Milestones

DIED. Italo Calvino, 61, Italian author of fanciful imagination and technical virtuosity who used surreal fables and phantasmagorical science fiction to express thoroughly modern, realistic observations on human absurdity; of complications following a stroke; in Siena, Italy. A Resistance fighter during World War II, he drew on his partisan experiences in early, realistic works like The Path to the Nest of Spiders (1947), but turned more and more to fantasy in such books as The Baron in the Trees (1957), Invisible Cities (1973), The Castle of Crossed Destinies (1974) and If on a Winter Night a Traveler (1979). One of his best-known works is a rich collection, Italian Folktales (1956), which reflected his belief that "fables are true" and, conversely, that reality is fabulous.