Dario Tonani

Dario Tonani develops Italian science fiction through a Mondo9 cycle that imagines a desert world dominated by sentient machines and metal. Cardanica is the opening story in that setting. Tonani’s bibliography identifies it as science fiction, published in English by 40K Books in 2011, after an earlier Italian appearance in Robot. It was followed by Robredo, Chatarra, and Afritania, and the stories were later incorporated into the larger Mondo9 sequence. The author describes the cycle as having a steampunk flavour, but its machines are not passive inventions: mechanical creatures, hostile environments, and bodily transformation shape the world’s danger. Tonani’s economics degree and long career in speculative writing sit behind a body of work that includes several connected fictional universes. Cardanica is therefore best read both as a compact story and as the entry point to an expanding saga. Its publication history also shows how Tonani’s Italian work reached English-language readers before later collected editions broadened the Mondo9 chronology.