小说与文学2020lewisiana.nl编辑精选
科学家掌权：乔治·奥威尔评《那可怕的力量》（1945）
The Scientists Take Over: George Orwell Reviews “That Hideous Strength” (1945)
导读
这是奥威尔 1945 年对 C.S. 路易斯《那骇人的力量》的书评：他既指出小说在人物与情节上的缺陷，也敏锐地看到书中那批以“改良社会”为名施行暴政的科学家与计划者。这篇值得写作者读，是因为它示范了如何一边公正地挑作品的毛病，一边提炼出作品真正的思想内核——很多人把它看作《1984》诞生前的某种精神前传。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
给反派写动机时，用“进步”“改良”“为了大家好”这类自我正当化，比直白的恶意更可信、更令人不寒而栗。
- 02
写书评或评论时，把被评作品与另一部作品对照（如《那骇人的力量》对《1984》），既完成评价又顺手记下自己的创作思路。
- 03
宏大主题要落在一个具体机构、委员会、项目上，让抽象的“时代转折”通过场景和人物行为显形。
- 04
实用小技巧：向某个委员会写信投诉时，只提一条诉求，比罗列一堆问题更有力、更容易被接受。
HN 评论精选
把作品放在与《1984》的对照中读，并提炼出“进步话语遮蔽代价”的主题和“一条投诉”的实用建议。
我一直喜欢这篇书评，读起来像是《那骇人的力量》与当时还没写出来的《1984》之间的对照。就小说本身而言，我把它看作一部精神上的前传：如果说《1984》是已经实现的敌托邦，那这本就是敌托邦正在诞生的时刻。它不完美，奥威尔也指出了，但它站在战前与战后世界的十字路口，或许正是我们所谓“现代性”的起点；据我所知，它也是最后一部前原子时代的科幻小说，作品本身和那个时代一样处于过渡之中。更具体地说，它提供了一个审视“进步”观念的框架：进步（以及那些把自己干的事称作进步的人）多么容易对被取代之物的价值视而不见，并对被抛下的人报以轻蔑。今天这类事我们更可能叫它“颠覆式创新”，动态虽不同，相似之处仍在。最后，我从第一章一句顺带的注释里学到一条很好的建议：给某个委员会写信投诉，只提一条意见，会更有力、更容易被接受。
fennecfoxen查看英文原文
I always liked this review because it reads like a diff between _That Hideous Strength_ and _1984_ (not yet written). I like the book itself as a sort of spiritual prequel. If 1984 is the dystopia realized, THS is the dystopia as it is born. It's an interesting work. It's flawed, as Orwell notes, but it stands at the crossroads between the prewar and postwar worlds, at the very beginning, perhaps, of what we would recognize as Modernity. To the best of my knowledge, it is the last work of pre-atomic sci-fi. The work itself is as transitional as the time period. In more concrete terms, it provides a frame on the notion of Progress, and how easily Progress (and those in charge of calling their work Progress) can turn a blind eye to the merits of what is being replaced, with contemptuous disdain for those it leaves behind. (Today we may be more likely to call this sort of thing "Disruption," and while there are real differences in the dynamic, there are similarities too.) Finally, there's just one small piece of very good advice I extracted from an incidental note in the first chapter — if you write a letter to a committee of some sort, complaining, it will be much stronger and go over better if you limit yourself to a single complaint.
最可怕的暴政动机是把压迫包装成“为你好”的社会改良。
我一直喜欢这部小说，因为它刻画了这样一类人：他们为暴政辩护的理由是“改良社会”，而全然不顾社会成员是否愿意被改良。
steve_g查看英文原文
I've always liked this novel for its depiction of people whose justification for tyranny is "improving society", regardless of how the members of society feel about being improved.
权力欲者会组织起来，普通人需要保持警惕——这是敌托邦写作的现实依据。
奥威尔这句“我们时代有不少人怀着刘易斯先生赋予其人物的那种骇人的权力之梦，而我们已能看到这些梦想变得可实现的时刻”，我很喜欢。在我看来这很明显，正如对他也很明显：在几十亿人的星球上，总有一些人渴望权力，并会彼此勾结以更好地推行他们的图谋。其余的人应当保持警觉，阻止他们攫取权力，因为他们通常对旁人毫无共情。
brobdingnagians查看英文原文
> Plenty of people in our age do entertain the monstrous dreams of power that Mr. Lewis attributes to his characters, and we are within sight of the time when such dreams will be realisable. I love this statement. It seems quite obvious to me, as it did to him, that out of a planet of billions of people, some of those would be power hungry and organize themselves together for better carrying out their schemes. The rest of us should be vigilant in preventing them from rising in power, since they usually have little empathy for the rest of us.
借神话原型（伊甸园、亚特兰蒂斯）重构故事，读者往往要读第二遍才能察觉。
对我来说《那骇人的力量》是他太空三部曲中最难读的一本；我最喜欢《佩兰德拉》，但那是读第二遍时朋友提醒我它是对伊甸园的重写之后（第一遍读时我太年轻，没看出来）。《沉寂的星球》之所以有意思，是因为“沉寂”指的是地球：它对外部世界保持沉默，因为那些外界者选择避开它泛滥的恶。顺带一提，三部曲源于 C.S. 路易斯与托尔金的约定：两人各写一套科幻，路易斯写太空三部曲，托尔金写时间旅行故事。托尔金要写一个英格兰旅人在努门诺尔（阿拉贡先祖之地）沉没前造访那里，结局类似亚特兰蒂斯。路易斯完成了，托尔金没有，不过大量材料后来由他儿子编入中土历史卷中出版。
hcrisp查看英文原文
That Hideous Strength is, to me, the most challenging of his space trilogy. I liked Perelandra best, but only after reading it a second time when a friend pointed out that it was a reimagining of the garden of Eden (I was too young to pick up on that during the first read). Out of the Silent Planet is interesting since the reference is to Earth and how it remains "silent" to those outside of it who choose to avoid its rampant evil. Incidentally the trilogy came about when C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien agreed to write separate sci-fi series - Lewis would write a space trilogy and Tolkien a time-travel one [0]. Tolkien was to write of a traveler from England who visited Numenor (the land of Aragorn's sires) before it drowned in a fate similar to Atlantis. Lewis completed his, but Tolkien did not although much of the material was published in a volume on the history of Middle Earth by his son, Christopher. (Lewis referred to his friend as "that great but dilatory and unmethodical man".) Tolkien's experiment did result in the development of the idea of the Fall of Numenor which did get incorporated into the Lord of the Rings saga. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Road_and_Other_Writings
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