洛杉磯時報:《死神永生》 壯麗三部曲劃上句號
It’s a good time to be an alien hunter. In August astronomers discovered Proxima b, a potentially life-supporting planet only 4.2 light-years away. Not long after, news surfaced of a possible signal coming from HD164595, a star in the Hercules constellation, first noticed by Russian scientists in 2015. Then there’s KIC 8462852, better known as Tabby’s Star, a body whose inexplicable light fluctuations have inspired a rash of speculation. Are we finally going to learn that we’re not alone? If so, will it be good news?
現在是成爲外星人獵人的好時候。今年八月，天文學家發現了比鄰星b，是一顆距離我們只有4.2光年的宜居行星。之後不久，有消息傳出，可能有信號來自武仙座的編號爲HD164595的恆星，最早是由俄羅斯科學家於2015年探測到。之後是編號爲KIC8462852的恆星,更爲人熟知的名字是喵星【Tabby是以最早的研究論文的第一作者Tabetha S. Boyajian命名，原意虎斑貓泛指貓】，這顆恆星有着明顯的光亮起伏變化，引起了大量猜測【有觀點認爲是外星文明在建造戴森球】。難道我們終於能知曉我們不是宇宙中的唯一？這會是好消息嗎？
For Chinese science fiction writer Cixin Liu, the answer is almost certainly no. Like Stephen Hawking, who has long warned about the dangers of sending messages into space, Liu’s vision of extraterrestrial contact is anything but peaceful.
而對中國科幻作家劉慈欣來說，答案就是個大大的“不”字。與長期警告不要向太空發送信息的斯蒂芬·霍金類似，劉所預見的地外接觸一點都不會和平。
In his Hugo Award-winning 2006 novel “The Three-Body Problem” (translated into English by Ken Liu in 2014), Liu described a first contact scenario in which Chinese radio astronomer Ye Wenjie discovers a species called the Trisolarians, so called because their home world circles three suns in an unstable orbit. Though the Trisolarian who receives her message warns her of danger, she persists in communicating anyway. Having watched her father get beaten to death with belt buckles during China’s Cultural Revolution, she feels that society can use an intervention.
劉慈欣在其2006年出版的雨果獎獲獎作品《三體》（由劉宇昆譯成英語並在2014年出版），描寫了一個第一類接觸的故事情節，中國射電天文學家葉文潔發現了叫做三體人的種族，因其母星以不穩定的軌道圍繞三顆恆星公轉而得名。儘管接收到葉的訊息的三體人向她預警，她仍堅持通訊。在中國文/革時期目睹其父被皮帶扣抽打，葉深感人類社會需要有外界介入。
But even Ye Wenjie doesn’t anticipate the consequences of her discovery. Upon learning about Earth, the Trisolarians send a fleet to wipe out humanity and take over its real estate. In the two sequels to the novel — “The Dark Forest,” which appeared in English last year, and now “Death’s End” — Liu describes humanity’s effort to confront the most extreme crisis it has ever faced.
但連葉文潔都不曾料到她的發現所造成的後果。在得悉地球之後，三體人派遣艦隊想要一舉掃平人類並接手人類的家園。之後的兩部續作，一年前英譯出版的《黑暗森林》，以及現在出版的《死神永生》，劉描寫了人類如何直面有史以來最嚴峻的危機。
Liu is a maximalist, and the scope of his books allows him to explore all sorts of sci-fi interests. He writes about the effects of hibernation technology on society, artificially constructed parallel universes, an enemy that has mastered near-perfect surveillance abilities and a video game-based religious cult. Liu is also a maximalist in structure; while the first two books in the trilogy told a relatively linear story, “Death’s End” doubles back to the beginning of the “Crisis Era” to re-tell that history from the perspective of another character, Cheng Xin.
劉是個極繁主義者，他筆下的廣闊領域能讓他探究所有的科幻熱點。他寫冬眠技術對社會的影響、人工建造平行世界、掌握完美監控能力的敵人、以及源於電子遊戲的邪教。三部曲前兩部講了相對線性的故事，而《死神永生》回到“危機紀元”伊始，以另一角色程心的視角重新講述那段歷史。
Xin is an aerospace engineer who works on a far-fetched effort to send a preserved human brain into space. Although the brain is technically dead, Xin and her colleagues hope that the Trisolarians will have the technology to revive it, thus providing humanity with an agent in the Trisolarians’ midst. Because the brain isn’t expected to reach its destination for hundreds of years, Cheng Xin is put into hibernation.
程心是一名航天工程師，從事將一個封存的人類大腦送入太空的希望渺茫的計劃。儘管從技術上講，大腦已經死亡，但程心及其同僚寄望三體人有科技能復活它，從而成爲人類安插在三體人中的間諜。由於大腦需要數百年才能到達目的地，程心進入冬眠狀態。
When she wakes up 264 years later, it turns out that the brain went off course long ago and hardly anyone remembers it anymore. But because she happens to own a star, given to her by the brain donor as part of another short-lived program, Cheng Xin has become wealthy and famous. She is soon called upon to defend humanity in what has become a state of mutually assured destruction with the Trisolarians. From here, “Death’s End” continues past the time frame of its predecessors, stretching almost to the end of the universe.
當她在264年後甦醒，卻發現很久以前大腦就已偏離航向，已經沒什麼人記得這回事了。但由於碰巧大腦原主人曾經在另一短命計劃裏贈送給程心一顆星星，她名利雙收。隨即她被召喚並接受保衛人類的使命，已演變成與三體人確保共同毀滅的性質。從這裏開始，《死神永生》超過了前作的時間框架，幾乎一直延伸到宇宙的盡頭。
With such a dramatically expanded temporal canvas, it’s no surprise that Liu also expands the alien cast. In “Death’s End” spaceships encounter mysterious artifacts when they pass through a region of fourth-dimensional space, and we meet a killer super-civilization, which wages war by altering the laws of physics. But like a lot of sci-fi writers, Liu focuses less on the aliens than on the effect their existence has on humanity.
在如此浩瀚無垠的時間長卷上，毫不奇怪劉慈欣也擴充了外星陣容。在《死神永生》裏，太空飛船穿過了一片四維空間區並撞見了神祕的人工物品，而且我們還遇見了殺手級超文明能通過改變物理規律進行作戰。但與許多其他科幻作家一樣，劉更注重外星人的存在對人類的影響而非外星人本身。
In general, Liu takes a dark view of the world. In the second book in the series he posited that the universe is essentially a “dark forest,” populated by predatory species that will wipe out lesser beings in an instant. Though most intelligent life forms know well enough to keep quiet, “there’s a stupid child called humanity, who has built a bonfire and is standing beside it shouting, ‘Here I am! Here I am!’”
總之，劉慈欣有黑暗的世界觀。在系列第二部裏，他假設宇宙的本質是“黑暗森林”，盤踞着虎狼般的種族，會頃刻間抹平次等生物。儘管多數智慧生物懂得噤若寒蟬，“有一個叫人類的傻孩子，生了一堆火併在旁邊高喊：我在這兒！我在這兒！”。
Yet his depiction of Earth civilization in “Death’s End” is charitable. Society goes through some rough spots, but it learns from its mistakes and prioritizes democracy and human rights over military panic. The story is told primarily from the point of view of Chinese characters — a welcome reminder that sci-fi scenarios don’t exist within an exclusively English-speaking world — but his future society is international, with political bodies like the United Nations taking on ever-greater roles.
然而他在《死神永生》裏對地球文明的描述算是大發慈悲了。人類社會熬過幾次困難期後吸取教訓，重民主人權抑軍事恐慌。故事主要是以中國角色的視角講述，很好地提醒我們，科幻故事並不由英語世界獨享，未來社會將是國際性的，聯合國之類的政治實體會起到前所未有的作用。
Unfortunately, humanity’s desire for peace and prosperity also undermines its survival. It’s a dangerous universe out there, Liu argues, and a global social welfare state may not be equipped to deal with it. Such ideas make Liu’s books compelling reading, and “Death’s End” is the most mind-bending of them all.
不幸的是，人類對長治久安的渴求削弱了自己的生存能力。劉慈欣主張：外面是危險的宇宙，全球社會福利制度或許無法應對。此類想法使其作品令人信服，而《死神永生》是之中最燒腦的一部。
While Liu’s humanity on the whole is conservative, some characters — both heroes and antiheroes — are determined to save civilization at all costs. In “The Dark Forest,” an officer hijacks a starship and takes off into deep space because he believes that Earth will be defeated in the coming war with Trisolaris. The main character in that novel, Luo Ji, achieves a standoff with the alien invaders because of his willingness to destroy humanity as well. And in “Death’s End” we encounter Thomas Wade, an American intelligence officer who is prepared to wage a horrific civil war in order to pursue transformative research into light-speed travel.
雖然劉慈欣筆下的人類總體來說非常保守，一些角色無論英雄還是反英雄，都立志不惜一切代價匡扶地球文明於危難。在《黑暗森林》裏一名軍官劫持一艘星艦朝深空出發，因爲他深信地球會在之後同三體人的戰爭中落敗。書中的主角羅輯，成功地與外星來敵形成對峙，就是因爲他也有陪葬人類的魄力。而在《死神永生》裏，我們會見到美國情報官托馬斯·維德，他爲了以非常手段研究光速旅行，甚至準備挑起恐怖內戰。
Yet as a novelist Liu has weaknesses that are impossible to ignore: These characters are exclusively men. Liu’s women, in contrast, tend to be nurturing, sentimental and weak. While Xin’s motivations are pure, her inability to make hard choices threatens to be disastrous. “She understood for the first time her own feelings toward this new world: maternal instinct,” Liu writes. “Subconsciously, she saw everyone in the new world as her child, and she could not bear to see them come to harm.” It is women, Liu implies, who are to blame for humanity’s softness, and who are thus responsible for its potential destruction.
然而劉慈欣在寫作上也有讓人無法忽視的弱點：角色幾乎清一色男性；與此相對，劉筆下的女性往往是嬌柔的、傷感的、軟弱的。儘管程心動機很純，但無法作出艱難抉擇則預示着危險發生。“她看清了自己對這個新世界的感情的實質：母性。”劉慈欣寫道：“在她的潛意識中，新世界中所有的人都是自己的孩子， 她不可能看着他們受到傷害。”劉暗示，女性是人類柔軟心腸的罪魁，也是人類或將毀滅的禍首。
Such passages point not only to sexism, but to poor characterization generally. Although the books are full of thrilling ideas and scenarios, the characters are little more than cutouts, with gender stereotypes providing the most obvious pattern. This is an unforgivable defect, since science fiction long ago progressed beyond simplistic tales of macho warriors in space.
這些段落觀點不僅是性別歧視，也是糟糕的整體人物塑造。儘管全書充滿激動人心的點子和劇情，但人物刻畫不比紙板模型厚多少，性別的刻板印象尤爲明顯。這是不容逃避的缺陷，科幻小說發展到現在早就脫離了太空肌肉男的低級趣味。
Even with its flaws, however, Liu’s picture of humanity’s place in the cosmos is among the biggest, boldest and most disturbing we’ve seen; perhaps it’s no wonder that the author himself succumbs to the comfort of familiar parental archetypes. Fortunately, Liu remains true to his dark vision. In this terrifying world, neither mommy nor daddy can save us.
雖有這個那個缺點，劉對人類在宇宙裏的地位刻畫，是我們所見過最宏偉最大膽且最讓人不安的。或許正因如此，作者本人陷於熟悉的雙親意象而不能自拔。還好，劉能保持真我堅持他的黑暗觀點，在這可怕的世界裏，沒有媽咪爹地能夠拯救我們。
