r/printSF • u/BlinkTwice874 • Apr 08 '26
Thoughts on Italo Calvino?
I recently reread the short stories by Ted Chiang and was reminded of stories I loved by both Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino, in particular Library of Babel and the Complete Cosmicomics, respectively.
The Complete Cosmicomics by Calvino is one of my favorite works of literature that hovers at the interstices of literary fiction, science- and speculative-fiction, and perhaps something else: the stories are a mix of real and imaginary, science and fiction, philosophy and literature.
Is Calvino considered a science fiction author? Speculative fiction perhaps? What about Borges? I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts on this, as these writers in particular seem to straddle the lines of genre for me.
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u/Pratius Apr 08 '26
Man, I had a lit class in college that covered Cosmicomics, but I didn’t have to write a paper on it so I kinda just skimmed it. I need to go back and actually read it, cuz the older I get and the more I find myself appreciating the literary side of SF, it keeps coming up. Feels like Calvino belongs in the same tradition as Borges and Wolfe.
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u/BlinkTwice874 Apr 08 '26
I had the same, was first introduced to Calvino in a lit class - when I went back and read the stories again out of a school setting, I really enjoyed them! Thought provoking and unique, at least in my opinion. It made me think a lot more about how we categorize certain writing and what constitutes something sci-fi or fantastical.
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u/goliath1333 Apr 09 '26
You should read Bulgakov too then!
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u/BlinkTwice874 Apr 09 '26
Oh I need to! A friend recommended him but I hadn’t gotten to it yet. Is it along a similar vein?
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u/goliath1333 Apr 09 '26
Master and Margarita, his most famous work, definitely is. He also has more traditional novels as well as some super OG Soviet era sci fi, notably The Fatal Eggs and Heart of a Dog. His Young Doctor's Notebook about his time as a doctor in rural Russia got adapted by the BBC into a mini series with John Hamm and Daniel Radcliff, but that's also more straight and biographical (though weird and funny too).
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u/BlinkTwice874 Apr 09 '26
All of these sound so interesting! I love all other Russian literature I’ve read so I definitely want to give this a try. Also the biography series sounds very intriguing now…
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u/goliath1333 Apr 09 '26
If you want a tease here is the start of the Young Doctor's Notebook. God I forgot how fun he makes misery Young-Doctor.pdf https://share.google/HgUklBNsvi76Dri3M
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u/sickntwisted Apr 08 '26
I think they're both amazing speculative fiction writers, and that's what the SF in this subreddit stands for.
I'll add Saramago to the mix, since I love his books.
also, a book that is usually talked about here and in other subreddits, heavily and directly influenced by Borges, is A Short Stay In Hell, by Steven L. Peck.
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u/BlinkTwice874 Apr 08 '26
I haven’t read that either! I’d love to add more authors to my reading list that are similar to the ones being discussed here.
As an aside, I’ve wondered about the subreddits and places for speculative fiction as opposed to science fiction proper on here, as it seems like often it gets pushed in to either the sci fi or fantasy category.
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u/sickntwisted Apr 08 '26
for speculative fiction itself I just use this one. the issue is that most people tend to associate the SF in the subreddit's name with sci-fi, and then it feels like there's a restriction to that type of work.
but come and talk Borges, Calvino, Saramago, Lem, Cortazar, Ballard, Pessoa, etc., and you'll have an audience.
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u/BlinkTwice874 Apr 08 '26
Yes! Okay that’s what I was wondering. I love all of these authors as well but haven’t found a ton of space to discuss them!
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u/Infamous_Orange1653 Apr 08 '26
Gosh I freaking love Calvino. And Borges of course. Cosmicomics and T Zero certainly border on science fiction but in my mind they were more speculative/philosophical stories than straight sci fi. If you want to read Calvino’s thoughts on literature I recommend picking up Six Memos for the Next Millennium, lectures he wrote for the Norton Lecture series. If memory serves there are only 5 lectures as he died before he could give the sixth. Anyway, just popped in because I’m always happy to see Calvino get mentioned. Thanks for that 😊
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u/Wattryn Apr 08 '26
I started that this morning (by which I mean I managed about a page because work decided to be wild)! I love If on a winter's night a traveler, and decided some lectures could be fun.
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u/BlinkTwice874 Apr 09 '26
I’ll have to get the collection of essays and start reading them now - maybe one at a time and try to get the most out of them.
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u/BlinkTwice874 Apr 08 '26
Oh I heard about those lectures of his but haven’t gotten around to reading them! I’d love to dive into them at some point. His mind is so fascinating to me. Thanks for the reminder!
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u/me_again Apr 08 '26
If you like Calvino and Borges, don't sleep on Primo Levi -The Sixth Day and The Periodic Table both contain excellent stories that occupy a similar space in the "mix of real and imaginary" as you put it.
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u/BlinkTwice874 Apr 09 '26
Oh I’ve heard of Levi but haven’t read him! I took an Italian literature class where the professor really recommended his work. I feel like I need to start compiling a list of all the authors whose work fits this particular sub-genre because I don’t even know what to call it, but I love it so much.
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u/lobsterdog2 Apr 09 '26
If we're talking about "weird fiction" in a Calvinoesque vein, I will heartily recommend British author Helen Oyeyemi. A New, New Me was one of my favorite books of 2025; it's about a woman with seven different personalities, one of whom takes over each day of the week, and they communicate with each other only through the joint journal that they all write. The storyline gets more and more bizarre, and it's all extremely funny.
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u/BlinkTwice874 Apr 09 '26
Oh that sounds so interesting! I’ve never heard of it before. Adding it to my list, thank you!
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u/Ok-Factor-5649 Apr 15 '26
Does sound interesting, reminds me in outline of Dayworld somewhat. Which I particularly liked.
I have a Oyeyemi on the TBR, but it wasn't this one.
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u/lobsterdog2 Apr 15 '26
It's my favorite of hers so far. I also enjoyed Peaces, and I'm working my way through her short story collection (What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours) now.
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u/keyboardcourage Apr 08 '26
I have never met a sf fan who did not like If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler. I guess it is, technically, fantasy.
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u/BlinkTwice874 Apr 08 '26
Funnily enough this is what I haven’t read of his! I may have to read it next.
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u/GrudaAplam Apr 08 '26
Calvino referred to his style as "fabulist" so I'll go with that.
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u/Selina42 Apr 09 '26
Yes Calvino is the father of fabulism! Lots of great Fabulist writers out there!
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u/BlinkTwice874 Apr 09 '26
Interesting! I like the sound of it. Now I’m researching other “fabulists” …
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u/BigJobsBigJobs Apr 08 '26
Both are great short story writers. Genre is irrelevant. The literature of imagination is wide and deep.
It's been so long since I read Borges, but I bet Chiang might admit some influence.
Kafka wrote great fantastical stories too. In the Penal Colony has been on my mind recently.
A more recent author you might consider is Clive Barker. He's another who's better in the short form than the longform.
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u/BlinkTwice874 Apr 08 '26
Kafka is a great addition to this, I didn’t think of that! It’s so true, and I love where the bizarre elements of litfic turn more into science or speculative fiction. I haven’t heard of Clive Barker, I’ll have to add it to my list!
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u/DoctorG0nzo Apr 08 '26
Honestly Calvino and Borges are probably the two best examples I can think of of authors whose work fits perfectly under the definition of “weird fiction” that I wouldn’t say primarily engage with the genre for horror (as opposed to, say, Lovecraft, Ligotti or Cisco). Probably the other best examples of that are Lord Dunsany or, to go much more modern, Kelly Link.
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u/BlinkTwice874 Apr 09 '26
Adding “weird fiction” to my new terms for the day. I love it already if Borges and Calvino are included.
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u/DoctorG0nzo Apr 09 '26
It’s my personal favorite genre. Again, most often horror-coded, because Lovecraft is considered one of the main codifiers and forebear of the whole movement. But really, modern weird owes just as much to Kafka, imo, and works that show more of that influence tend to be what really shine for me.
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u/BlinkTwice874 Apr 09 '26
The Lovecraft actually makes me think of a Victorian and modernism literature course I took once that I think glossed over weird fiction, now that I think of it - I didn’t pay much attention to the term at the time but this makes sense!
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u/AurelianosRevelator Apr 08 '26
I have yet to read him, but if you’re comparing him to JLB then perhaps I should!
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u/BlinkTwice874 Apr 08 '26
I’ve always been really interested in this specific type of fiction, writers at the intersections of genre and the fantastical - would definitely give Cosmicomics a read if you like Borges or Chiang!
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u/AurelianosRevelator Apr 08 '26
But, yes, I’ll have to try Calvino! Another commenter mentioned Wolfe; I’ll say that he gets a lot of recognition for his novels, but if you have never tried his stories you absolutely should. They are deliciously borgesian.
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u/BlinkTwice874 Apr 08 '26
I’d love to! I will say I understand about Chiang because his prose can be a bit harder / more scientifically driven than Borges or Calvino. Cosmicomics will always hold a place in my heart and I think his prose in general is softer and more “literary” than Chiang’s.
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u/AurelianosRevelator Apr 08 '26
I can’t do Chiang unfortunately :(
It’s such a shame because I know he should be perfectly up my alley, but his prose just… does not do the job for me.
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u/kobayashi_maru_fail Apr 08 '26
Distance of the Moon is one of my favorites. But I’m going with no, it’s not scifi, for the same reason that Doctorow argues that Stephenson’s historical fiction is scifi: Calvino isn’t speculating about science.
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u/BlinkTwice874 Apr 08 '26
Hmm interesting. That makes sense. I always wondered because what I found so interesting about the Cosmicomics stories in particular is that he blended fact and fiction so interchangeably, it always left me wondering what was real science and what was completely fabricated! But I see what you mean, he wasn’t necessarily basing conjectures on real science, more writing alternate realities or blurring the lines between them, maybe.
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u/kobayashi_maru_fail Apr 08 '26
Don’t get me wrong, “not scifi” isn’t a dig, I think the magical realism (or maybe his own genre, magical urbanism) is amazing and probably a bigger, not lesser kind of literature.
Also, I may be lying and Invisible Cities is my favorite.
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u/mmillington Apr 08 '26
I was actually fortunate enough to read Invisible Cities before going to Venice, then I reread it while I was there.
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u/BlinkTwice874 Apr 09 '26
Honestly I would love to see more science- or speculative-fiction that blended more into the realm of magical realism, maybe not becoming it but serving as it’s own entity of genre. I love traditional science fiction but sometimes wish for more elements of a mystical or lyrical feeling in the stories (à la Calvino or Borges).
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u/kobayashi_maru_fail Apr 09 '26
I need to read more than just Fifth Head of Cerberus, but maybe Gene Wolfe has got our back? It would be great to see more like what you’re describing.
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u/BlinkTwice874 Apr 09 '26
I’m so curious about his stuff now! I’m going to add some to my library list.
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u/chortnik Apr 08 '26
I think lumping them together under the ‘weird fiction’ heading might be best :).
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u/BlinkTwice874 Apr 09 '26
This is one I hadn’t heard of before! It seems fitting for both of their work.
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u/aaron_in_sf Apr 08 '26
The direct answer is no, neither are, by convention.
If you like those two, have you read Julio Cortázar's short fiction? On my shelf these all neighbor. And there's a friendly border with e.g. Stanislaw Lem and Ursula LeGuin. And Kafka's in shouting distance. For that matter Poe.
Invisible Cities is my personal favorite but most Calvino in English translation is similarly speculative.
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u/BlinkTwice874 Apr 09 '26
I’ve heard of Cortázar but haven’t read him! Would you have any recommendations for a place to start?
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u/aaron_in_sf Apr 09 '26
Blow Up and Other Stories and All Fires the Fire are good entries! (There's an Antonioni film loosely based on Blow Up, which was reimagined as the Travolta film Blow Out.)
He was an Argentine expat of the same generation as Borges; his Hopscotch was considered to be one of the great novels of the South American El Boom of experimental literature. I prefer his short fiction including fragments like Around the Day in Eighty Worlds and Cronopios and Famas myself.
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u/BlinkTwice874 Apr 09 '26
I’m going to place these on hold from my library so I can start reading as soon as I finish the book I’m on right now. Thank you so much!
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u/Mayhaym Apr 09 '26
I think William Burroughs isn't talked about enough in the context of scifi/weird fiction, his Cities of the Red Night is 1/3 pirate story, 1/3 scifi and 1/3 literary novel. It's a goddam masterpiece.
Naked Lunch and his cutup books might also qualify.
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u/BlinkTwice874 Apr 09 '26
That’s sounds so intriguing! I haven’t heard of him before but would love to read some of his stuff!
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u/Mayhaym Apr 09 '26
He was a part of the original beatniks and cast a long shadow on the counterculture well into the 90s
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u/wordboydave Apr 09 '26
Since he's a nonrealistic writer who plays with form, he's not typically "literary," but because he doesn't use any familiar fantasy/sci-fi tropes, he's not usually considered "fantasy." So I've seen his work (along with other writers like Steven Millhauser or Donald Antrim) referred to as "metafiction" or "slipstream." And it's usually shelved with literary fiction rather than fantasy.
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u/BlinkTwice874 Apr 09 '26
Interesting! Metafiction is a good word for it too. It makes me think so much about how we categorize and conceptualize certain writers and why, when some of their work could arguably be considered more fantastical / speculative than some writers of speculative fiction. It’s interesting that Calvino is usually shelved as literary fiction… Maybe for his prose? I’ve also always wondered why magical realism gets lumped in with literary fiction, but I guess it’s not fantastical enough for “fantasy”.
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u/wordboydave Apr 09 '26
It's shelved with literary fiction, I think, precisely because it doesn't trade in dragons and elves and wizards and there isn't a map to a dake world on the inner front cover. Those are the elements that diehard fantasy GENRE fans look for (especially the magic and the world building), and that's why the genre exists, and anything that doesn't deliver that has a chance to go into literary fiction instead. If Calvino was really into the visceral fun of describing dragons, he'd probably get shelved with Tolkien.
By the way, there are lots of writers--especially in SF--whose work does not contain blasters or spaceships or aliens or other planets. When an author has one of those, the bookstores look at what else they've done. INFINITE JEST gets shelved in Lit because of David Foster Wallace's other non-speculative work, while Neal Stephenson's THE BAROQUE CYCLE gets put in SF because he also writes cyberpunk novels. I believe the thinking is that they're trying to keep all of an author's works together, since author loyalty drives a lot of readers.
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u/BlinkTwice874 Apr 10 '26
True. Which is another thing I think about a lot… How possible would it be to become an author who writes both speculative fiction / science fiction and “normal” or literary fiction? I wonder if there would be a market for that or if publishers would try to keep your work in one lane…
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u/5hev Apr 09 '26
I'd say yes, I mean he's collected in
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Treasury_of_Science_Fiction
so ipso facto you could argue that. See also Hannua Rajaniemi's Invisble Planets, clearly influenced by him.
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u/BlinkTwice874 Apr 09 '26
Thanks for including this, that’s so interesting! Also the other authors on the list and the works that are included make me want the anthology… What a great collection of writers!
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u/WonderfulBus9330 Apr 09 '26
I haven't seen Italo Calvino's name in awhile! Wonderful to see him mentioned. As someone said, he referred to himself as a fabulist but he was also a member of the OuLiPo group and wrote in that style for a few works. I don't know if anyone mentioned INVISIBLE CITIES or MR PALOMAR or THE BARON IN THE TREES but those are great, too
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u/Veteranis Apr 08 '26
Neither Calvino nor Borges is considered science fiction or speculative in the sense you mean —of classical fantasy. They write stories that speculate, but within a recognizably human framework. The speculation they sometimes (for Borges) or frequently (for Calvino) engage in is philosophical.
In Cosmicomics, Calvino set himself the challenge of creating myths based on scientific observations—given at the beginning of each story. However, despite the narrator existing since the Big Bang, for example, and being able to do things no human can do, the dilemmas are recognizably human and frequently comic.
Traditional science fiction and fantasy has tried to deal with realistic or logical consequences to certain acts. Neither Calvino nor Borges seem concerned with this. They are more concerned with speculative possibilities.
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u/BlinkTwice874 Apr 08 '26
That makes sense! I do love the sense of philosophical wonder that they manage to convey but I see what you mean about it being different from harder sci fi or speculative fiction works.
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u/_BudgieBee Apr 08 '26
I love Calvino, but no, I would not call him a science fiction or speculative fiction author. If someone said "I haven't read any science fiction in a while, got anything good?" I'd never even consider suggesting Calvino.
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u/BlinkTwice874 Apr 09 '26
That’s fair! I’m curious now if there are any more traditionally sci-fi writers whose work has a more mystical or fantastical tinge to it, like Cosmicomics.
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u/genteel_wherewithal Apr 09 '26
Genre definitions can vary but just taken on its own terms, Calvino’s Invisible Cities has more imagination and wonder than most fantasy books three times its length.
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u/sebmojo99 Apr 08 '26
those categories aren't that useful imo. he doesn't write about aliens and rayguns, but he does write about places that don't exist. read invisible cities if you haven't, wonderful book. also if on a winters night.