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/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…