The Complete Cosmicomics

“The most joyful reading experience of your life." —Salman Rushdie

The beloved and enchanting classic story collection: Italo Calvino's profound and phenomenally funny and account of the universe as a cosmic joke

Naturally, we were all there, old Qfwfq said, where else could we have been? Nobody knew then that there could be space. Or time either: what use did we have for time, packed in there like sardines?

Travelers jump between the Earth and the moon. The last living dinosaur struggles to exist amid the rise of new mammals. A game of marbles is played using Hydrogen atoms. Italo Calvino’s beloved cosmicomics cross planets and traverse galaxies, speed up time or slow it down to the particles of an instant. Through the eyes of an ageless guide named Qfwfq, Calvino uses a set of scientific theory and facts to tell the story of the origins of the universe. Poignant, fantastical, and wise, these thirty-four dazzling stories—collected here in one definitive anthology—relate complex scientific and mathematical concepts to our everyday world. They are an indelible and unfailingly delightful literary achievement.

“Nimble and often hilarious . . . Trying to describe such a diverse and entertaining mix, I have to admit, just as Calvino does so often, that my words fail here, too. There’s no way I — or anyone, really — can muster enough of them to quite capture the magic of these stories . . . Read this book, please.” — NPR

"Italo Calvino was, word for word, the most charming writer to put pen to paper in the twentieth century." - The New Yorker

"In story after story, Calvino displays the same singular talent for wresting the profound from the absurd...One of the joys of the collection is the chance to watch his evolution as a writer — from the purebred fantasy of his early years to the brain-wrinkling experiments of his later, more famous novels...A diverse and entertaining mix...Read this book, please." - NPR.org

"Calvino’s stories offer us beauty and hilarity while imparting concepts from the hard sciences...This exuberant and humorous collection will appeal to a cross section of readers, including lovers of speculative fiction, fantasy, and literary fiction." - Library Journal

“The most joyful reading experience of your life."

“Entirely unlike anything that anyone else has written." - Gore Vidal

"Calvino is a wizard." - New York Review of Books