The Singularity

At the start of Buzzati’s (The Stronghold) enthralling 1960 novella set in a futuristic 1972, meek electronics professor Ermanno Ismani receives a cryptic missive summoning him to the byzantine Ministry of Defense, where he is offered a lucrative position to work on a mysterious project at an undisclosed location known simply as military zone 36. So far, so Kafkaesque, but things take a gothic turn when he arrives at the forbidding facility secreted high in the mountains, where the very landscape is being transmogrified into something decidedly unnatural. This is revealed to be “a machine made in our likeness,” a.k.a. artificial intelligence, built by scientist Endriade as conceived by its mastermind Aliosi, since dead by his own hand. Uncanny sounds and sensations suggest there may be ghost in this machine, a restless and vengeful spirit. Milano Appel’s subtle and evocative translation preserves the menacing feel of what has since become a familiar AI trope.