小说与文学2017electricliterature.com
反乌托邦小说的兴起
The Rise of Dystopian Fiction
导读
这篇文章梳理了反乌托邦小说从苏联异见作家、七十年代偏执狂潮到村上春树的演变脉络。对写作者来说，它提供了一条类型史的线索：反乌托邦从来不是关于未来的预测，而是关于当下的焦虑与警告。读完可以更清楚地想：你笔下的“坏世界”，究竟在替今天的什么说话。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
反乌托邦的繁荣往往对应一个“没有共同的美好未来愿景”的时代；动笔前先想清楚你相信的“更好的世界”是什么，反面才有真正的靶子。
- 02
把设定从“未来可能发生”挪到“已经在发生的当下”，读者会更被刺痛——写现实中的监控、消费与语言腐化的具体细节，比预测未来更有力。
- 03
警惕一味渲染罪感与绝望：给人物留下靠新知识和勇气解决问题的空间，故事才有张力，而不只是情绪消耗。
- 04
好的反乌托邦同时是政治评论：让读者读完愿意“想一想”，这既是卖点，也是写作目标。
- 05
类型潮流会变，但经典（如《1984》《美丽新世界》）长销的原因是它们描述的不是未来，而是读者认得出的现在。
HN 评论精选
反乌托邦的流行源于我们失去了“更好的世界”的共同愿景，写作者应意识到这一时代缺口。
这在科幻里非常明显：很难想出一本近年出版的乐观科幻。若再排除狼人、吸血鬼、僵尸这类超自然题材，就更难找了。我们时代最大的问题之一是：没有一个关于“可实现的更好世界”的共同愿景，作为一个社会，我们不知道要往哪走。四十到六十年代那些有希望的想法大多被试验过，也在美国大规模实现了——1940年通用汽车的Futurama展描绘1960年，那是在大萧条最深处做出的乐观想象，之后二十年还打了一场大战，可它还是实现了：高速公路、城市扩张都做到了。1964年的Futurama想保持乐观，却完全预测失准：月球基地、北极基地、海底基地、巨型机械在丛林里开路、海水淡化灌溉沙漠，全都停在原型阶段。七十年代科幻热衷大型太空居留地，也走不下去，入轨成本太高。今天几乎没人认真去定义一个更好的未来。
Animats查看英文原文
This is very true in SF. It's hard to think of a recent optimistic SF book. If you exclude all the paranormal stuff (werewolves/vampires/zombies/etc), it's even harder. One of the biggest problems we have today is that there's no shared vision of an achievable better world. As a society, we don't know where to go. Most of the promising ideas from the 1940-1960s have been tried, and most achieved in the US. See the original General Motors Futurama from 1940, which was supposed to be a vision of 1960.[1] This optimism was during the depths of the Great Depression, the next 20 years contained a big war, and yet it all happened. Freeways - did that. Spreading out cities - did that. Tall buildings spaced far apart in open space - tried that, didn't work out well. Most of those goals were achieved at scale. The 1964 GM Futurama [2] tries to be optimistic, but it totally missed as prediction. Moon bases. Arctic bases. Undersea bases. Roads through jungles built by giant mobile machines. Desalinization plants irrigating the desert. Extreme urban sprawl. "Neither terrain nor distance a deterrent to where men of the city build their homes." None of that got beyond the prototype stage. Nobody quite knew where to go from there. In the 1970s, SF had an enthusiasm for big space habitats. That went nowhere; lift cost to orbit is just too high. Today, nobody is even trying very hard to define a better future. (Well, Musk talks about colonizing Mars, but, face it, as real estate, Mars sucks. If you could get to Mars for free right now, it wouldn't be worth developing. Few deserts are, even ones with air.) [1] https://youtu.be/tAz4R6F0aaY?t=462 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-5aK0H05jk
经典反乌托邦已从“预言”变成“描述当下”，这正是它们重新流行的原因。
说到《1984》和《美丽新世界》，我认为它们在当年是反乌托邦，现在不是了。缺的那块拼图是技术（包括监控技术），而这块我们不久前补上了，于是大洋国和世界国成了现实，接下来只等当选的政治家去落实某一版本。世界上越来越多的地方看起来、感觉起来像《1984》，而西方世界的一大部分已经活在了《美丽新世界》里。这些书如今这么受欢迎，大概不是因为它们预言了我们的未来，而是因为奥威尔和赫胥黎准确描述了今天我们生活的世界。
delegate查看英文原文
Talking about 1984 and A Brave New World, I think these might have been dystopian in the past, but not now. Technology (including surveillance technology) was the missing piece and we've closed that gap not long ago, making Oceania and World State a reality. Now its up to the elected politicians to implement a particular incarnation of one of these novels. There are more and more places in the world which look and feel like 1984 (or are quickly getting there), while a big chunk of the 'western' world lives in a Brave New World already. I guess these books are so popular now not because of what might happen to our world in the future, but because of how accurately Orwell and Huxley described the world we live in today.
质疑反乌托邦叙事一味制造罪感，主张故事应保留“靠知识与勇气解决问题”的希望。
道格拉斯·亚当斯说过类似的话：如果电影设定在不久的将来、洛杉矶某天灰蒙蒙还下着雨，你就知道这是反乌托邦片。我对洛杉矶没意见，只是我以前以为反乌托邦科幻的目的是阻止糟糕的未来发生；后来又觉得它的目的是让我们普遍地谦卑下来，从而停止发明新技术、别再冒险破坏环境。现在我认为我们恰恰需要技术来保护环境。我也好奇：一部接一部暗示我们有多罪恶多堕落的电影，对西方人的心理会有什么影响。我给孩子读的故事只要老派的圆满结局：危机发生，英雄靠新知识和勇气克服它。
roceasta查看英文原文
Douglas Adams commented something along the lines of you can tell you're watching a dystopian movie if it's a grey day in Los Angeles at some point in the near future, and it's raining. Nothing against LA, but I think I used to assume that the point of dystopian sci-fi was to try to prevent nasty futures from happening. Then I sort of got the idea that the point was to generally make us more humble so that we'd stop creating new technology and thus risking the environment. Now I think we absolutely need technology to protect the environment. I also wonder what the effect of film-after-film implying how guilty and wicked we are has on the Western psyche. I only read stories to my kids that have good old-fashioned happy endings. A crisis occurs and the heroes overcome it by finding new knowledge and bravery.
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