Book details
Format Paperback, 153 pages
Published October 4th 1976 by Mariner Books (first published 1965)
ISBN0156226006 (ISBN13: 9780156226004)
edition language: English
original title: le cosmicomiche
Summary
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 one of the tenets of postmodern theory — that the sign is not the thing it signifies, nor can one claim to fully or properly describe a thing or an idea with a word or other symbol.
All at One Point — The fact that all matter and creation used to exist in a single point. "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?"
Without Colors — Before there was an atmosphere, everything was the same shade of gray. As the atmosphere appears, so do colors. The novelty scares off Ayl, Qfwfq's love interest.
Games Without End — A galactic game of marbles back before the universe had formed much more than particles.
The Aquatic Uncle — A tale on the fact that at one stage in evolution animals left the sea and came to live on land. The story is about a family living on land that is a bit ashamed of their old uncle who still lives in the sea, refusing to come ashore like "civilized" people.
How Much Shall We Bet — A story about betting on the long term evolution of mankind.
The Dinosaurs — How some dinosaurs lived after most of them had become extinct, and how it felt to be that last existing dinosaur in an age where all the current mammals feared your kind as demons.
The Form of Space — As Qfwfq "falls" through space, he cannot help but notice that his trajectory is parallel to that of a beautiful woman, Ursula H'x, and that of lieutenant Fenimore, who is also in love with Ursula. Qfwfq dreams of the shape of space changing, so that he may touch Ursula (or fight with Fenimore).
The Light Years — Qfwfq looking at other galaxies, and spotting one with a sign pointed right at him saying "I saw you." Given that there's a gulf of 100,000,000 light years, he checks his diary to find out what he had been doing that day, and finds out that it was something he wished to hide. Then he starts to worry.
The Spiral — A beautiful story about life as a mollusc, and the nature of love and writing.
Review
Cited as a breakthrough influence by the American postmodernist writer John Barth (who writes that at the time he was "much under the spell" of Borges), Cosmicomics takes on the farthest reaches of humanity's knowledge of the universe and spins a series of twelve stories that each riff off of a different aspect of how our cosmos is composed. While all the stories shape themselves around scientific concepts that in 1965 were held to be more-or-less factual, they're also fantastically inhabited by living beings and consciousnesses that try to understand themselves and their environment-with a sentient and ever-changing being named Qfwfq narrating most of the stories-and it's the relationship between scientific understanding and living experience that gives these stories poignancy and purpose.
Summary
Cosmicomics is a book that asks a lot of its reader. You will never be truly sure what Qfwfq actually is, or quite whether physics could be made to work the way Calvino envisions, and there is frustration to be had aplenty for the reader who tries to make sense of it all. Instead, this is best experienced in the same way as many theists approach religion – enjoy the sensation, but don’t ask too many questions
Here are a few quotes from the fabulist-novelist-journalist.
"Didn't I realize it? Or had that been my intention from the very beginning? Before I could think properly, a cry was already bursting from my throat. 'I'll be the one to stay with you for a month!' Or rather, 'On you!' I shouted in my excitement: 'On you for a month!' and at that moment our embrace was broken by our fall to the Moon's surface, where we rolled away from each other among those cold scales."
- Italo Calvino, Cosmicomics, "The Distance of the Moon"
"There was no use trying to understand the phenomena that took place in those days; and there was no use trying to explain it to Granny B'bb."
- Italo Calvino, "At Daybreak," 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..."
- Italo Calvino, Cosmicomics
"And in that moment we all thought of the space that her round arms would occupy moving backward and forward with the rolling pin over the dough, her bosom leaning over the great mound of flour and eggs, ... and we thought of the space the flour would occupy, and the wheat for the flour, and the fields to raise the wheat, and the mountains from which the water would flow to irrigate the fields; ... of the space it would take for the Sun to arrive with its rays, to ripen the wheat; of the space for the Sun to condense from the clouds of stellar gases and burn; of the quantities of stars and galaxies and galactic masses in flight through space which would be needed to hold suspended every galaxy, every nebula, every sun, every planet, and at the same time we thought of it, this space was inevitably being formed..."
- Italo Calvino, Cosmicomics
"a true outburst of general love, initiating at the same moment the concept of space and, properly speaking, space itself, and time, and universal gravitation, and the gravitating universe, making possible billions and billions of suns, and of planets, and fields of wheat, and Mrs. Ph(i)Nk0s, scattered through the continents of the planets, kneading with floury, oil-shiny, generous arms, and she lost at that very moment, and we, mourning her loss."
- Italo Calvino, "All at One Point," Cosmicomics
"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...""
- Italo Calvino, "How Much Shall We Bet?," Cosmicomics
