Daniele Del Giudice has been recognized as a novelist of promise since his first novel, Lo stadio di Wimbledon (Wimbledon Stadium, 1983), was awarded the Viareggio Prize for literature in 1983. Subsequent works, which show a relationship to developments in late-twentieth-century literature both nationally and internationally, have realized this potential. His fiction is notable for its contribution to a trend within Italian literature that since the 1960s has explored what previously had been considered scientific or technological language and subjects.

The use of scientific culture to further the goals of creative fiction has many precedents and can be traced back at least as far as the works of nineteenth-century writers of science fiction such as Jules Verne. However, Del Giudice's best works differ from science fiction because they do not share its hallmarks: a taste for adventure, the fantastic, settings in the past or the future, and strong plots. Instead...