經典科幻文學:《宇宙盡頭的餐館》第5章1

Chapter 5
Ursa Minor Beta is, some say, one of the most appalling places in the known Universe.
Although it is excruciatingly rich, horrifyingly sunny and more full of wonderfully exciting people than a pomegranate is of pips, it can hardly be insignificant that when a recent edition of Playbeing magazine headlined an article with the words “When you are tired of Ursa Minor Beta you are tired of life”, the suicide rate quadrupled overnight.
Not that there are any nights on Ursa Minor Beta.
It is a West Zone planet which by an inexplicable and somewhat suspicious freak of topography consists almost entirely of sub-tropical coastline. By an equally suspicious freak of temporal relastatics, it is nearly always Saturday afternoon just before the beach bars close.
No adequate explanation for this has been forthcoming from the dominant lifeforms on Ursa Minor Beta, who spend most of their time attempting to achieve spiritual enlightenment by running round swimming pools, and inviting Investigation Officials form the Galactic Geo-Temporal Control Board to “have a nice diurnal anomaly”.
There is only one city on Ursa Minor Beta, and that is only called a city because the swimming pools are slightly thicker on the ground there than elsewhere.
If you approach Light City by air – and there is no other way of approaching it, no roads, no port facilities – if you don’t fly they don’t want to see you in Light City – you will see why it has this name. Here the sun shines brightest of all, glittering on the swimming pools, shimmering on the white, palm-lined boulevards, glistening on the healthy bronzed specks moving up and down them, gleaming off the villas, the hazy airpads, the beach bars and so on.
Most particularly it shines on a building, a tall beautiful building consisting of two thirty-storey white towers connected by a bridge half-way up their length.
The building is the home of a book, and was built here on the proceeds of an extraordinary copyright law suit fought between the book’s editors and a breakfast cereal company.
The book is a guide book, a travel book.

第五章
小熊星座貝塔星，據有的人說，是整個已知宇宙中最令人震驚的地方之一。
這顆星球非常富裕，陽光普照，到處都是討人喜歡的居民——比飽滿的石榴裏的籽還要密集。但你卻很難忽略一件事：最近一期《花花生物》雜誌推出了一篇頭條文章，“當你對小熊星座貝塔星感到厭倦時，你也就對生活本身感到厭倦了”——文章發表之後，該星球的自殺率一夜之間上升了四倍。
當然，小熊星座貝塔星上根本不存在夜晚。
它是一顆西區行星，具有一種無法解釋、甚至在某種程度上可以說令人不解的奇特地貌，幾乎全部由亞熱帶海岸線構成。同樣令人不解的奇特之處是，在時間上，它幾乎永遠處於海灘酒吧關門之前的星期六下午。
在小熊星座貝塔星上佔統治地位的生命形式從來沒有對這樣的問題作出過恰當解釋，他們的時間主要花在如下方面：繞着游泳池奔跑，以試圖獲得精神上的啓蒙，以及邀請銀河系地理－時間控制委員會的調查官員來“過一過每天都反常的美妙日子”。
小熊星座貝塔星上只有一座城市，而這裏之所以被稱爲一座城市，只是因爲這裏的游泳池比其他地方稍微密集一點兒。
如果你有機會乘飛機去光彩城（其實，去那兒並沒有別的交通工具。沒有公路，沒有港口。如果你不是飛着去，那麼他們在光彩城就不想見你），你將看到它爲什麼會得到這樣一個名字。這裏的日光照射是最強烈的，在游泳池裏閃耀着，在白晃晃的棕櫚樹成行的林蔭大道上閃耀着，在他們戴着的上下晃動的青銅眼鏡上閃耀着。閃爍的光芒甚至掩蓋了別墅、機場、海灘酒吧……
日光閃耀得最厲害的地方是一棟建築。這是一棟高聳、漂亮的建築，由兩座三十層的白色高塔構成，在高度的一半有一座橋，將兩座高塔連接起來。
這棟建築是一本書的家，是用一場非同小可的版權訴訟中所獲得的款項來修建的，這場訴訟發生在這本書的編輯者和一家早餐麥片公司之間。
這本書是一部指南，一部旅遊書。