(2021-04-27) Sterling The Big Idea

Bruce Sterling: The Big Idea. ...my latest short story collection, “Robot Artists and Black Swans,” which is American science fiction re-imagined as Italian fantascienza.

Literary thought-experiments are Big Ideas.

Suppose that an Italian science fiction writer existed.
Suppose that he lived in my Turinese apartment in Italy, he ate my lunch and wore my clothes.

Obviously he’s a local Turinese writer engaged with his city’s extensive heritage and its high-tech design scene.

Also — and this is important — he’s indifferent to the American science-fiction cultural tradition, the “Old Baloney Factory” as Damon Knight used to call it.

Bruno Argento is not a grizzled American genre careerist like me, but since he actually is me, he brings the American SF literary toolkit to his Italian cultural circumstances. So he might well read and quote Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco, but he writes rather standard popular fiction, gleeful, accessible genre page-turners that might aspire to some Nebula nominations.

Italians-as-Martians. Such is the result of a sincere attempt to take the kindly advice of Brian Aldiss to heart

Brian Aldiss was one of the founders of “World SF” group. “World SF” were idealists, and their ideals fell short, as ideals do. However, the core Big Ideal there is that Science Fiction can transcend conventional literary boundaries of language, culture, and commerce.

These stories are meant to seem Italian, yet they’re starkly personal. They’re all about the adventure-hero sci-fi protagonist (the author) immersed in a strange world he never made