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uncleanjoe 's review for:
The Complete Cosmicomics
by Italo Calvino
The Complete Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino, is a completed collection of his scientific based short stories, most of which focus on the actions of the ineffable Qfwfq. Nearly all of these short stories begin with a quote from a scientist or a piece of folk scientific knowledge, which the story the extrapolates upon through our protagonist, Qfwfq. For me though it was the second collection of stories, published under the title Time and the Hunter, that really stood out for their abstract experimental stories. These stories were the most challenging ones to get through, as our narrator takes the form of objects such as a red blood cell driving through veins, a unicellular organism on the brink of cellular division, and the X in a mathematical equation. I cant say I entirely "got" these stories (sometime I felt like I would need a degree in biology or molecular chemistry to fully understand), but I'm in awe of the author's creativity and prowess as a writer to even create something so experimental.
Finally, other stories I think worth noting are "A Sign in Space," which is about the theory of semiotics and both "The Spiral" and "Shells and Time," which are about how the mollusc's secretion of its shell in a way creates our notion of history. I understood this to mean that the mollusc is the first "thing" to create a historical object outside of itself, to point out that historical science is just the chronological collection of such objects. These objects are just "signs" of their respective eras, but they're also labors of creation by their creators, and thus an essence is lost through time.
Finally, other stories I think worth noting are "A Sign in Space," which is about the theory of semiotics and both "The Spiral" and "Shells and Time," which are about how the mollusc's secretion of its shell in a way creates our notion of history. I understood this to mean that the mollusc is the first "thing" to create a historical object outside of itself, to point out that historical science is just the chronological collection of such objects. These objects are just "signs" of their respective eras, but they're also labors of creation by their creators, and thus an essence is lost through time.
"Your history is the opposite of ours, the opposite of the history of what by moving has not arrived, of what has been lost in order to survive: the hand that modelled the vase, the bookcases that burned at Alexandria, the way the scribe spoke, the flesh of the mollusc that secreted the shell..."