SOURCE: “Science and Imagination in Calvino's Cosmicomics,” in Mosaic, Vol. 15, No. 4, December, 1982, pp. 47–58.

In the following essay, Hume investigates the role of science and perception in the stories that comprise Cosmicomics and t zero.

The stories that make up Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics and T Zero are generally regarded as dazzling and bizarre little fantasies which grow out of scientific propositions.¹ Critics and reviewers have tried to relate them to science fiction, but Calvino's stories lack that form's speculative interest in how humans would respond to technologically defined situations.² Most readers so delight in the narrator's virtuoso dance through galaxies and life forms that few have asked any questions about what—if anything—Calvino may have intended with these jeux d'esprit.

Calvino is one of the few sophisticated writers who are interested in science and its effects on our minds, rather than just its influence on our material expectations...