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Title details for The Singularity by Dino Buzzati - Wait list

The Singularity

by Dino Buzzati
Anne Milano Appel
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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.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    June 4, 2024

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781681378015

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781681378015
      • File size: 1023 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Library Journal

      July 19, 2024

      At the start of Buzzati's (The Stronghold) enthralling 1960 novella set in a futuristic 1972, meek electronics professor Ermanno Ismani receives a cryptic missive summoning him to the byzantine Ministry of Defense, where he is offered a lucrative position to work on a mysterious project at an undisclosed location known simply as military zone 36. So far, so Kafkaesque, but things take a gothic turn when he arrives at the forbidding facility secreted high in the mountains, where the very landscape is being transmogrified into something decidedly unnatural. This is revealed to be "a machine made in our likeness," a.k.a. artificial intelligence, built by scientist Endriade as conceived by its mastermind Aliosi, since dead by his own hand. Uncanny sounds and sensations suggest there may be ghost in this machine, a restless and vengeful spirit. Milano Appel's subtle and evocative translation preserves the menacing feel of what has since become a familiar AI trope. VERDICT Folding prescient philosophical musings on the nature of human consciousness into a satisfyingly eerie fable, Buzzati's foundational work of Italian science fiction might well be subtitled "The Postmodern Prometheus."--David Wright

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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