Cosmicomics 0 csillagozás

Italo Calvino: Cosmicomics Italo Calvino: Cosmicomics

An enchanting series of stories about the evolution of the universe

During the course of these stories Calvino toys with continuous creation, the transformation of matter, and the expanding and contracting reaches of space and time. His characters, made out of mathematical formulae and simple cellular structures, disport themselves among galaxies, experience the solidification of planets, move from aquatic to terrestrial existence, play games with hydrogen atoms, and have a love life. Calvino succeeds in relating complex scientific concepts to the ordinary reactions of common humanity.

Italo Calvino's superb storytelling gifts earned him international renown and a reputation as „one of the world's best fabulists” (John Gardner, New York Times Book Review). Born in Cuba in 1923, Calvino was raised in Italy, where he lived most of his life. He died in Siena at the age of sixty-one.

Megjelent a The Complete Cosmicomics kötet részeként is.

Eredeti megjelenés éve: 1965

Tartalomjegyzék

>!
Harcourt, San Diego, 1976
154 oldal · ISBN: 0156226006 · Fordította: William Weaver

Népszerű idézetek

kaen>!

Now, there wasn't a single sign of mine in space. I could start drawing another, but I knew that signs also allow others to judge the one who makes them, and that in the course of a galactic year tastes and ideas have time to change, and the way of regarding the earlier ones depends on what comes afterwards; in short, I was afraid a sign that now might seem perfect to me, in two hundred or six hundred million years would make me look absurd.

A Sign in Space

kaen>!

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: the Galaxy went on turning but I could no longer count the revolutions, any point could be the point of departure, any sign heaped up with the others could be mine, but discovering it would have served no purpose, because it was clear that, independent of signs, space didn't exist and perhaps had never existed.

A Sign in Space

kaen>!

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?
I say „packed like sardines,” using a literary image: in reality there wasn't even space to pack us into. Every point of each of us coincided with every point of each of the others in a single point, which was where we all were. In fact, we didn't even bother one another, except for personality differences, because when space doesn't exist, having somebody unpleasant like Mr. Pbert Pberd underfoot all the time is the most irritating thing.

All At One Point

kaen>!

The time had come for Lll to meet my family: and since its oldest and most authoritative member was Great-Uncle N'ba N'ga, I couldn't avoid a visit to him, to introduce my fiancée. But every time an opportunity occurred, I postponed it, out of embarrassment; knowing the prejudices among which she had been brought up, I hadn't yet dared tell Lll that my great-uncle was a fish.

The Aquatic Uncle

kaen>!

And he waves the pages of the papers, black and white the way space was when the galaxies were being formed, and crammed – as space was then – with isolated corpuscles, surrounded by emptiness, containing no destination or meaning. And I think how beautiful it was then, through that void, to draw lines and parabolas, pick out the precise point, the intersection between space and time where the event would spring forth, undeniable in the prominence of its glow; whereas now events come flowing down without interruption, like cement being poured, one column next to the other, one within the other, separated by black and incongruous headlines, legible in many ways but intrinsically illegible, a doughy mass of events without form or direction, which surrounds, submerges, crushes all reasoning.

How Much Shall We Bet?

kaen>!

The strange thing was that the possibility of my being a Dinosaur never occurred to anyone; the sin I was accused of was being Different, a Foreigner, and therefore Untrustworthy; and the argument was over how much my presence increased the danger of the Dinosaurs' ever coming back.

The Dinosaurs

kaen>!

And, thinking of this judgment I would no longer be able to change, I suddenly felt a kind of relief, as if peace could come to me only after the moment when there would be nothing to add and nothing to remove in that arbitrary ledger of misunderstandings, and the galaxies which were gradually reduced to the last tail of the last luminous ray, winding from the sphere of darkness, seemed to bring with them the only possible truth about myself, and I couldn't wait until all of them, one after the other, had followed this path.

The Light-Years

kaen>!

When you're young, all evolution lies before you, every road is open to you, and at the same time you can enjoy the fact of being there on the rock, flat mollusk-pulp, damp and happy. If you compare yourself with the limitations that came afterwards, if you think of how having one form excludes other forms, of the monotonous routine where you finally feel trapped, well, I don't mind saying life was beautiful in those days.

The Spiral


Hasonló könyvek címkék alapján

Isaac Asimov: I, Robot
Francesco Verso (szerk.): Freetaly
Robert A. Heinlein: Waldo & Magic, Inc.
Ilona Andrews: Silver Shark
Robin Hobb – Megan Lindholm: The Inheritance and Other Stories
Bogi Takács: The Trans Space Octopus Congregation
Ursula K. Le Guin: The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
Dan Wells: Isolation
Cixin Liu: The Wandering Earth
Ray Bradbury: The Martian Chronicles