Lorena Herrera Encuera

VII Library of Science Fiction - Isaac Asimov (1920-1992)

wonder Isaac Asimov was born when really, the discrepancies between the different calendars in use in Russia at the time of his birth and the lack of official records as a result of turbulent times such as these led to believe that he was born in early October of 1919 and the date then official Jan. 2, 1920. Isaac had to be born with the name of И саак Юдович Озимов, which transliterated comes out something like Isaak Iudovich (or judice) Ozimov. However, it is important quell'Isaac Asimov was born January 2, 1920, which will become perhaps the most famous science fiction writer, and will receive the nickname Good Doctor The Good Doctor. So prolific prodigioso, Asimov fu un divulgatore scientifico infaticabile oltre che un narratore in grado di spaziare ben oltre quella science-fiction che era la sua passione primeva e che gli diede la fama iniziale che perdura solida a tutt'oggi. Alla base del suo successo vi è senza dubbio la chiarezza della sua scrittura. A volte è accusato di essere uno scrittore troppo semplice, perfino rozzo, e incapace di dar vita a personaggi realistici. Il mio consiglio è di leggere le sue opere con più attenzione, e non scambiare per sciatteria la sua naturale immediatezza di comunicazione e facilità di scrittura, le "armi" grazie alle quali favoriva la comprensione, una lettura fluida e creava personaggi che univano una perfetta funzionalità narrative and human characteristics of measured and sober realism.


Even without considering, that is what I do, works written with effect from 1982, when starting from the novel The Edge of Foundation he succumbed to the lure and shooting and unified its two series more (the Foundation and Robot), the sequence of novels also of considerable size, his work is still impressive narrative fiction. Asimov gave probably his best short story in copious production, where features dozens of great stories and novels, but also on the length of the novel some of his results were excellent. For convenience, divide its books in different sections: the series, the stories, other novels, anthologies made as a curator, his other activities almost compulsive :-). Also recalling that in the last years of Isaac fittings - a posteriori - Future History in an all-encompassing practically everything he wrote, adding several new cycles originating in those novels I mentioned, not all negligible, but certainly for all fans of the author that the sf tout court.

Asimov A little more than an adolescent

The Series

That the Robot and Foundation.


During the years between '40 Asimov wrote eight novels and short stories that were to compose a coherent story future of our galaxy, completely colonized by humans in the distant future. Influenced by the parable of the rise and decline of the Roman Empire, Asimov chose to narrate the decline of the Galactic Empire and attempts to escape a long Medieval on a galactic scale. The Future History asimoviana creations is one of the most fascinating and rich sense of wonder science fiction classic, and you can well say that his optimism has finally frustrated these days even more topical than the time when those stories were written. In the early 50's eight stories and novellas were collected in three books that make up what is still known as the Trilogy (the original) of the Foundation: First Foundation; Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation . and Italian will become ...

The loop structure of the robot is much more jagged. Also during the 40s Asimov wrote a series of stories focusing precisely on robots, built by the fictional U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation. Human actors were some of Powell and Donovan, two men of action in the pay of the company, and other stories, the best, "robopsicologa" Susan Calvin, perhaps a more realistic portrait of a scientist in the history of sf. These stories were gathered in the 50s in the anthology I, Robot ( I, Robot in Italy), with an appendix on in the '60s by The Rest of Robots (The second book of Robot ). Later, other miscellaneous stories and more robots will feed together with the previous in the next 1982 anthology of The Complete Robot ( All of my Robot ). Asimov, however, continue to write stories on the matter until the end.

least four memorable stories contained in the anthology: Liar!; The little robot lost ; Proof ; The avoidable conflict.

here are memorable, at least three stories: higher beings; Satisfaction Guaranteed and Lenny .

Besides those already mentioned, here I want to point out several other stories: Sally, a very strange and sad tale featuring a car-robots that do not easily forget; Victoria involuntary ; Image mirror, where Asimov takes the characters of Elijah Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw say in addition; feminine intuition; Luciscultura and the famous, beautiful novella The Bicentennial Man , then horribly murdered in painful film starring Robin Williams.






In the '50s Asimov wrote two of his best novels: The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun ( Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun in Italian). In them we are witnessing the "clash of civilizations" between the two cultures in which humanity was divided: the land, confined to a sovrappopolatissima Earth, characterized by short-lived (our current ...) and real phobia for robots, and relegated to monstrous megalopolis of metal covered by domes and underground and Space, descendants of those who once left the Earth on other planets to form societies characterized by the fundamental presenza dei robot: essi vivono a lungo, fino a quattro secoli, vivono su pianeti scarsamente popolati e le loro (ai nostri occhi bizzarre) culture sono tutte assai più ricche di quella terrestre. Senza scendere nei dettagli dei due celebri romanzi, tra i migliori connubii di fantascienza e giallo, protagonisti di entrambi sono l'investigatore terrestre Elijah Baley, bellissima figura di deraciné asimoviano (nel quale, come nell'Andrew Harlan de La fine dell'Eternità non è difficile intravedere aspetti dell'autore), e il robot umanoide R.Daneel Olivaw (che nella ripresa produttiva degli anni '80 diverrà il cardine centrale attorno al quale Asimov unificherà i suoi cicli narrativi). Senza dubbio tra i migliori personaggi ideati dal Nostro. Nel secondo romanzo Asimov introdurrà un terzo e riuscito personaggio: Gladia Delmarre.

I Racconti

Oltre a quelli raccolti nelle già citate antologie robotiche, Asimov nel corso della sua carriera ha scritto decine, centinaia di racconti, moltissimi dei quali sono nella storia della fantascienza. La Mondadori ha pubblicato tre corposi volumi che raccolgono quasi l'intera produzione novellistica asimoviana (Tutti i racconti voll. 1-3 - The Complete Stories).

La copertina del terzo volume dei racconti completi.

E però le moltissime antologie personali di Asimov pubblicate in precedenza mantengono un loro fascino e un loro perché. Tra le molte mi piace segnalare e consigliare quelle che di seguito elenco.

Riunisce molti (dei moltissimi) racconti scritti nei primi anni di carriera. Inevitabilmente in parecchi casi una certa rozzezza è evidente, ma soprattutto verso la fine si incontrano già esempi pregevoli dell'inventiva asimoviana: Gatto temporale , Copyright and impasse. And most of all the phantasmagoric divertissement that properties of endocroniche tiotimolina risublimata .

The three volumes of the Uranian ' Anthology Staff ( Nightfall and Other Stories) and the two of text and notes ( Buy Jupiter ) will be united in box Oscar Mondadori divided into the two original anthologies. Countless memorable stories. I will just mention some: Night (also known as the night falls ), perhaps the most famous story, and without doubt the best of Asimov; green patches, and if ...? , fulminant story is a true epitome of the sf ; pipe "C" Such a beautiful day, scab, My Son the physical eyes not only to see; Billiards Darwin Day of the hunters; compras Planet, The Founders; The Tiotimolina among the stars.

The casket Double Best of Asimov ( The Best of Isaac Asimov ) brings together the stories that the Good Doctor himself considered his best. Obviously at the time of the original anthology published in 1973. In addition to stories in the anthologies already mentioned above, there are jewels like Who knows how to amuse; The last question; The Cronoscopio; Anniversary .

Earth is room enough is a beautiful anthology anthology that collects some great stories asimoviani. In addition to some already reported in previous anthologies, it is worth remembering Law to vote, the last trump; Dreaming is a private matter.

Asimov's misteries expected to meet a series of detective stories to science fiction than ours, who was a specialist. In addition to the mini-cycle centered on Professor Wendell Urth, a peculiar figure of detective, and some have already seen, is worth reporting at least two other stories: pate de fois gras and A Marsport without Hilda .

In The Winds of Change worth mentioning and Persuasion ideas die hard , in addition to the first appearances of the little demon Azazel, the protagonist in the last years of the life of Isaac Asimov in a series of humorous short stories, at worst very pleasing and at their best delicious, especially the vein of cruelty Isaac and sadism that you poured under the veil of humor.

... And of course the anthology that brings together a good selection of short stories featuring the devil.















Mi permetto infine di consigliare, al di fuori però della science fiction, i cinque volumi dei racconti giallo-umoristici imperniati sul gruppo di amici riuniti nel club dei Vedovi Neri, testimonianza del talento umoristico del Buon Dottore e tra i suoi migliori risultati narrativi.

Gli altri romanzi

Oltre ai due romanzi-capolavoro robotici degli anni '50, e a quelli scritti a partire dal 1982, Asimov ha al suo attivo un certo numero di altri romanzi. Ugualmente negli anni '50 scrisse La fine dell'Eternità ( The End of Eternity ), che insieme a un altro di cui dirò tra poco considero il suo miglior risultato sulla distanza lunga. Nel romanzo è narrata la storia dell'Eternità, il corpo di ingeneri temporali che, sostanzialmente, bloccano la storia umana controllando l'intera linea temporale occupata dall'umanità e impedendo ogni vero e libero sviluppo culturale della nostra specie. La storia e la fine degli Eterni. E' in questo romanzo che agisce Andrew Harlan, l'altro sradicato asimoviano oltre a Elijah Baley, e figura in cui è sicuramente possibile scorgere dei riflessi autobiografici. Sempre agli anni '50 risale il cosiddetto Ciclo dell'Impero. In realtà si tratta di tre romanzi indipendenti, concettualmente unificati set from all three at various times of the formation of that Empire in Asimov Galactic will narrate the fall in the cycle of the Foundation. Of the three, Pebble in the Sky ( Pebble in the Sky) and The Currents of Space ( The currents of space ) are among the best of Isaac, while stars like dust / The Tyrant of the Worlds ( The Stars like Dust / Tyrann ), although decent, has a story leggerina and sometimes not exactly flawless. In 1972, Asimov published The Gods then ( The Gods Themselves ) that I personally sit on the floor of The End of Eternity . The novel, which is rare for fiction asimoviana presents the aliens, but it is mainly a mature reflection on the nature of science and on the figure (the figures) of the scientist.

The editor of anthologies

The bloated writer was also a tireless editor of anthology. Sci-fi first, but in this business Asimov spaced in almost every field of fiction. Alone or more often as a co-curator along with others (particularly his friend Martin H. Greenberg, which is sometimes added further contributions) Isaac has collected and presented to readers in many anthologies, the finest selection of the assets of the novelistic sf Anglo-American. Choice of course according to its criteria and the other editors, but the excellence of their media choices can be easily verified.


The best result achieved in this field is, in my opinion, the series of anthologies The Great Stories of Science Fiction, edited together with Greenberg. It is venticinque volumi che, con criterio annuale, raccolgono i migliori racconti del periodo 1939-1963. Estrapolare un elenco di titoli migliori sarebbe comunque riduttivo; inoltre, perfino più dell'indubbio valore della gran parte dei testi, è la ricostruzione storica complessiva che emerge dai volumi a farne uno strumento indispensabile di conoscenza e apprezzamento della fantascienza classica.

Le copertine del primo e dell'ultimo volume de Le Grandi Storie della Fantascienza

Asimov was the first curator of collections of short stories and novels that received the Hugo Award, the first and still the main field of science fiction. The volume shown here is actually incomplete (Get a veil on the editorial policies Italian) are missing the forest The World by Ursula Le Guin (available for example in the volume of uranium Classics presents the Hugo Award for the biennium 1972-73) .

Dawn of Tomorrow is a full-bodied volumone that brings together a selection of stories of the true origins (the 30s, actually ...) of science fiction magazines. Inevitably i migliori esempi di quei tempi pionieristici sono spesso grezzi; la loro rozzezza è però compensata dalla gestazione evidente di quel patrimonio di idee e concetti che in seguito si disperderà nei mille fertili rivoli della fantascienza che giungono  fino a noi. Tra i racconti più notevoli, a mio parere, vi sono L'uomo che si evolse e Devoluzione di Edmond Hamilton; Tumithak dei corridoi e Tumithak a Shawm di Charles Tanner; Colossus di Donald Wandrei; Bivi nel tempo e Proxima Centauri di Murray Leinster; Il pianeta dei parassiti di Stanley G. Weinbaum; Passato, presente e futuro Nat Schachner.




Along with Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh, another frequent fellow curator, Isaac then edit an anthology series of three volumes (The Great Book of Science Fiction) each dedicated specifically to the best short story of a decade ('30s, '40s and '50s). In the first book I remember, besides Bivi aforementioned time of Leinster, matter of form Horace L. Gold; Who goes there? John W. Campbell jr.; divide and rule L. Sprague de Camp and Wolves from the darkness of Jack Williamson. In the second, in addition to another News of Williamson, his hands crossed (later expanded into the novel The Humanoids ), deserve particular attention Nerves by Lester Del Rey (that will become the novel Nuclear accident ) Of all women born Catherine L. Moore; The Weapon Shop Alfred E. van Vogt (starting point of a series of novels) and Killdozer! of Theodore Sturgeon. In the third volume, finally, I would like ... read all the stories :-)

Two of most beautiful and interesting anthologies which Asimov had a hand as a curator are also the 'Anthology School (later more correctly retitration Where to from here? ) which publishes on its own, and Disasters! for which he worked with Greenberg and Waugh. Definitely worth reading all the stories contained in it, without exception.

decidedly delicious and the anthology edited by Asimov and Greenberg with the usual Joseph D. Olander, whose original title is 100 Great Science Fiction Short Short Stories and was divided into two volumes on uranium 44 micro-fiction and Microfantascienza: 44 new micro (vabbe'...). Some of the stories are really short of brilliant gems, and this is in any case a reading at the same time relaxing and stimulating.

One of the most unexpected that Asimov anthologies edited, along with Greenberg and Waugh, is certainly Hallucination Orbit - Psychology in fiction. Among the most interesting stories in the volume cite Sound Machine by Roald Dahl; A rose by another name Christopher Anvil; Girotondo the same Isaac; Absalom spouse Henry Kuttner and Catherine L. Moore and The man who could not forget by Robert Silverberg.

asimoviana I wish to close this review with one exception, a volume that is not Asimov or edited by him. But dedicated to him. In general, the celebratory anthologies in which incense fellow writer with stories set in turn fictional universe created by celebrated leave time that they find. This anthology, edited by Sheila Finch on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the literary career of the Good Doctor, however, is una sorprendente smentita, e più di un racconto è valido di per sé. Vorrei citare almeno l'intenso L'ultima sfida di Pamela Sargent che apre il libro; La caduta di Trantor , di Harry Turtledove e Il presente eterno di Barry Malzberg, acutissima chiosa del racconto asimoviano E se...? .



Infine, una buona risorsa online su Isaac:
http://www.asimovonline.com/asimov_home_page.html

Kingdom Hearts 2 How Keep The Medallion Safe

Contemporaries - Ripples in the Sea of \u200b\u200bDirac (Ripples in the Dirac Sea 1988) by Geoffrey A. Landis (n.1955)

The "Dirac Sea" (http:// it.wikipedia.org / wiki / Mare_di_Dirac ) is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating developments of theoretical physics of the twentieth century - and it is not the "Neutrino Majorana" ( http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki / Fermione_di_Majorana ) Italian physicist who postulated in his theory to refute the English. The argument is in fact very tasty, and it is not surprising that lends itself well to a sci-fi reworking. Moreover, travel time are also one of the most fascinating themes of narrative fiction. If anything, be surprised that it has been used less than would be expected. Perhaps because it is not easy to master the theory and then use it with ease, and the risk of making the pure sci- bubble becomes excessive.

Geoffrey A. Landis has impeccable credentials for insight into the theory while avoiding the danger of the flowering of such mediocre crap science fiction. E ' a physical professional: working at NASA, where he worked, among other things, planetary exploration (he collaborated on the design of the Pathfinder for the Exploration of the Martian surface), as well as the development of solar cells and photovoltaic systems. It is also appreciated poet. Both his scientific background as the poetic attitude spill clearly in his works of fiction, combining a clear and precise theoretical care to all human and psychological detail.

production about Landis is not overflowing, but even thinner: about seventy stories today. To which adding a single novel.

Ripples in the Dirac Sea was released in 1988 on the pages of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, and the following year he received a deserved Nebula Award for best short story . The story is simple but intense. A great scientific achievement opens the door to a human drama and personal, and triggers for the reader a series of reflections on the value we attach to our time, life and death. What to say so, I realize, it seems to threaten the tedium inhuman player who has the guts to read such a tirade submerged in retorica. E invece no. La scrittura di Landis è tanto leggera quanto capace di arrivare al cuore delle cose con facilità e coinvolgendolo, il lettore. Non c’è nulla che venga spiegato o imposto dall’autore, che si limita a evocare con pochi tratti le figure dei due personaggi che riempiono le pagine del racconto per fissarsi nella nostra memoria. L’uno con i suoi sogni dolorosamente infranti, e poi ricomposti nella consapevolezza dell’illusorietà della trama stessa del tempo e dell’esistenza; l’altro che nell’abbandono al ritmo naturale della vita pare giungere a decostruire il senso stesso del tempo, pura coincidenza dell’esistere. L’uno, scienziato fino all’ultimo, viene da dire; the other instinctive poet.

become friends, each other, over and over again ...

One is the young anonymous scientist who experiments with the machine built to exploit " Ripples in the Dirac Sea "and time travel - absolute cliché, and appeal for the writer not insured difettino courage and talent. Travel to the features of the theory is only possible in the past. The experiment is a success, but when the young man is about to present the results a convention will remain involved in an accident trapped in his hotel room in the middle of a fire, is sentenced to death. And sentenced to escape back in time go on forever without being able to do anything to save himself, because there are paradoxes in cronoviaggio dirac: whatever is done in the past is not possible to change this from where you started. The "Ripples in the Sea of \u200b\u200bDirac", once you come back to this, delete from the tape of the time that the traveler has scratched, only his memory preserves the memory of past quell'illusorio. Of the many illusory past, always different and always the same. Every time the young man must go back to that stanza d’albergo in fiamme, perché costrettovi dagli eventi o perché la linea temporale che sta vivendo si è approcciata al momento di partenza in modo tale da rendere il ritorno inevitabile, egli è costretto a perdere qualche attimo o secondo prima di potersi rituffare nel passato. Ci sarà un giorno che non potrà più scampare alla morte, arso vivo o soffocato dal fumo. Ha lottato contro l’inevitabile e poi è sceso a patti con esso. Con il puntiglio e la caparbietà dello scienziato ormai sa che il tempo non è illimitato, ma la sua quantità, tanta o poca che sia, va vissuta fino in fondo, imparando ad accettare i drammi e le gioie e imparando a farlo con equanimità ( I live on borrowed time. So do we all, Perhaps. But I know When and Where My debt will fall two . And add: Every time I return, I use up a little bit of time. One day I will have no time left .)

The anthology of the best stories that housed the 1988 "Ripples in the Sea of \u200b\u200bDirac"

The other is Dancer. 's a perfect counterpoint to the young scientist, and the perfect key because this man who dreamed of taming the time to learn to accept the indifferent dominion over human affairs. Dancer is what is called a "product of the youth counterculture of the '60s." Nothing in this romantic coloring by Landis, which provides special care in fact never go over the top figure in the sketch . Dancer is, if ever there was one, a man at peace. Not in the sense of a spirit of turbidity or a lot less than a slavish adherence to fashion "alternative" but to an instinctive understanding of the natural rhythm of life, the profound sense of time. Not in relation to human life, one might say, but just the life of the universe. Of pure instinct, Dancer seems to understand the physical nature of time molto meglio dell’amico che ne conosce a menadito la complessa matematica: "They're trapped in the illusion of time," says Dancer. He lies on his back and blows a soap bubble, his hair flopping back long and brown in a time when "long" hair meant anything below the ear. A puff of breeze takes the bubble down the hill and into the stream of pedestrians. They uniformly ignore it. "They're caught in the belief that what they do is important to some future goal." . In un giorno di primavera del 1965 Dancer pronuncia queste parole osservando le persone intorno a lui e al suo amico, il quale considererà che He was right, more right than he could Have possibly imagined. Dancer is one of the serenity of those who know their place in life is simply to live, accept the flow of time until the individual life you will melt inside. Dancer dies invariably on the morning of February 9, 1969, no matter what his friend could do this does not change, and will happen every time he returns to give birth to that friendship, and living with new and unwavering intensity. For a man who has provided an almost eternity of time and timing, and actually has been to see the dinosaurs in the Cretaceous or the Palestine of the time of Christ, must return to the birds and their footprints is perhaps illusory summarized in what happens in one of those 9 February 1965: He died with a secret smile on His face. I've never understood That smile . The scientist can not accept not understand, but it is likely that the friend - the scientist, in turn, calmed by contact with Dancer - can do. It understands the value, with a true sense of friendship: mutual discover. And it is certainly a privilege to do that over and over again: Dancer, too, will never die. I Will not Let Him. Every time I get to final That February morning, the day he died, I return to 1965, To That perfect day in June. He Does not Know me, he never knows me. But we meet on That Hill, the only two willing to enjoy the day doing nothing .

Paul Adrian Maurice Dirac (1902-1984), Nobel prize for physics in 1933

The figures of the two main characters and the story in really show the whole force of a poetic soul searching, decided to penetrate the meaning of our life and the mystery of nature. The solid scientific system is not only not inconsistent with this narrative language, or minor issue, but it is indeed the root of creativity. The visionary genius of Paul Dirac, his theory a world where energy can be negative - or the idea of \u200b\u200bthe Majorana neutrino exists simultaneously as its antiparticle simultaneously coexisting at any time in the two directions of time - this is the genius of the same human quality of the poet -seer that the word gives form to the universe shaped by his prophetic vision. Change the appearance, because each makes use of the mathematical symbol and one of the symbolic power of the word, but the essence of one and the other is in the act '(omni) power of' Homo Faber . Landis reminds us that knowledge stems from the desire creativa dell’uomo, e che il poeta-veggente precede lo scienziato che decodifica (o tenta di decodificare) la natura. Egli è (anche) poeta-veggente, un creatore di mondi e loro ordinatore: è colui che muta il Χάος in K όσμος . Egli è l’uno e l’altro…   

Vent’anni fa, quando la lessi la prima volta, questa storia mi piacque, forse per quel fondo di malinconia, e per l’immaginifico contenuto (fanta)scientifico. Ma è stato ora, rileggendola, che l’ho apprezzata davvero in ogni sfumatura. Ne ho apprezzato un’acutezza che può scivolare inavvertita sotto il velo delle suggestioni, narrative e concettuali, che Landis ha sparso a piene mani. E si apprezzano di più anche quelle suggestioni stesse, le possibilità per l’immaginazione che si aprono riflettendoci sopra.

Increspature nel Mare di Dirac è stato pubblicato nel fascicolo n.1142 di Urania, che presentava l’antologia, curata da Don Wollheim, dei migliori racconti di sf del 1988.

 Si can read the story in English at this url:

http://diracsea.net/ripples-in-the-dirac-sea/

Bmi Calculator Big Breasts

Miniature - Corrida (ibid., 1968) by Roger Zelazny (1937-1995)

E 'June 14, 1995 when even Roger Zelazny died sixty years. The American author was undoubtedly among the most original voices in fiction since its inception in the early '60s in the pages of the oldest trade magazine, Amazing Stories , then revived by the editor Cele Goldsmith. Zelazny immediately reveals a fine literary writer and careful attention to the style of his work fits perfectly into the science fiction of the time that was updating his themes and putting more and more attention to the fact most exquisite literary stories. I confess a special affection for Zelazny, the author who was key to completely reshape my approach to science fiction when uncritical reader of Urania, a friend lent me the file number 10 of the then unknown to me Robot magazine, saying: "And for a reading is then refined Zelazny "that dossier contained the novel The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth , very valuable literary reworking of the myth of Ahab and Moby Dick transported in the oceans of an alien world, one of the most clear and vigorous narrative of the first Zelazny.

The reworking of science fiction in key social and religious myths and archetypes and psychological narrative is the theme of her missionary work, particularly of those early novels and stories that require attention and hearts of readers. The elegant, polished writing Zelazny is particularly suited to enhance the tranquility of this material and the seduction of narrative reading. At the same time writing that is modeled on its content, becoming a vehicle of modern myth-making and drawing its strength from the attractiveness of its evocative power of those myths and mythical ancestral heritage.

Corrida is a sliver of his dazzling ability to awaken in the reader this mythical memory and an equally incisive test of his skill as a writer. Zelazny tessesse could write as if the wires or by crystal use of any variation of irony, beat, or could be sought through the streets of a literary experimentalism that still seemed unusual in the pragmatic and rustic fence sf. He was versatile and constantly test its versatility. In Corrida makes use of an abrasive in writing that combines the accuracy with which it brings out the psychological world of the protagonist, the player creates an atmosphere of increasing anxiety and fear and profound loss, and reaches a final hard unpleasant and even in his seemingly leave the story unfinished.

The short short story is a much more flexible than you might think, particularly in the field of science fiction where it provides the best way to shift the point of view and with the sudden rupture of normality which are vital pillars in the construction of a story that works and that bound and are intimately related to the nature of sf. Next to the diagram of the Sentinels, the title of a short story by Fredric Brown Sentinel, with the punch line that breaks down the mental picture that the reader has taken shape in reading, challenged the certainties, and there are other no less effective stylistic registers. Not with a bang in ( http://olivavincenzo.blogspot.com/2009/08/fantascienza-il-classico-la-mano-not.html ) Howard Fast set an event in the most extraordinarily surreal ordinary daily images and let the two elements clash with mocking irony to the formal end where the 'understatement reaches its peak. In Chief famous story of the early '60s, Henry Slesar, one of the most prolific writers of the short story genre and teacher, showed him all the satirical potential of extreme brevity. Corrida looks like another variation on the road and theme. Zelazny brings the reader as if he were in front of a television screen and he does attend a cruel. The "show" opens on the sudden awakening of the still unknown and uncomfortable protagonist, who finds himself immediately thrown into what turns out to be an arena for bullfights. Sentence after sentence, the subjective value is defined on the protagonist and installing its anguish, frustration and anger, along with the anxiety of the reader. Reader who lives in the subjective narrative of complete disorientation of the character fell into an absurd situation ("I'm not a bull ! "), and his anger caused by pain of wounds received (inflicted by real banderillas ?) And the threat hanging over him, the reappearance of scraps of memory that does not explain or clarify anything, the psychological mechanisms of fear and blind rage, which is not difficult to imagine realistic point of view of the subject of bullfighting . Above all, the reader witnesses the vehement struggle of Michael Cassidy (who finally remembers his name) with the figure of his tormentor. Shadow black and fuzzy, does not say a word that does not seem to do anything, but every time he gets closer to Michael, or Michael approaches him, he reveals the pain that is inflicted.

The naked story "From fear" is colored in such a way that meanings remain soft and do not even find certainty in the end. Michael and the reader with him, he will question until the last about who or what constitutes dark shadow (perhaps God, or fate - or perhaps an alien might think the reader, but a solution seems so simple ...). Zelazny proceeds on a dual track of subtlety in the analysis of detailed thoughts and reactions of Michael and the development of the horror narrative mechanism, hardness and ruthless in the description of the bullfight to its obvious conclusion. The reader is not given an explanation, all interpretations remain at his disposal. At the limit - chi può dirlo? – potrebbe davvero essere stato uno spettacolo televisivo, ma l’ipotesi appare riduttiva. Sta di fatto che questa scheggia narrativa affonda la sua ragion d’essere nella pura suggestione che le idee richiamate da Zelazny posseggono ai nostri occhi e per la nostra mente. Il violento sacrificio rituale allestito nella corrida e il terrore atavico del cacciatore di diventare preda si compenetrano in un meccanismo che è rafforzato dalla non riconoscibilità e inconoscibilità dell’ombra nera e silenziosa e dall’inesorabilità e apparente insensatezza delle sue azioni. L’uomo crea Dio per ordinare il cosmo e renderselo comprensibile; ma se Dio infine apparisse all’uomo nella sua realtà, il attempt would fail because the human officer would no longer be his creative thinking to build the cosmological order, but the thought of God, from which man would be excluded and his psyche would be in pieces. It 's a possible solution to this short masterpiece, which thus comes to be clearly consistent with the major works of Zelazny at that time. Although this is not going specifically to a particular religious heritage and psychological - Hindu and Buddhist ones in the novel Lord of Light ; myths in Egyptian Creatures of Light and Darkness ; Christian myths in the story along A rose for Ecclesiastes, one of the most beautiful by Zelazny, the Greeks finally in the short novel This immortal - but working on a more general level. And, one might say, theoretical.

Corrida was published several times in Italy, the first anthology of personal Zelazny The Infinity Mountain (and other stories) published by Fanucci. Later also in uranium n.815, 44 micro-fiction first part of an anthology edited by Isaac Asimov trio, Martin H. Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander, then in the tasty volumina gift 25 stories that made Urania.