T zero

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t zero (Ti con zero) is a 1967 collection of science fiction short stories by Italian writer Italo Calvino. The Italian edition was published by Giulio Einaudi and runs 164 pages. The English translation, Time and the Hunter, appeared in 1970.

The title story follows a lion hunter at a moment of great uncertainty. In the book’s frame, time is divided into seconds: past seconds (t−1, t−2, …), the present (t0), and future seconds (t1, t2, …). The first set of stories is narrated by Qfwfq, an immortal being introduced in Calvino’s Cosmicomics, who uses a scientific fact as the seed for each tale. Other stories move away from strict science themes, exploring a range of ideas. The final story is a playful pastiche of Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo.

All the stories in t zero, along with those from Cosmicomics and related works, are collected in The Complete Cosmicomics (Penguin UK, 2009).