劉慈欣：中國的亞瑟·克拉克

Liu Cixin, China's most popular science-fiction writer, is 52 years old and has written thirteen books. He worked as a software engineer at a power plant in Shanxi. In China, he is about as famous as William Gibson in the United States; he’s often compared to Arthur C. Clarke, whom he cites as an influence. His most popular book, "The Three-Body Problem," has been translated into English by the American sci-fi writer Ken Liu, and in China it's being made into a movie, along with its sequels.
劉慈欣是中國最受歡迎的科幻作家，現年52歲的他著有13作品。劉慈欣曾擔任山西省某發電廠的軟件工程師。他在中國的知名度可以和美國科幻作家威廉·吉布森（William Gibson）相媲美。人們常將劉慈欣與亞瑟·克拉克（Arthur C. Clarke）相提並論，而劉慈欣稱自己受到了克拉克的影響。劉慈欣最受歡迎的小說《三體》（The Three-Body Problem）已經被美籍華裔科幻作家劉宇昆（Ken Liu）譯成了英文。在中國，《三體》三部曲的電影也已在拍攝中。

Liu Cixin's writing evokes the thrill of exploration and the beauty of scale. "In my imagination," he told me, in an e-mail translated by Ken Liu, "abstract concepts like the distance marked by a light-year or the diameter of the universe become concrete images that inspire awe."
劉慈欣的作品喚起了人們對探索和宏觀之美的興奮感。在一封經劉宇昆翻譯的電子郵件中，劉慈欣告訴我：“在我的想象中，以光年計量的距離和宇宙直徑這類抽象概念變成了具體的形象，令人心生敬畏。”

American science fiction draws heavily on American culture, of course—the war for independence, the Wild West, film noir, sixties psychedelia—and so humanity’s imagined future often looks a lot like America's past. For an American reader, one of the pleasures of reading Liu is that his stories draw on entirely different resources.
毋庸置疑，美國科幻小說很大程度上取材於美國文化，包括獨立戰爭、西部荒野、黑色電影、60年代的迷幻風潮，因此，人文科學所構想的未來世界與美國的過去存在很大程度的相似性。對美國讀者來說，閱讀劉慈欣作品的樂趣之一在於他的故事取材完全不同。

Much of "The Three-Body Problem" is set during the Cultural Revolution. In "The Wages of Humanity," visitors from space demand the redistribution of Earth's wealth, and explain that runaway capitalism almost destroyed their civilization. I doubt that any Western sci-fi writer has so thoroughly explored the theme of filial piety.
小說《三體》的故事背景大抵都是文化大革命（the Cultural Revolution）期間。在《贍養人類》（The Wages of Humanity）這部小說中，太空來客要求重新分配地球財富，並解釋說失控的資本主義幾乎摧毀了他們的文明。我不太確定西方科幻作家會如此全面深入地探討“孝道”這一主題。

But it's not cultural difference that makes Liu's writing extraordinary. His stories are fables about human progress—concretely imagined but abstract. Take the novella "Sun of China," which follows Ah Quan, a young man from a rural village that has been impoverished by drought. In the first three chapters, Ah Quan sets out from the village and finds work in a mine; he travels to a regional city, where he learns to shine shoes, and moves to Beijing, where he works as a skyscraper-scaling window-washer. Then the story takes a turn.
劉慈欣作品的特別之處並非在於文化差異。他的故事都是一些有關人類發展的寓言——既是具體的想象，同時又是抽象的概念。在他的短篇小說《中國太陽》（Sun of China）中，主人公是個叫做阿全的年輕小夥子，他來自一個遭受旱災的貧困鄉村。在小說的前三章裏，阿全離開了村子，到礦上找工作；接着他又到了一個地級市，在那裏學會了擦皮鞋，之後輾轉來到北京，當起了一名高樓外牆玻璃清洗工。後來，故事情節出現了一個轉折。We discover that it's the future: China has constructed a huge mirror in space called the China Sun, and is using it to engineer the climate. Ah Quan gets a job cleaning the reflective surface of the China Sun. It turns out that Stephen Hawking is living in orbit, where the low gravity has helped to prolong his life; Hawking and Ah Quan become friends and go on space walks together. The physicist teaches the worker about the laws of physics and about the vastness of the universe, and Ah Quan’s mind begins to dwell on the question of humanity’s fate: Will we explore the stars, or live and die on Earth? Soon afterward, he is saying goodbye to his parents and setting out on a one-way mission to explore interstellar space. By the end of the story, Ah Quan’s progress is representative of humanity’s. He has traversed an enormous social and material distance, but it pales in comparison to the journey ahead.
我們發現書中描述的是未來的世界：中國在太空建造了一面巨大的鏡子，它被稱爲“中國太陽”，用於調節氣候。阿全的工作是清潔“中國太陽”反光表面。原來斯蒂芬·霍金（Stephen Hawking）生活在軌道上，因爲那裏的重力小，他的生命得以延長；後來霍金和阿全成爲了朋友，一起去太空漫步。這位物理學家向這個工人講授了物理學定律和宇宙的浩瀚，阿全的內心開始思考人類命運：我們要去探索其他星球嗎？還是就在地球上度過一生？不久，他就向父母告別，踏上了探索星際的單程之旅。故事結尾，阿全取得的進步代表着全人類的進步，儘管他跨越了巨大的社會和物質距離，但與未知的旅程相比，這顯得微不足道。

Liu’s stories aren't always so tender; in imagining the human future, his romantic sweetness is balanced with harsh objectivity. In "The Wandering Earth," scientists discover that the sun is about to swell into a red giant. In response, they build enormous engines capable of pushing the entire planet toward another star—an "exodus" that will last a hundred generations, during which everything on the surface will be destroyed. Watching the deadly sun recede and transform into a star like any other, the protagonist cries out, "Earth, oh my wandering Earth!" And yet the story suggests that this is just the sort of outrageous project we'll need in order to insure humanity's long-term survival.
劉慈欣的故事不完全是這麼溫和的；在想象人類的未來時，他筆下的浪漫甜蜜與殘酷現實是相輔相成的。在《流浪地球》（The Wandering Earth）中，科學家們發現太陽將要膨脹爲巨大的紅色星體。因此，他們建造了巨大的引擎，這些引擎能夠將整個地球推向另一顆恆星——一場持續上百代的“大遷移”就此展開。在此期間，地球表面的一切都將被摧毀。看着致命的太陽漸漸遠去，變得模糊，最後變得與其他星體無異，主人公哭喊着“地球，我流浪的地球啊！”然而，這個故事向我們暗示了，我們需要種種匪夷所思的解決方案來保證人類的長存。

"In the distant future, if human civilization survives and spreads through the cosmos, humanity must create technological marvels at ultra-grand scales," Liu wrote to me.
劉慈欣在郵件中寫道：“在遙遠的未來，如果人類文明在宇宙間生存繁衍的話，人類必需創造超乎尋常的科技奇蹟。”

I believe science and technology can bring us a bright future, but the journey to achieve it will be filled with difficulties and exact a price from us. Some of these obstacles and costs will be quite terrible, but in the end we will land on the sunlit further shore. Let me quote the Chinese poet Xu Zhimo from the beginning of the last century, who, after a trip to the Soviet Union, said, "Over there, they believe in the existence of Heaven, but there is a sea of blood that lies between Heaven and Hell, and they’ve decided to cross the sea."
我深信，科學技術能夠給我們帶來光明美好的未來，但是實現的過程會充滿艱難險阻，我們要爲此付出代價。其中有些阻礙非常艱難，有些代價非常高昂，但是我們終將抵達陽光明媚的彼岸。請允許我援引上世紀初中國詩人徐志摩在遊歷前蘇聯（Soviet Union）之後寫下的詩句：“他們相信天堂是有的，可以實現的，但在現實世界與那天堂的中間隔着一座海，一座血污海，人類泅得過這血海，才能登彼岸，他們決定先實現那血海。”

But to what end? Humanity can't survive everything; the last volume of the "Three-Body" trilogy is set, in part, during the heat-death of the universe. Liu’s stories see life from two angles, as both a titanic struggle for survival and as a circumscribed exercise in finitude. In my favorite of his stories, "The Mountain"—it's available in English in a short-fiction collection called "The Wandering Earth"—mountain climbing is proposed as a metaphor for this contradiction. "It is the nature of intelligent life to climb mountains," inter-dimensional alien explorers explain. But the universe is so unknowable that "we are all always at the foot," and will never reach the peak. In another story, "The Devourer," a character asks, "What is civilization? Civilization is devouring, ceaselessly eating, endlessly expanding." But you can't expand forever; perhaps it would be better, another character suggests, to establish a “self-sufficient, introspective civilization." At the core of Liu's sensibility, in short, is a philosophical interest in the problem of limits. How should we react to the inherent limitations of life? Should we push against them or acquiesce?
但是，終點在哪裏呢？人類無法保存一切；《三體》三部曲的最後一部中，部分情節設定在宇宙熱死亡期間。劉慈欣的故事從兩個不同角度來審視生命：一個是爲生存而頑強鬥爭，一個是在界限內受限制的行爲。在他所有作品中，我最喜歡的是《山》（The Mountain）——在短篇小說集《流浪地球》中有它的英文譯本——此文以登山作爲這個矛盾的隱喻。跨緯度的外星探索者解釋“登山是智慧生命的本質”。但是宇宙神祕而不可知，以至於“我們總是在山腳下，”且永遠也到不了頂峯。在另一個故事《吞食者》中，書中人物問“什麼是文明？文明就是吞食，不停地吃啊吃，不停地擴張和膨脹。”但是你不可能永遠在擴張，另一個人物建議道，也許建立一個“自給自足的、內省的文明”會更好，另一個人物這樣建議。簡而言之，一言以蔽之，劉慈欣的理性內核是對極限問題的哲學思考。我們應該如何應對生命固有的侷限性？我們應該反抗，還是認命？

"Everything ends," Liu said, in his e-mail, "and describing what is inevitable should not be viewed as a form of pessimism. Take the example of a romantic tale: 'The lovers lived happily ever after' would clearly be viewed as an optimistic story. But if you add a coda—'A hundred years later, they were both dead'—does that turn the story pessimistic? Only science fiction can go as far as 'a hundred years later' at the scale of the universe."
劉慈欣在郵件中提到：“沒什麼是永恆的，描述必然性不應當被視爲一種悲觀主義。就拿愛情故事來說，‘戀人從此幸福快樂地生活在一起’我們當然認爲這是一個樂觀的故事。但如果你在結尾再加一句——‘百年過後，他們兩個都去世了’——難道就變成了一個悲觀的故事了嗎？只有科幻小說可以描寫‘百年之後’的浩瀚宇宙。”

Vocabulary
film noir: 黑色電影(一類犯罪影片)
psychedelia: 迷幻物
runaway: 迅猛發展而難以控制的
novella: 短篇小說
exodus: 大批離開
protagonist: 主人公
circumscribed: 受限制的
trilogy: 三部曲
finitude: 限定
introspective: 內省的
coda: 結尾部分