Chapter 14 Book Review "The Science Fiction We Need"

If you want to have a dream that you will never forget, I can introduce an experience: On a winter night (preferably in our northern winter), go to a large empty and dark warehouse with no heating and the temperature is close to freezing, and sleep in a On a hard plank bed, the less cover the better, it’s just not too cold for you to fall asleep.The dreams of this night must be of high quality, and the dreams in the cold are the most realistic, and when you wake up, the cold will make you unable to distinguish dreams from reality. Just one such dream. In this dream, you are standing in a black and white universe. The white one is the endless ice sheet below, the black one is the bottomless space above, and the darker one is the dead sun. On the black disc, there are interlaced cracks that emit a dark red light.The few of you are sleepwalking on this ice field, your eyes are dull, and the little black stone that controls your consciousness reflects the cold light of stars behind your head.You see the black towers and temples that were left hundreds of millions of years ago, and the yellow eyes of the monsters on the black walls of the temples are staring at you... This place may be millions of light years away from the earth, and this time is already far away from our reality For one billion years, in the unimaginably distant homeland of the earth, human civilization has long since disappeared, and the earth itself may not exist anymore.In the entire cold and silent universe, you are left, a few human beings sleepwalking dully on the frozen ocean under the black sun... This is the world Williamson created for us, a world that is both frightening and fascinating.

Why read science fiction?For ordinary readers, this is a 1+1=2 problem, but it is also the same problem. For the Chinese science fiction world, it is the Goldbach conjecture of science fiction literature, and the century-old science fiction in China is like a gossamer. In history, there are different answers in different periods. So far, Chinese science fiction people are still puzzled by this question. This is also a fundamental problem of science fiction, and it is the cornerstone of the existence of this genre of literature.Although it cannot bring a clear answer to this question, it has given us a lot of enlightenment.

The earliest answer to this question came from Mr. Lu Xun, who believed that science fiction could popularize science and drive away ignorance in China.It is undeniable that this was a great insight under the historical conditions at that time. For China at that time, it may have greater significance than those later more reasonable insights. In fact, at that time, if science fiction literature in China chose other The goal is stupid, even inexcusable.This theory lasted until the 1950s. At that time, the theory that should have fulfilled its historical mission became stronger and more utilitarian. Science fiction became a tool for children to learn scientific knowledge. In fact, science fiction still has this image in the eyes of many people.So, what scientific knowledge can readers learn from it?Maybe I can learn some, but what I get more is misleading.Even from a less strict scientific point of view, those spaceships that encounter the gravitational field of the star in the wave state flight and return to the normal state from the wave state, and those on the black sun planets that can still control the longevity of the thinking of different planetary species after billions of years Stone, can not stand the minimum scrutiny.

In the 1980s, a second answer to the question of why one should read science fiction finally appeared: to gain a deeper understanding of society on the background of science fiction.Yes, there are a lot of human nature and society in the movie. That spaceship is a microcosm of human society, selfishness, narrowness, greed, intrigue, corruption, etc. can all be found in it. Among the Western science fiction works of the late age, the characters in this novel are also relatively vivid.But if you remember the novel decades later, it's certainly not those things.If someone really wants to read it for these reasons, he'd better buy a set of "Human Comedy". As for humanity and society, Balzac's points are more profound than this book.In fact, you may not remember any of the characters in this novel decades later, but you will never forget the fear and confusion of human beings as a whole in this cold and silent world under the black sun.

There is another answer to why we should read science fiction: it can make us mentally prepare for the various futures facing human beings, so that we can prevent or at least calmly face future disasters in advance.What is described is indeed the future, and it is indeed a disaster, but it is a disaster in a world millions of light-years away from the earth in the future billions of years from now. Judging from the quality level of our sun, it is in Life would end in a completely different way then, and if civilization existed on Earth by then, it would end in fire rather than in freezing cold.It is somewhat far-fetched to describe such a future catastrophe as a way to strengthen our psychological endurance.

But despite this, why does it fascinate us?The answer is simple, we want to go there, to the world under the black sun that Williamson created for us a million light years away and a billion years later, we voluntarily handed over this black longevity stone to Williamson Stick it on your forehead so that you can sleepwalk under its control. Sometimes we suspect that God may be a science fiction writer, because the task of science fiction is to create different worlds, although for science fiction these worlds can only exist in the imagination.In fact, early science fiction didn't try to create whole worlds, but was content to create something, like Verne's big machines.Later, science fiction developed from the creation of large machines to the creation of the world, marking the leap of science fiction literature from engineers to creators.But the work of the creator is not easy. There are only a handful of imaginary worlds left in the history of science fiction that can be called classics, just like the characters such as Hamlet and Don Quixote left in the history of literature. That leaves Asimov's Galactic Empire, Clarke's Rama Spaceship, and Herbert's Dune Planet.Not long after it was born, we certainly cannot say that its world can become a classic, but we can be sure that this world is created extremely well.

Why are you climbing?Because the mountains are there; why do you read science fiction?Because the world in sci-fi isn't there!Yes, the imaginary worlds created by the masters of science fiction appeal to us because of their alienation, or their distance from reality.In the gray life day after day, we deeply feel the boredom and narrowness of reality, and long to copy our own individual life in geometric progression to fill the entire universe like mist, and experience the mystery and splendor of countless other worlds for ourselves. , Experience countless different lives in other times and in other spaces. Only imagination and fantasy can make us realize this wish indirectly, which is the main source of the attraction of science fiction.

In previous science fiction theories, the imaginary world in science fiction mainly emphasizes two points: one is its logical self-consistency, making the imaginary world a closed system that can operate perfectly logically.This is almost the work of scientists, the more obvious example being non-Euclidean geometry, which was later used extensively in geographic cartography and theoretical physics by mathematicians who created them only to obtain a logical self The world of geometry is satisfying; the second is the extraordinary and strangeness of the imaginary world. It is necessary to distance these worlds from reality and shock readers with the huge gap between them and reality.Many classic works in the history of sci-fi have achieved these two points, but they have not produced great repercussions in China after their introduction. The reason may be that these works have intentionally or unintentionally ignored the third point: the distance between the imaginary world and reality. grasp.

First of all, it is necessary to explain the "distance" mentioned here. This is not a physical distance, but refers to the strength and freedom of imagination and fantasy. The Star Wars franchise is clearly set in a faraway place, in "another space, another time," in Lucas's words at the beginning of the film's novel, but what he describes is nothing more than adding lightsabers and Spaceships are in the middle ages of the earth, so this is science fiction that is very close to reality.Hal Clement described such a hypothetical creature in "Critical Factors", which is not familiar to domestic readers. They are liquid, shapeless, seep and flow in the stratum, and flow through a stratum cavity through the roof of the cave. The drop of water found gravity... In the novel, this kind of creature lives in the stratum of the earth, but the distance between this imaginary world and reality is very far.

The imaginary world in science fiction must not be too close to reality, otherwise it will lose its charm and even the meaning of existence; but the distance between the imaginary world and reality should not be too far, otherwise readers will not be able to grasp it.Creating an imaginary world is like launching a satellite. If the speed is too low, it will fall back to the ground, and if the speed is too high, it will escape into the void. The imaginary world of science fiction can only be truly alive if it finds the balance between reality and imagination.And it's especially good at this.

Looking at the various elements of the composed world separately, the gap between them and reality is not too great.First of all, the black sun, like an extinguishing coal in space, is much more intuitive than another kind of dead star—black hole; It is neither unfamiliar nor novel to the people on earth... All these images can be truly constructed in the brain by readers relying on reality, which gives readers a realistic crutch, enabling them to move freely in that imaginary world without hindrance. sleepwalking.But the world composed of these factors has a huge gap with the reality, it is so extraordinary, so shuddering, so that we can really feel the vast and deep chill.This feature is especially valuable for Chinese readers who have relatively little experience in science fiction reading. The fire of science fiction in China was ignited by Western works, and to this day, the best science fiction novels in the memory of our science fiction fans still come from the West.But things have changed in recent years, and modern science fiction in the West (mainly the United States) has done the opposite in China.In the past, most of the Western science fiction read by Chinese readers were works before the 1960s. In order to change this situation, the domestic science fiction publishing industry has translated and published a considerable number of recent foreign science fiction novels, most of which are the peak of American science fiction in recent years. made.Domestic sci-fi fans are ecstatic to read it first, but the result is that their hot faces are put on their cold butts. From these beautifully decorated novels, they can no longer feel the past from Jules Verne, Wells, Assi The shock and joy felt in the works of Moff and Clark, what they see are only obscure metaphors and fragmented dreams, and the imaginary world of science fiction has become dark and hazy.In front of works such as "Standing on Zanzibar", "Raging Star Tide", and "The Man in the High City", most domestic readers have a reading obstacle and frustration, which may also make latecomers stay away from science fiction. But there is an exception. It was first published in the United States in 1998. It can be said that it is a very new work, but it brings us a long-lost pleasure in the golden age of science fiction. Step into that imaginary world without barriers. Let us think about such a question: What kind of science fiction works do we really need now?For the current state of American science fiction, the domestic science fiction circles are appreciative, thinking that this is a sign of the maturity of science fiction as a literature. These peak American works have no market in China, just because our readers are too low. .As everyone knows, young readers in the United States can't understand those works, so their young people seldom read science fiction.It's incomprehensible that our sci-fi community still appreciates the fact that American sci-fi readers are older, and expects that the sci-fi readership living in China will one day be like this.Doesn't anyone think about it, when all the old sci-fi fans in the United States over the age of 40 are dead (it doesn't seem like it will take long), who else will read their sci-fi novels?In fact, the younger age of domestic science fiction readers is the hope of Chinese science fiction, but we regard it as a regrettable thing, which cannot but be said to be very regrettable.For such a readership, what we need are novels like this that are both connotative and readable. Williamson, who received the rocket-shaped trophy on the Hugo podium last year, won the science fiction Nobel Prize for "The Last Earth," a film with equal clarity and crispness. style works.Of course, this is just my imagination, and Williamson may not be able to accept the award, because he was ninety years old at this time.This reminds me of a saying someone said to science fiction fans: People who are exposed to science fiction often look younger than they really are. If this happens to you, please don't be surprised. Liu Cixin