Robot Artists and Black Swans : The Italian Fantascienza Stories

Robot Artists and Black Swans is a collection of short stories written by Italian fantascienza author Bruno Argento, the alter-ego of Texan cyberpunk and futurist Bruce Sterling (my favorite author). These stories, mostly first published in Italian, are a love letter to the city of Turin.

They’re also, if I might be honest, merely okay. “Kill the Moon”, a short critique of an Italian moonlanding in 2061 as a dumb publicity stunt by a billionaire and his actress girlfriend, has some bite; “Elephant on Table” has some quality ironies and turns of phrase. “Robot in the Roses” gestures towards a grand conflict between art and science in the post-Anthropocene, as two elites from different secret groups follow a robotic artist and debate its merit.

But on the whole, the stories meander and don’t really develop plot, character, or aesthetics. The dialog declaims in archaic cyberpunk grandiosity that doesn’t match the stakes of the stories.