Qfwfq is the narrator of many stories appearing in several works by Italian author Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy , the Cosmicomics collection of short stories , and the novels Invisible Cities and If on a winter's night a traveler .Lionised in Britain and the United States,...

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Description of Character

Qfwfq is as old as the universe and has taken various forms, of which Qfwfq retains its memory in later incarnations. For example, in the short story "Blood, Sea" (found in the collection t zero) this character is a man riding in a car with three other people, but this man also remembers when he lived in the form of an amoeba of sorts inhabiting a primeval ocean. He also describes Zylphia, one of the other car passengers, as having been there, raising the question of whether Qfwfq is able to take multiple discrete physical forms at once. Qfwfq also describes having a family, who seem also to transcend time in a similar manner. He also has a competitive relationship with a similar entity named Kgwgk, which results in the invention of art.

He is described as "not surprised by anything", and characteristically "not at all sentimental about being the last dinosaur".

Books in which Character Appears

• Cosmicomics
  Cosmicomics
  Cosmicomics is a book of short stories by Italo Calvino first published in Italian in 1965 and in English in 1968. Each story takes a scientific "fact" , and builds an imaginative story around it...
  
   --- Qfwfq narrates all but two of the short stories in this collection.
• t zero
  T zero
  t zero is a 1967 collection of short stories by Italian author Italo Calvino. The title story is based on a particularly uncertain moment in the life of a lion hunter...
  
   --- Qfwfq narrates all of the stories in this collection. The first four stories are in a section titled, "More of Qfwfq".
• Numbers in the Dark and other stories --- Qfwfq narrates the final two stories in this collection, "Implosion" and "Nothing and Not Much".

Qfwfq's name

The name "Qfwfq" (as well as "Kgwgk") is a palindrome

Palindrome

A palindrome is a word, phrase, number, or other sequence of units that can be read the same way in either direction, with general allowances for adjustments to punctuation and word dividers....

. The name may be an allusion to the second law of thermodynamics

Second law of thermodynamics

The second law of thermodynamics is an expression of the tendency that over time, differences in temperature, pressure, and chemical potential equilibrate in an isolated physical system. From the state of thermodynamic equilibrium, the law deduced the principle of the increase of entropy and...

; substituting = for f gives Q=W=Q, which describes a heat engine

Heat engine

In thermodynamics, a heat engine is a system that performs the conversion of heat or thermal energy to mechanical work. It does this by bringing a working substance from a high temperature state to a lower temperature state. A heat "source" generates thermal energy that brings the working substance...

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