On the one hand, from the early origins of Ayurvedic medicine to today, some psychologists have believed that basic temperament tends to remain unchanged, even in the worst of times: optimists in concentration camps still look on the sunny side, sour-minded cynics winning Nobel Prizes doubt their efforts have done any good, etc., etc. ...in 1944, H. G. Wells penned a paper on the "illusion of personality," arguing that the very idea of individuality (with its root meaning of indivisibility) was simply a "biologically convenient delusion." ...given the mess we've made of this planet (which may already be beyond repair), the very question may soon be moot. Elsewhere, with his typical mix of surrealism and science, Daniele Del Giudice's short fiction (ably translated by Anne Milano Appel), "Shipwreck with Painting" takes the crossing between art and catastrophe as its point of origin.