小说与文学2020antipope.org编辑精选
又一部我不会再去写的小说
Yet another novel I will no longer write
导读
科幻作家 Charles Stross 讲述自己为何放弃一部已经构思好的小说：COVID-19 疫情让他的病毒灾难设定显得多余，现实给所有人上了一堂生动的疫情应对课。评论区由此展开关于僵尸/灾难题材真正内核的讨论——它从来不是关于病毒，而是关于人群、社会秩序与人性的假设。对写作者而言，这是一份关于「设定背后的世界观预设」的精彩示范。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
现实事件会「偷走」你的点子，但灾难设定的价值不在事件本身，而在你借此表达的人性假设，动笔前先想清楚自己要论证什么。
- 02
类型套路都带着历史包袱与政治预设（例如僵尸片继承的奴隶制恐惧与「精英恐慌」），借用套路时要自觉自己继承了哪些立场。
- 03
危机的可信度取决于社会细节：人们确实会互助，但互助半径有限（邓巴数约 150 人），超出这个范围的「他者」如何被对待才是真正的戏剧张力。
- 04
灾难的规模要设计清楚——1% 的人死亡只是医疗系统压力，只有社会结构真正崩塌，冲突才有分量。
HN 评论精选
僵尸叙事有具体的历史来源与阶级潜意识，主角的「正义暴力」值得被反思。
这位作者对僵尸题材的解读很有意思：僵尸神话源于海地奴隶种植园，明显表达的是奴隶对死后仍被强迫无休止劳作的恐惧；这一叙事被挪用到美国的影视和小说中，与白人殖民者对奴隶起义的恐惧混合。幸存者/主角是观众被要求共情的视角，但他们对付蹒跚尸群的方式，和任何 plantation owner 面对奴隶起义时的反应一样残暴——这体现了一种特殊的美国式认知失调：精英恐慌。
setgree查看英文原文
This is an interesting take on what zombie fiction is about: > The zombie myth has roots in Haitian slave plantations: they're fairly transparently about the slaves' fear of being forced to toil endlessly even after their death. Then this narrative got appropriated and transplanted to America, in film, TV, and fiction. Where it hybridized with white settler fear of a slave uprising. The survivors/protagonists of the zombie plague are the viewpoint the audience is intended to empathize with, but their response to the shambling horde is as brutal and violent as any plantation owner's reaction to their slaves rising, and it speaks to a peculiarly American cognitive disorder, elite panic. Contrast this to Christian Thorne [0], who writes: > Zombie movies are always going to be about crowds. People-in-groups are the genre’s single motivating concern. Other classic movie monsters are like malign superheroes, possessed of special powers, great reserves of speed and strength. What’s peculiar about zombies, when put alongside vampires or werewolves or aliens, is that they are actually weaker than ordinary human beings. They are really easy to kill for a start, because their bodies are already moldering. Their arms will tear clean off. They go down by the dozen. You’re in no danger of being outwitted. They can kill only because they have the numbers, and so that’s the menace that zombie movies are always trying to clarify: The threat of multitudes. I've watched/read a fair bit of zombie stuff, and I think Thorne is more on the mark about modern zombie movies. -- lots of scenes of zombies breaking down barricades or tearing people out of their cars (America's favorite refuge against crowds!). But movies that try harder to have a point, like the original Day of the Dead, lay it on pretty thick that we are the zombies (who, even after death, return to the mall to amble around). Which is, I think, more in-keeping with a 'zombies are slaves doomed to eternal toil' reading. Colson Whitehead's 'Zone One' flips the slave/master dynamic by having a mediocre black protagonist advance in post-zombie society way more than he was ever going to pre-outbreak, because the C student who survives in a low-effort way is more resilient than traditional high-achievers. 0: https://sites.williams.edu/cthorne/articles/the-running-of-the-dead-part-2/
灾难叙事暴露作者的默认人性观，把所有人写成潜在敌人是一种意识形态选择而非写实。
「精英恐慌」指的是有钱有特权的人想象混乱来临时一切社会约束都会崩解、周围所有人都要来抢劫、强奸、杀害他们。这某种程度上反映了他们内心相信人性本就好夺、贪婪、无道德且残忍，而自己的地位依赖权力与暴力——这是一种前启蒙时代贵族，或由暴力奴隶主精英主导的社会才会有的世界观。这一点太切中了。《行尸走肉》把人类写成部落生存至上、遇到的每个陌生人几乎都是强奸犯或食人者、只能被消灭，那种反动和近乎法西斯式的虚无主义令人震惊；我一度怀疑它是不是在反讽，但显然观众并不这么看。
Barrin92查看英文原文
>The survivors/protagonists of the zombie plague are the viewpoint the audience is intended to empathize with, but their response to the shambling horde is as brutal and violent as any plantation owner's reaction to their slaves rising, and it speaks to a peculiarly American cognitive disorder, elite panic. Elite panic is the phenomenon by which rich and/or privileged people imagine that in times of chaos all social constraints break down and everyone around them will try to rob, rape, and murder them. To some extent this reflects their own implicit belief that humanity is by nature grasping, avaricious, amoral, and cruel, and that their status depends on power and violence. It's a world-view you'd expect of unreconstructed pre-Enlightenment aristocrats, or maybe a society dominated by a violent slave-owning elite. This is such a salient point. It's something I've noticed when someone recommended me The Walking dead years ago. It's horrendous how reactionary and borderline fascist that show is in its nihilistic display of humanity where tribal survival is all that matters and every individual encountered is almost certainly some sort of rapist or cannibal and just needs to be stomped out. At one point I was thinking if the show is actually pushing this narrative so hard as to parody it but it certainly doesn't seem to be viewed that way.
互助有规模上限（邓巴数），真正的灾难张力出现在超出熟人共同体的那一层。
这不是标准的僵尸设定。只有 1% 的人染病死亡或挤占医疗资源，并不足以让社会崩溃。僵尸设定是只有 1% 的人未受影响、社会瓦解消失，启蒙时代之后的现代人得在敌对环境中求生。我同意 Stross 说的，危机中人们不会抡起棒球棍砸人头，而会先照顾自己的社群——但这种互助大概到「150 人」这个魔法数字就停止了。超过这个规模，别人就不算朋友了；资源紧缺时我们会怎么对待他们，我可没他那么乐观。看看眼下地中海的局面就知道了，而那还是在资源并不真正紧缺的时候。
bhaak查看英文原文
> And then COVID-19 came along and basically rendered the whole thing unneccessary because we are all getting a real world crash-course in how we deal with people suffering from a viral pandemic, and we do /not/ generally deal with them using shotguns and baseball bats even if they're so contagious that contact might kill us. But that's not the standard zombie scenario. Having 1% of the population being somehow sick and dying or a strain on the medical resources doesn't make society collapse. The zombie scenario is that only 1% of the population is unaffected and society breaks down and disappears and modern humans, humans living after the Enlightement, have to survive in a hostile environment. I agree with Charles Stross that people don't just bash their heads in a crisis but that they start to look after their own community. But this probably stops after we reach the magical number of 150 people. After that, other people are not friends anymore and how we deal with them when resources are scarce, well, I'm not as optimistic as he is. Just look at the current mediterranean situation and that's when resources aren't actually scarce.
同类还值得读
乔治·奥威尔1940年对《我的奋斗》的书评
George Orwell’s 1940 Review of Mein Kampf
这是奥威尔 1940 年对《我的奋斗》的书评，他没有简单谴责，而是认真分析希特勒的宣传手法为何奏效、又暴露了哪些思维特征。
小说与文学2022 · 499 分 · 545 评4 条写作要点编辑精选我们都是极客：尼尔·斯蒂芬森的文学作品
We are all nerds: The literary works of Neal Stephenson
这是一篇讨论 Neal Stephenson 科幻小说的文章，评论区读者围绕《Anathem》《钻石年代》《Snow Crash》等作品，聊世界构建、结尾处理和写作风格的变化。
小说与文学2022 · 307 分 · 220 评4 条写作要点编辑精选用图画写作：理查德·斯卡里与儿童文学的艺术
Writing in Pictures: Richard Scarry and the art of children's literature
这是《耶鲁评论》上漫画家 Chris Ware 写的文章，分析童书作家 Richard Scarry 如何用图画而不是文字来讲故事。
小说与文学2024 · 297 分 · 131 评4 条写作要点编辑精选如何写一部小说
How to Write a Novel
这篇来自 The Millions 的文章讨论写小说的两种路径——“计划派”（planners）与“即兴派”（pantsers，即“跟着感觉走、边写边编”）。
小说与文学2016 · 238 分 · 112 评4 条写作要点编辑精选特德·姜那充满灵魂的科幻小说
Ted Chiang's Soulful Science Fiction
这是《纽约客》一篇写特德·姜的人物报道，探讨他的科幻小说为什么“有灵魂”。
小说与文学2017 · 202 分 · 79 评5 条写作要点编辑精选