De l'infinito, universo e mondi. Manuale di esobiologia

In the 1970s Sebastiano Vassalli’s works are influenced by avant-garde literary movements. The Manuale di esobiologia, as Vassalli himself wrote, is an «alchemical operation looking for an avant-garde literature which may be pop as well» – a milestone in the author’s research before his historical masterpiece, The Chimera. The work, published posthumously thanks to a draft conserved in Vassalli’s archive, is a science fiction essay with a catalogue of aliens taken from 60s-70s Italian science fiction. Unlike any Bestiary, aliens are organized following an empirical model, without any kind of allegory. With the biting irony that permeates the whole Manuale, Vassalli is already showing signs of the author-collector of sources and documents who, in about 20 years, will write the story of Antonia, the witch of Zardino.