The Singularity - by Dino Buzzati (Paperback)

About the Book

"Originally published as Il grande ritratto, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Milan 1960"--Copyright page.

Book Synopsis

In this prophetic allegory about artificial intelligence by a renowned figure of twentieth-century Italian literature, a modest university professor becomes involved in a remote and enigmatic project in the middle of the Cold War.

At the beginning of Dino Buzzati's The Singularity, Ermanno Ismani, an unassuming university professor, is summoned by the minister of defense to accept a two-year, top-secret mission at a mysterious research center, isolated from the world among forests, plunging cliffs, and high mountains. What's he supposed to do there? Not clear. How long will he be there? No saying.

Still, Ismani takes the mystifying job and, accompanied by his no-nonsense wife, Elisa, heads to the so-called Experimental Camp of Military Zone 36, wondering whether, in the midst of the Cold War, it's some sort of nuclear project he's been assigned to. But no, the colleagues the couple meets on arrival assure them, it's nothing like that. It's much, much more powerful.

At the center of the research complex is strange, shining, at times murmurous, white wall. Behind it, a deep gorge drops away, full of wires and radio towers and mobile sensors and a host of eccentric structures. A question begins to dawn: Could this be the shape of consciousness itself? And if so, whose?

Buzzati's novella of 1960, a pioneering work of Italian science fiction, is published here in a brisk new translation by Anne Milano Appel. In it, Buzzati explores his favorite themes of love and longing while offering a startlingly prescient parable of artificial intelligence.

Review Quotes

"Can the human soul be re-created? And if so, is it ethical to do so? Dino Buzzati asked himself these questions in 1960, when, after reading about contemporary cyber­netics, he wrote The Singularity . . . which repurposes Buzzati's great themes in a sci-fi setting. If you have read The Stronghold, you will find the atmosphere familiar." --Gloria M. Ghioni, Criticaletteraria

"Dino Buzzati is one of the great literary practitioners of the dark marvelous. To my mind, he constitutes one corner in the triangle of indispensable twentieth-century Italian fantasists, a status he shares with his contemporaries Italo Calvino and Tommaso Landolfi." --Kevin Brockmeier, Electric Literature

"Dino Buzzati was an individualist . . . akin to Italo Calvino in his taste for the bizarre and the fairy tale." --N.S. Thompson, Times Literary Supplement

"Dino Buzzati's 1960 science fiction novel The Singularity--translated by Anne Milano Appel--tells the story of a scientist summoned to a mysterious research outpost. ... This is another memorable entry in a stunning bibliography." --Tobias Carroll, Reactor

"The Singularity stages this complicity between science and military power, warning us against any facile belief that such knowledge can be acquired without cost or risk ... Although Buzzati anticipated many of the specific threats associated with artificial intelligence, his exploration of generalized dread makes his work more relevant than ever." --Gianna Albaum, Reading in Translation

"Rather than a text-prediction chatbot, the AI in The Singularity has a soul--or at least a 'glass egg' approximating a soul.... Buzzati is frequently compared to Kafka, Borges, and Calvino. Like them, his novels and stories ... have a fabulous quality." --Ben Cosman, Cleveland Review of Books

"A stylish, compelling little mystery.... Although it is more than six decades old, it predicts ... with unsettling accuracy. Its characters are confronted by the presumptuous arrogance of men whose brilliance in engineering disguises how morally and emotionally incapable they are." --Will Dunn, The New Statesman

The Singularity is a slim novel of under 130 pages, but the ideas it explores spill beyond its covers and are perhaps much more relevant today than when it was originally published. -- Areeb Ahmad, Strange Horizons

The Singularity is delightfully retro, calling back to the early Cold War era of secret military projects, atomic weapons, and computers that filled entire rooms and ran on punch cards. Yet Buzzati's prescient story, told in a new translation by Anne Milano Appel, is buzzing with many issues that society still grapples with today. --Paul Scharre, Foriegn Policy

About the Author

Dino Buzzati (1906-1972) was an Italian journalist, artist, and author. A gifted artist as well as writer, Buzzati was the author of five novels, including The Stronghold and A Love Affair (NYRB Classics); numerous short stories and poems; a children's book; and a comic book, Poem Strip (NYRB Classics).

Anne Milano Appel has translated nearly four dozen books from Italian into English, including Giovanni Arpino's Scent of a Woman; Pope Francis's God is Young; Claudio Magris's Blindly, which won the inaugural Italian Prose in Translation Award; and, most recently, Claudia Petrucci's The Performance. She lives in the Bay Area.