Cosmicomics
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Cosmicomics is a series of short stories by Italo Calvino. Each story takes a scientific fact, and builds a wonderfully imaginative story around it. Every story is narrated by an always extant being called Qfwfq, who talks like a cranky old grandfather reminscing about the better days.
The most well known is probably the first one, "The distance of the moon", which takes the fact that the moon used to be much closer to the earth, and builds it into a romantic story about two men and one woman in a tribe of people who used to jump up onto the moon when it passed overhead.
Some other stories:
- "The aquatic uncle" - A tale on the fact that at one stage in evolution animals left the sea and came to live on land. The story is about a family living on land that is a bit ashamed of their old uncle who still lives in the sea, refusing to come ashore like "civilized" people. Especially at Christmas, when it's really embarrassing.
- One story is about Qfwfq looking at other galaxies, and spotting one with a sign pointed right at him saying "I saw you." Given that there's a gulf of 100,000,000 light years, he checks his diary to find out what he had been doing that day, and finds out that it was something he wished to hide. Then he starts to worry.
- "All at one point" - The fact that all matter and creation used to exist in a single point. "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?"
- "A sign in space" - The idea that the galaxy slowly revolves becomes a story about a being who is desperate to leave behind some unique sign of his existence.
- "The Spiral" - A beautiful story about life as a mollusk, and the nature of love.
- "The Dinosaurs" - How some dinosaurs lived after most of them had become extinct, and how it felt to be that last existing dinosaur in an age where all the current mammals feared your kind as demons.
- A galactic game of marbles back before the universe had formed much more than particles.
- "How Much Shall We Bet" (http://www.emory.edu/EDUCATION/mfp/calbet.html) - A story about betting on the long term evolution of mankind.
All of the stories feature non-human characters with very human qualities.