it could've been pulled out of an introductory astronomy (or biology) textbook. For example, the first story, "The Distance of the Moon," begins with the following passage:

At one time, according to Sir George H. Darwin, the Moon was very close to the Earth. The the tides gradually pushed her far away: the tides that the Moon herself causes in the Earth's waters, where the Earth slowly loses energy.

Then comes the bulk of each of 10-15 page story, all but two of which are narrated by Qfwfq, a wizened old storyteller who has seen everything from the beginning of the universe and who tells it all in a down-home style that feels as if the audience has gathered around a campfire to hear tales of long-ago. For example, "The Distance of the Moon" continues thus:

How well I know! - old Qfwfq cried, - the rest of you can't remember, but I can. We had her on top of us at that time, that enormous Moon: when she was full - nights as bright as day, but with a butter-colored light - it looked as if she were going to crush us; when she was new, she rolled about the sky like a black umbrella blown by the wind...

Qfwfq then goes on to tell a story of a group of people that would take a ladder up to the moon to harvest its cheese, and of his mute cousin who felt at home only on the moon, and of the captain's wife who was in love with the cousin, and of the narrator's love for the captain's wife, and all the tragic results of the love triangle, with the moon at it center.

Each story is given a striking humanity, achieving that goal of every fiction writer: illuminating what it means to be human; yet Calvino's methods often don't involve humans, as main characters are particles of dust, evolving animals, or even mathematical formulas. The stories, I believe, can best be described as "scientific myths," i.e. not the myths of great scientific figures, but mythology based upon modern science, reinvented the past's legends with today's understanding of the universe.

Cosmicomics, like his best-known work If on a winter's night a traveler, proves that Calvino is one of the most creative, innovative writers of the 20th century, able to use complex theory effortlessly to bring forth a deceptively simple tale of the basic human emotions.(less)

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Jan 31, 2011 Nate D rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: dozing nebula, gatherers of moon-milk

Recommended to Nate D by: it was too cramped in the singularity to tell who

Shelves: italy, stories, postwar-re-de-constructions

Calvino at his most Borgesian, perhaps, playfully mythic yet distilling broad complex theory on art and life from simple (here, astronomical) concepts run to distant, unforeseen extents. For instance, in the one I just finished, the eternal protagonist sees a sign placed on a star 100 million light years away reading I SAW YOU, and realizes it refers to an incident in his own life 200 million years before (time for the light to go out and back). Embarrassed to find that actions he'd hoped had be...more

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Aug 11, 2007 Rob rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

this was a huge disappointment after If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. a few of the stories might be perfect for a bed-time story for a very precocious 9-year-old, if the parent had the background to explain the science. but not enough good science for a science nerd(me), and i think too much science for a normal person. too much fairy-tale language for an adult(me), but too much technical language for a kid. some of the ideas were great, and i would enjoy the first page or two, but quickly got...more

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Jul 29, 2010 Jenelle rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

like this book was written for me! modern folktales about scientific phenomenon, not unlike Dawkins' An Ancestor's Tale but less evolution and more cosmic creation myths. swooping perspective, plastic time, transcendental but colloquial narration (the storyteller is named for the second law of thermodynamics). sorta: what if our human passions & interests are the same conditions, magnified, that govern the entire cosmos: a string theory of temperament. really really really good, although som...more

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Natalie do you know this exists: "The new Penguin Classics Complete Cosmicomics collects in one volume almost all of Calvino's Cosmicomic stories: the origina...more
Aug 06, 2010 09:19am

Jenelle hm, did not know, thank you! checked on it and I do not agree with the assessment of the cover. the translations by Weaver are the same for the separa...more
Aug 06, 2010 01:04pm

Natalie Jenelle wrote: "hm, did not know, thank you! checked on it and I do not agree with the assessment of the cover. the translations by Weaver are the sam...more
Aug 06, 2010 01:20pm

Jun 04, 2007 Eleanor rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: sci-fi dreamers

Cosmicomics is one of the most rewarding and unique collections of short stories I've had the good fortune to stumble upon. Each story begins with a scientific fact about the nature of the universe, the big bang, evolution, the birth of the sun, and Calvino creates a community of characters among the very earliest formation of particles of life (often featuring particles themselves as main characters), bringing human interactions, hopes, fears, ambitions, and love to single-celled organism, matt...more Cosmicomics is one of the most rewarding and unique collections of short stories I've had the good fortune to stumble upon. Each story begins with a scientific fact about the nature of the universe, the big bang, evolution, the birth of the sun, and Calvino creates a community of characters among the very earliest formation of particles of life (often featuring particles themselves as main characters), bringing human interactions, hopes, fears, ambitions, and love to single-celled organism, matter, and dinosaurs as their motivation to survive great changes in the history of the universe. Philosophically Calvino orbits around the notion of identity without reference point, great differences in evolution as the reason two organisms fell out of love, all in a smooth satirical voice (strangely reminiscent of british humor although Calvino must be Italian) that makes these stories utterly charming and worth re-reading.

Here's an excerpt from the beginning of the story "At Daybreak" (scientific fact not included):

Pitch-dark it was, --old Qfwfq confirmed,-- I was only a child, I can barely remember it. We were there, as usual, with Father and Mother, Granny Bb'b, some uncles and aunts who were visiting, Mr. Hnw, the one who later became a horse, and us little ones. I think I've told you before the way we lived on the nebulae: it was like lying down, we were flat and very still, turning as they turned. Not that we were lying outside, you understand, on the nebula's surface; no, it was too cold out there. We were underneath, as if we had been tucked in under a layer of fluid, grainy matter. There was no way of telling time; whenever we started counting the nebula's turns there were disagreements, because we didn't have any reference points in the darkness, and we ended up arguing. So we preferred to let the centuries flow by as if they were minutes; there was nothing to do but wait, keep covered as best we could, doze, speak out now and then to make sure we were all still there; and, naturally, scratch ourselves; because--they can say what they like-- all those particles spinning around had only one effect, a trouble-some itching. (less)

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Jun 16, 2013 Mary Catelli rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

Ah, Qfwfq, you old scoundrel!

A sequence of short stories, with the most minimal framing device ever -- somewhere in the first sentence there is an italicized phrase, said Qfwfq, or its equivalent -- in which Qfwfq takes some scientific snippet and weaves a tall tale about how he had been there when it happened. Marvelous little concoctions of anachronisms, in a charming voice. The tale of how he was the last of the dinosaurs long after the others' extinction ends with him taking a train, for ins...more

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Jun 06, 2013 Flavio rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Le avventure di Qfwfq si ambientano in un romanzo del tutto fuori dalla logica che però funziona, per cui mandi al diavolo il tuo razionalismo e continui a leggere, contento come una pasqua. L'importante, però, è leggere il libro lentamente e senza fretta per assimilarlo a dovere. Per certi versi questo è il Calvino migliore, cioè quello concreto, che racconta una storia. Per altri versi invece è il Calvino peggiore, quello che si diletta in astrazioni poco interessanti. Ciò nonostante vorrei so...more

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May 07, 2013 Bjorn rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Now that's good Calvino. Funny, detailed, multi-layered, beautifully written and ever so clever without losing track of the story it tells.

On one level, this is a story about a... let's call him a man, because he's definitely male even if he isn't really human, an eternal being named Qfwfq. It's his life, from childhood to maturity. Only his life takes place over the entire age of the universe, from Big Bang to the 1960s on Earth. Each story builds on some scientific factoid, and then creates a...more

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Apr 04, 2013 Greg Brown rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Calvino's novel is similar to Borges in the high-concept, borderline metaphysical premises, but more focused on the characters rather than following all the consequences of that premise. That's not to say that Borges isn't emotional; one of his under-appreciated gifts, and one lacking in most of his wanna-be successors, was in wringing emotional grist out of his evocative images and premises. Instead, Calvino isn't afraid to weave a separate emotional story onto the premise, or wander off-topic...more Calvino's novel is similar to Borges in the high-concept, borderline metaphysical premises, but more focused on the characters rather than following all the consequences of that premise. That's not to say that Borges isn't emotional; one of his under-appreciated gifts, and one lacking in most of his wanna-be successors, was in wringing emotional grist out of his evocative images and premises. Instead, Calvino isn't afraid to weave a separate emotional story onto the premise, or wander off-topic as he continues down the tale.

Indeed, Calvino is more interested in using the outlandish settings to more literally represent emotions and relationships that exist in our own lives, albeit in more subtler forums. For example, one of the stories depicts the transition of some species from the land to the sea—but struggling with relatives who have refused to make the change, and seem stuck in their ways yet still insist on their own wisdom.. Our narrator's girlfriend is thoroughly habituated to the land, and he fears of the consequences if he introduces her to his great-uncle. Even if we aren't amphibian, can't we recognize this tale?

This sort of panpsychism pervades the stories, with our narrator Qfwfq taking the form of a dinosaur, a mollusk, pre-creation matter, and more. Calvino's painstaking efforts to depict the sensory experiences of these creatures are what lends the book a poetic edge, since you rarely see those kinds of explorations in prose. There are exceptions of course, like Nagel's "What is it like to be a bat?", but they tend to be specialized forms and not general fiction.

Talking about it with a friend, she mentioned that the book seemed to be more a novel than a collection of short stories, and I'd agree. Resonating throughout many of the stories is love, loss, and dealing with the confluence of the two. Calvino's language is beautiful, yet dwells in melancholy. If this had been his only book I would have thought it a personal obsession, but it instead resonates as a particularly thoughtful thematic choice for a book concerned with the consequences and casualties of cosmic creation.(less)

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Mar 25, 2013 Andrea Ika rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Distance of the Moon -- A story which which takes the fact that the moon used to be much closer to the earth, and builds it into a romantic story about two men and one woman in a tribe of people who used to jump up onto the moon when it passed overhead.
At Daybreak — Life before matter condenses.
A Sign in Space — The idea that the galaxy slowly revolves becomes a story about a being who is desperate to leave behind some unique sign of his existence. This story also is a direct illustration of...more

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Nov 22, 2012 David rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, evolution

This book is a series of short stories that tell about evolution of the universe and of life. It is a sort of allegorical fantasy, entertaining, humorous, and thought-provoking. What is it like to be a sentient being, afloat in the universe? How could you restore your reputation, when someone who is 100 million light years distant, directs a sign toward you, saying "I SAW YOU"? What sort of signpost would you build, to figure out the rotation period of the galaxy? What would you do if you were t...more

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Oct 24, 2012 Roberta rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

'Cosmicomics' is considered to be one of the best early examples of post-modernism due to its broad imagination, and its focus on semiotics and on its own narrative power. The following excerpts clearly portray the self-reflexivity that runs through the whole book:

'What sort of sign? It's hard to explain because if I say sign to you, you immediately think of a something that can be distinguished from a something else, but nothing could be distinguished from anything there; you immediately think...more

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Mar 01, 2012 Stephen M rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: lifes-too-short-for-novels

This is a wonderful set of short stories which comes as no surprise from the Cuban born, Italian Italo Calvino. I had previously read If on a Winter’s Night A Traveler and Invisible Cities, both I highly recommend, and enjoyed both of them immensely. I once heard about the vast differences between all of Calvino’s novels; that certainly seems true, each one of those books bare vague resemblances to one another; the similarities residing in minor things like, short story format, magical realist e...more This is a wonderful set of short stories which comes as no surprise from the Cuban born, Italian Italo Calvino. I had previously read If on a Winter’s Night A Traveler and Invisible Cities, both I highly recommend, and enjoyed both of them immensely. I once heard about the vast differences between all of Calvino’s novels; that certainly seems true, each one of those books bare vague resemblances to one another; the similarities residing in minor things like, short story format, magical realist elements and gorgeous prose. Ultimately, Calvino is one of my favorite authors because he can take nearly any premise and breath wonderful imaginative life into them. If nothing else, I come away with such vivid and delightful images that I can’t help but think he was something of a genius; at least with that aspect of writing which I find to be the hardest. Any one and their mom can write some poetically-tinged block of prose and send it on its way, but it takes a little something extra to create a literary world, living and breathing with the perfect amount of detail it needs, complete unto itself, full of imaginative wonder. Calvino, most especially has a knack for these set pieces. The best example of that comes in the first story of this collection.

Is it a spoiler to describe the first story? Can you spoil a short story collection? Well, if so, you’ve been warned. The entire book follows poor Qwfwq, if read literally, he is some sort of shape shifter—across species as well as subatomic particles—as he experiences the universe at varying times from the moment of its creation, to the development of matter, to the formation of the earth. Each story is prefaced with an italicized section detailing a certain scientific theory or maxim. The first, called The Distance from the Moon, has a theory formulated by George H. Darwin, the famed Charles Darwin’s son. The prediction is in regards to the origin and formation of the moon. At the time of the writing of Cosmicomics, it was believed that the moon was once very close to the earth and that it slowly drifted away from the earth in its orbit. Calvino imagines a strange tribe of some sort of half human, half fish type creatures that harvest the moon for the milk that it has. They ride on a boat across the ocean, where the moon gets closest to the earth. They have to climb a ladder and jump, lingering for a moment between the gravitational pulls of both surfaces until the point where the gravity of the moon overtakes the gravity of the earth and the person is pulled towards the moon. Calvino’s description of the ocean from that point of view is stunning. Imagine “the sea above you, glistening, with the boat and the others upside down, hanging like a bunch of grapes from the vine.” The rest of the story plays with this conceit. This story may be the longest, and it is his most effective. It even follows a strict three-act structure with inciting incident, dark night of the soul and denouement. I was impressed that this section, which is packed full of mother/Lacanian ideas could also be formally compact. More than just that, however, is what permeates through all of these stories. In all of them, Calvino’s imagination shines. If you let it, it will take you up in its wonderful world. The entire collection is a conjunction of fantasy, science, magical realism and realist emotions. One story talks of a left-over dinosaur after the others went extinct. Calvino tells a story about social ostracism and conflicted identity. There is a story about the steady state theory of the universe, the theory all but rejected now. In which the character Qwfwq chases another character, Pwfwp throughout the universe. He finally notices that he can see the back of his own head in front of Pwfwp, Pwfwp is actually chasing Qwfwq! Until he notices that there is an infinite number of Q’s chasing P’s and vice versa. From Q’s perspective, he is chasing P, but from P’s perspective, P is chasing Q.

This is a prime example of Calvino’s overall intention with the work. He wants to impress upon the reader the arbitrary nature of privileging perspective. In an interview within a book called The Uses of Literature: Essays, Calvino says that

“Robbe-Grillet came out with a bitter attack on anthropomorphism, against the writer who still humanized the landscape. . . It is not that Robbe-Grillet’s argument didn’t convince me. It is just that in the course of writing I have come to take the oppostire route in stories that are a positive delirium of anthropomorphism, of the impossibility of thinking about the world except in terms of human figures. . . [I] multiplied his eyes and his nose in every direction until he no longer knows who he is.”

The point of each story is to simultaneously laugh at how ridiculous it is to compare evolution to human social interaction, yet at the same time indulge, because how else do we know about the world around us? In Cosmicomics there is a particular sadness in each story, a loss and tragedy of understanding. Even the signs which we take to be words begins to break down, as the meanings of words proliferate and destabilize.

"I realized that with what seemed a casual jumple of words I had hit on an infinite reserve of new combinations among the signs which compact, opaque, uniform reality would use to disguise its monotony, and I realized that perhaps the race toward the future, the race I had been the first to foresee and desire, tended only—through time and space—toward a crumbling into alternatives like this, until it would dissolve in a geometry of invisible triangles and ricochets like the course of a football among the white lines of a field as I tried to imagine them, drawn at the bottom of the luminous vortex of the planetary systems, deciphering the numbers marked on the chests and backs of the players at night, unrecognizable in the distance."

He takes anthropocentrism to its logical extreme. By applying human characteristic to even the most absurd of things—subatomic particles and the original point of matter from which the big bang sprung—he exposes it this "humanizing" for the absurdity it is.

While reading all these stories, I couldn’t stop thinking about the sheer incomprehensibility of the universe. From its most minute particles to its cosmic grandiosity, we are stuck amid an ocean of unknowability; the basis for our existence only to be reified in arbitrary metaphors—even string theorists will tell you that “strings” are just the best metaphor they came conjure—and we are stuck in this self-privileged perspective by which we interact with the universe. I think about the incredibly miniature, the infinite regress of sub-atomic matter and the indomitable vastness of a star, not even ours, ours isn’t even that large and my head begins to spin. In every story, Calvino harps on this inability for any of us to really understand the incredible nature of the universe. I have no way of even picturing how vast the universe is; the speed of light—186,000 miles per second—still takes some 100 million years to travel between stars. If an atom were extrapolated to the size of a solar system, a string would be the size of a tree on earth. I struggle to even conceive of this and all the while I envy the certainty of preachers, religious fundamentalists or any person with a disposition for staunch certainty. They have, within their understanding, this entire universe, which we lack the vocabulary and imagination to even properly represent, subsumed under a single, perfect explanation. It causes them not a single shred of doubt or uncertainty; it is completely beyond me.

My only solace is indulging in what I love: reading, writing, learning, and most especially literature, like this beautiful book. I am overcome with gratitude and astonishment for having a brain and consciousness capable of appreciating this ever-confounding reality we call home and Calvino, for making it so damn wonderful and fun.(less)

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Jul 07, 2011 Moonquake Abbott rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I've somehow stumbled upon Calvino this summer and, much to my surprise considering I've been left puzzled rather than satisfied with Borges - an author he's compared to incessantly - Calvino has proven to be very enjoyable.

For me, these stories, though seemingly disjointed, all share many points. Calvino is really interested in the distinctions made between singularity and commonality, a recurring theme which plays out in a perfect setting. What better place than the vastness of the universe w...more

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Apr 10, 2011 Bojan Tunguz rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ever since our ancestors started looking into the night sky, the saw patterns and connections between the stars, moons and planets, and used stories and myths to imbue those patterns with meaning and structure. With the big hindsight of the scientific worldview, all those ancient stories may seem quaint and naïve. And indeed, the advent of modern astronomy and astrophysics has greatly enriched and deepened our understanding of the Cosmos. But these wonderful new insights should not be taken in o...more

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Feb 11, 2011 Tyler Jones rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: italian-literature, short-stories

What was it like back in the days when the moon was so close to the earth that it could be reached by ladder? How does one cope with the social embarrassment of having an uncle who refuses to evolve above being a fish? These questions and more are answered by Qfwfq, the narrator of the most fantastic stories ever captured inside a book cover.

Italo Calvino took scientific postulations and turned them into fictions of the highest order, where impossible situations are described and universal truth...more

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Dec 22, 2010 daniel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

in other words, considering it was the first sign ever made in the universe, or at least in the circuit of the milky way, i must admit it came out very well. visible? what a question! who had eyes to see with in those days? nothing had ever been seen by anything, the question never even arose. recognizable, yes, beyond any possibility of error: because all the other points in space were the same, indistinguishable, and instead, this one had the sign on it.
so as the planets continued their revolu...more

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Dec 31, 2009 Kirk rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a wonderful collection of short stories, narrated by the thoughtful and celestial being Qfwfq, that combine elements of both postmodern theory and magical realism in order to tell a story about galactic origins, evolution, society, language, and, above all, cosmic play.

While most dub this piece science fiction (a turnoff for my literary sex drive), the actual reading of Cosmicomics is so funny, beautiful and imaginative that the concepts like particle physics, nuclear fusion, gravity an...more

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Oct 13, 2009 Leif Schenstead-Harris rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Calvino takes on scientific discourse and the narrative of creation: would be my one sentence take on Cosmicomics. And he doesn't do a half-bad job of it, in fact his look at signs is almost readable, and his story of otherness and Dinosaurs is pretty fun, not to mention the excellent (if short lived) All at one point. However, the above being said, it often feels as if Calvino is hindered, rather than inspired, by the urge to retain a strong fidelity to the science; as a result sometimes the wr...more

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Jun 15, 2013 Jason rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2013

While not every story in this collection can match the truly excellent, transcendent glory that is its first story, "The Distance of the Moon," every one is a glimpse into greatness, beauty and thoughtfullness. Whether it is a group of beings reminiscing about the time (which was no time at all) before the big bang, when they inhabited the exact same space, which wasn't even a space, or else is a being who creates the first sign, thereby exploring the ideas of language, communication, existence...more

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May 01, 2013 Matt rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I loved this book. It is a compilation of 12 fable-like stories about the creation of the universe. Each story starts of with a paragraph explaining some fact of science, then Calvino creates a fun, hilarious, and often sad (or at least disappointing) world where millennia fly by like seconds. I loved the stories, so much fun and so creative.

This is a passage I loved about the characters (k)yK and Qfwfq gambling on the chances things would happen in the universe.
"We also didn't know what we were...more I loved this book. It is a compilation of 12 fable-like stories about the creation of the universe. Each story starts of with a paragraph explaining some fact of science, then Calvino creates a fun, hilarious, and often sad (or at least disappointing) world where millennia fly by like seconds. I loved the stories, so much fun and so creative.

This is a passage I loved about the characters (k)yK and Qfwfq gambling on the chances things would happen in the universe.
"We also didn't know what we were staking because there was nothing that could serve as a stake, and so we gambled on our word, keeping an account of the bets each had won, to be added up later. All these calculations were very difficult, since numbers didn't exist then, and we didn't even have the concept of number, to begin to count, because it wasn't possible to separate anything from anything else."

Here is the beginning of a story where Qfwfq obsesses about what other people think of him.
"One night I was, as usual, observing the sky with my telescope. I noticed that a sign was hanging from a galaxy a hundred million light-years away. On it was written: I SAW YOU. I made a quick calculation: the galaxy's light had taken a hundred million years to reach me, and since they saw up there what was taking place here a hundred million years later, the moment when they had seen me must date back two hundred million years.
Ever before I checked my diary to see what I had been doing that day, I was seized by a ghastly presentiment: exactly two hundred million years before, not a day more nor a day less, something had happened to me that I had always tried to hide. I had hoped that with the passage of time the episode had been completely forgotten; it was in sharp contrast - at least, so it seemed to me - with my customary behavior before and after that date: so, if ever anybody wanted to dig up that business again, I was ready to deny it quite calmly, and not only because it would have been impossible to furnish proof, but also because an action determined by such exceptional conditions - even if it was really verified - was so improbably that it could be considered untrue in all good faith, even by me. Instead, from a distant celestial body, here was somebody who had seen me, and the story was cropping up again, now of all times."(less)

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Nov 25, 2011 Sean Meriwether rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, science-geek

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 th...more

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Jun 23, 2009 Billy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Italo Calvino tells the anthropomorphic story of the universe unfolding in non-linear order and how all things relate to each other as if they were humans filled with narcissism, embarrassment, desire for diversion and obsession. The narration of electrons, prokaryotes, dinosaurs, and aspects of the universal void interacting with their environment with consciousness and human frailties is a beautiful concept. The language is like that of a fairy tale, but floral with egocentric intellectualism....more

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Oct 14, 2011 Ben rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bookmooch, philosophy

Definitely an interesting read (like most everything Calvino writes), but once again just a bit too abstract and cerebral for my tastes. These are very odd, insightful, clever, and often dense stories about different aspects of the creation of the universe, the expansion of the universe, or the evolution of Earth (and life on the planet), as told from the perspective of (probably) a single character who has lived through it all (though whether or not it is actually a single character, though he...more

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About Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino was born in Cuba and grew up in Italy. He was a journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952-1959), the Cosmicomics collection of short stories (1965), and the novels Invisible Cities (1972) and If On a Winter's Night a Traveler (1979).

His style is not easily classified; much of his writing has an air of the fantastic...more

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Quotes from Cosmicomics

“I had fallen in love. What I mean is: I had begun to recognize, to isolate the signs of one of those from the others, in fact I waited for these signs I had begun to recognize, I sought them, responded to those signs I awaited with other signs I made myself, or rather it was I who aroused them, these signs from her, which I answered with other signs of my own . . . ” — 21 people liked it

“I could distinguish the shape of her bosom, her arms, her thighs, just as I remember them now, just as now, when the Moon has become that flat, remote circle, I still look for her as soon as the first sliver appears in the sky, and the more it waxes, the more clearly I imagine I can see her, her or something of her, but only her, in a hundred, a thousand different vistas, she who makes the Moon the Moon and, whenever she is full, sets the dogs to howling all night long, and me with them.” — 9 people liked it

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