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alastaircraig 's review for:
Cosmicomics
by Italo Calvino
When the fishermen began climbing a ladder to the moon, I knew Italo Calvino and I would be friends.
This short story - the first of twelve - represents Cosmicomics at its best. Calvino takes a simple scientific theory (that the moon once orbited much closer to the Earth), exaggerates time and scale enough to make it perceptible, and uses it as the backdrop for a bittersweet love story. He turns an incomprehensible concept, shows it through tiny human eyes, and makes it comprehensible.
The narrator, Qwfwq, takes many forms throughout the collection, varying wildly in size and ability. One story he is an interstellar deity creating and surfing galaxies; the next, he is a prehistoric mollusc. Generally, I found those that worked from the bottom up much more interesting. They make the universe feel even larger. Those that presented it as smaller, a plaything of petty intersteller beings, often missed the mark for me. But even those (only comparative) misfires had their share of Clever and Cute.
I will remember this book for the images it left behind:
A fisherman looking up from the moon to Earth's vast ocean as an angled ceiling, seeing his friends floating above in boats. stretching their ladders down/up toward him.
An awkward, millennia-spanning conversation between galaxies involving signs and telscopes.
A boy chasing a girl through a dull grey world as it develops an atmosphere, giving it the gift of colour.
These are images that warp reality just enough to tell a great story. These are images that will stick with me.
This short story - the first of twelve - represents Cosmicomics at its best. Calvino takes a simple scientific theory (that the moon once orbited much closer to the Earth), exaggerates time and scale enough to make it perceptible, and uses it as the backdrop for a bittersweet love story. He turns an incomprehensible concept, shows it through tiny human eyes, and makes it comprehensible.
The narrator, Qwfwq, takes many forms throughout the collection, varying wildly in size and ability. One story he is an interstellar deity creating and surfing galaxies; the next, he is a prehistoric mollusc. Generally, I found those that worked from the bottom up much more interesting. They make the universe feel even larger. Those that presented it as smaller, a plaything of petty intersteller beings, often missed the mark for me. But even those (only comparative) misfires had their share of Clever and Cute.
I will remember this book for the images it left behind:
A fisherman looking up from the moon to Earth's vast ocean as an angled ceiling, seeing his friends floating above in boats. stretching their ladders down/up toward him.
An awkward, millennia-spanning conversation between galaxies involving signs and telscopes.
A boy chasing a girl through a dull grey world as it develops an atmosphere, giving it the gift of colour.
These are images that warp reality just enough to tell a great story. These are images that will stick with me.