刘慈欣：中国的亚瑟·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.
刘慈欣是中国最受欢迎的科幻作家，现年52岁的他著有13作品。刘慈欣曾担任山西省某发电厂的软件工程师。他在中国的知名度可以和美国科幻作家威廉·吉布森（William Gibson）相媲美。人们常将刘慈欣与亚瑟·克拉克（Arthur C. Clarke）相提并论，而刘慈欣称自己受到了克拉克的影响。刘慈欣最受欢迎的小说《三体》（The Three-Body Problem）已经被美籍华裔科幻作家刘宇昆（Ken Liu）译成了英文。在中国，《三体》三部曲的电影也已在拍摄中。

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."
刘慈欣的作品唤起了人们对探索和宏观之美的兴奋感。在一封经刘宇昆翻译的电子邮件中，刘慈欣告诉我：“在我的想象中，以光年计量的距离和宇宙直径这类抽象概念变成了具体的形象，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，美国科幻小说很大程度上取材于美国文化，包括独立战争、西部荒野、黑色电影、60年代的迷幻风潮，因此，人文科学所构想的未来世界与美国的过去存在很大程度的相似性。对美国读者来说，阅读刘慈欣作品的乐趣之一在于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.
小说《三体》的故事背景大抵都是文化大革命（the Cultural Revolution）期间。在《赡养人类》（The Wages of Humanity）这部小说中，太空来客要求重新分配地球财富，并解释说失控的资本主义几乎摧毁了他们的文明。我不太确定西方科幻作家会如此全面深入地探讨“孝道”这一主题。

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.
刘慈欣作品的特别之处并非在于文化差异。他的故事都是一些有关人类发展的寓言——既是具体的想象，同时又是抽象的概念。在他的短篇小说《中国太阳》（Sun of China）中，主人公是个叫做阿全的年轻小伙子，他来自一个遭受旱灾的贫困乡村。在小说的前三章里，阿全离开了村子，到矿上找工作；接着他又到了一个地级市，在那里学会了擦皮鞋，之后辗转来到北京，当起了一名高楼外墙玻璃清洗工。后来，故事情节出现了一个转折。