Peter Kolosimo, pseudonym

Pseudonym

A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...

 of Pier Domenico Colosimo (15 December 1922 - 23 March 1984) was an Italian journalist and writer. Together with the later Erich von Däniken

Erich von Däniken

Erich Anton Paul von Däniken is a Swiss author best known for his controversial claims about extraterrestrial influences on early human culture, in books such as Chariots of the Gods?, published in 1968...

, he is ranked amongst the founders of pseudoarchaeology

Pseudoarchaeology

Pseudoarchaeology — also known as alternative archaeology, fringe archaeology, fantastic archaeology, or cult archaeology — refers to interpretations of the past from outside of the academic archaeological community, which typically also reject the accepted scientific and analytical methods of the...

 (in Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

: fantarcheologia).

Born in Modena

Modena

Modena is a city and comune on the south side of the Po Valley, in the Province of Modena in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy....

, he lived in Bolzano for much of his life. In 1969 he won the Premio Bancarella

Premio Bancarella

The Premio Bancarella is an Italian literary prize established in 1953; it is given in Pontremoli every year, the last Saturday or the last Sunday in July....

, one of Italy's most prestigious literary prizes, for Non è terrestre ("Not from Earth"). His books were translated in 60 countries, including Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

, Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 and China

People's Republic of China

China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...

.

Despite his highly controversial theories, he has been coordinator of the Italian Association of Prehistorical Studies.

Kolosimo died in Milan

Milan

Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

 in 1984.

Selected bibliography

• Il pianeta sconosciuto (1959)
• Terra senza tempo (1964; translated into English as Timeless earth)
• Ombre sulle stelle (1966)
• Non è terrestre (1968; translated as Not of this World)
• Astronavi sulla preistoria (1972; translated as Spaceships in Prehistory)
• Guida al mondo dei sogni (1974)
• Odissea stellare (1974)
• Fratelli dell'infinito (1975)
• Polvere d'inferno (1975)
• Italia mistero cosmico (1977)
• Civiltà del mistero (1978)
• Fiori di luna (1979)
• Viaggiatori del tempo (1981)
• I misteri dell'universo (1982, with Caterina Kolosimo)

External links

• UFOs and Revolution, an article on Kolosimo by Wu Ming
  Wu Ming
  Wu Ming is a pseudonym for a group of Italian authors formed in 2000 from a subset of the Luther Blissett community in Bologna.In their pre-Wu Ming days, the group wrote the novel Q ....
  
  , published on GQ magazine (Italian edition), July 2009.
• Review of Kolosimo's works