SOURCE: “Cybernetic Fiction and Postmodern Science,” in New Literary History, Vol. 20, No. 2, Winter, 1989, pp. 373–96.

In the following essay, Porush evaluates the impact of recent scientific developments—particularly the growth of cybernetics and postmodern scientific thought—on Calvino's work.

The poem is a kind of machine for producing the poetic state of mind by means of words.

Paul Valéry, Literature

And so the author vanishes—that spoiled child of ignorance—to give place to a more thoughtful person, a person who will know that the author is a machine, and will know how this machine works.

Italo Calvino, “Cybernetics and Ghosts”

I can no longer accept any situation other than this transformation of ourselves into the messages of ourselves.

Italo Calvino, T-Zero

For the first time in the long and fruitful relationship between literature and science, literature actually has the means to meet science on its own territory...