I like Bruce Sterling essays but not his fiction. This is a book of short stories written in a magical realism style and set in some sort of Italy. Definitely not for me. I received this book from two sources and when I told the manager of the second online blog that I wasn't able to finish, she said I was the only one or her reviewers who offered to try it.

I received a review copy of this book from NetGalley.com and also from SFRevu. ( )

***WHO SUCKED ME IN***
Thomas of SFF180 on YouTube in their SFF180 | Mailbag Monday | October 12, 2020 video published on ma. 12 okt. 2020

I don't know something about Italian sci-fi just works for me. Ah what's that serie called [b:Stad van bloemen|8611081|Stad van bloemen (Stravaganza, #3)|Mary Hoffman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1283944893l/8611081._SY75_.jpg|1575331]. That was my jam as a teenager!

“DEAR AMERICAN READERS, I am as surprised as you to find my modest collection of Italian science fiction stories published in your United Sates. I confess to you: by the professional standards of American science fiction writers, Bruno Argento is simply one of the European literary amateurs.”

In “Robot Artists and Black Swans” by Bruno Argento (Bruce Sterling’s heteronym)



Argento's Italian Journey. You can use it used it as a guide book (and yes starting in Carlsbad or Karlovy Vary in modern day Czech Republic like Goethe’s counterpart). Argento’s “Black Swan” showed that Italy, with its culture and outlook of the world has not really changed much in the Multiverse. Germany on the other hand had very much mind you. Like Goethe’s this short story collection stringly shows strongly Argento’s (Sterling’s?) 's impressions of Italy and how he himself grows through this book from insecurity to contentment with life.

I can see the proverbial SF fans whinge, whinge, whinge but - I thought everyone had heard of Bruno Argento and the rest sound vile apart from the Italian one, which sounds like either a laugh or a boring fake laugh (like Houellebecq - ideas:great. execution: yawnathon). The french one sounds cutesy nicey nicey but it's probably nice really. I just always find that anything with the word 'heartwarming' within a “tenmileradius” is always vile... I go to translation for excitement, and to get away from Anglophone-SF’s braindeadness. The Anglos believe no ideas must come anywhere near a novel, whereas Arabian Russian, etc. SF, ideas are everywhere. It's just a weird rigid rule in English language 'mustn't think' and the main form of criticism used for any novel that does is a complaint about 'character development'. Well, I don’t know how Argento’s Italian characters have developed in so many years, let alone within two hundred and fifty pages, so what's so unrealistic about someone who doesn't Learn Important Life Lessons (in a heartwarming way of course) by the end of some manky novel? Maybe they're just screaming bored trying to escape that manky novel...

“Robot Artists and Black Swans” is a good example of course; it’s unique and great and to my utter surprise everyone who's read it has said the same (I have a copy in the house and nobody has said otherwise who's picked it up). Ignore what you think the title means, but it's not the story of Robot Jesus set in Italy or a missionary text or some American evangelist...

I generally decide whether I will buy a book by looking at the face of the author on the dust jacket cover. Fortunately Argento’s mug was not there…

Sterling’s heteronym Bruno Argento should be better known in the Anglophone world. ( )

http://speculiction.blogspot.com/2021/04/if-sciencefiction-were-tree-bruce.html ( )