小说与文学2022bloodknife.com
墙上的字迹：科幻小说空洞的技术乐观主义
The Writing on the Wall: Sci-Fi’s Empty Techno-Optimism
导读
这篇文章批评“Project Hieroglyph”这类由官方资助、要求作家描绘技术乐观未来的科幻创作计划，认为它把科幻窄化成了宣传工具。几位资深读者和科幻作家在评论中指出：伟大科幻不必描绘更好的未来，也不必承担说教功能；把类型小说当成“激励工程”本身才值得商榷。对写作者而言，这是一堂关于“创作目的与作品价值”的清醒课。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
不要为某个外部“使命”或宣传目标写作，说教型创作目的会窄化你的想象力和作品的可能性。
- 02
作品不必描绘“更好的未来”或给出光明结论；反乌托邦、现实主义的阴暗叙事同样有力量，甚至更诚实。
- 03
“work the problem”（一步步解决问题）这类务实细节，比宏大愿景更能打动读者、激发真实行动。
- 04
不要居高临下地评判那些“不够深刻”的流行作品；它们的可及性恰恰是影响力的来源。
HN 评论精选
伟大科幻不必描绘光明未来，也不该被“激励未来”的教条绑架。
把威廉·吉布森的作品当作“美好未来”的例证是误读，我读到的不是这样。伟大的科幻不必描绘更好的未来，也不必遵守“什么才算伟大”的教条——从 HG 威尔斯到今天，最好的作品都在打破规则。《星际迷航》《地海》《乌尔斯》可能算不上硬科学，但确实是伟大的小说。另外，文章对安迪·威尔居高临下的批评也没必要：《火星救援》是近年最鼓舞人心的科学故事之一，一个受它启发的少年，也许会成为最早登上火星、开展重要科研的人之一。
ilamont查看英文原文
Examples include Isaac Asimov’s robots, Robert Heinlein’s rocket ships, and William Gibson’s cyberspace.” He called these examples hieroglyphs: clear, inspiring symbols of what a better future might hold. William Gibson writing about a better future? That's not what I saw in his books, but great science fiction doesn't have to portray a better future. In my opinion, great science fiction doesn't have to follow dogma, either. Some of the best works have ignored standard rules of "what makes great X", starting with HG Wells and up to the present day. Star Trek and Earthsea and Urth may not be great science, but they are truly fantastic fiction. ETA: I also thought the condescending swipe at Andy Weir is unnecessary. He wrote one of the most inspiring stories in recent years about science and spaceflight ... yet it doesn't even count as science fiction? ("But whatever you call it, The Martian’s space-hackery certainly couldn’t have inspired anyone “to develop new technologies and implement them on a heroic scale.”) Seriously, an adolescent inspired by The Martian may very well be one of the first humans to walk on Mars and carry out important science.
把类型小说当成宣传或教育工具，是对创作本身的误解。
我是科幻作家，曾被邀请参加 Project Hieroglyph，但拒绝了，因为它的明确任务是写盲目乐观的技术乐观主义，而不是写更可能发生的未来的现实主义描写。批评一个宣传项目“是宣传”，本身就很荒谬。文章还落入一个经典陷阱：假设某一类型小说必须承担说教和教育功能。雨果·根斯巴克和约翰·坎贝尔或许宣称过这样的意图，但他们都是各自意识形态的鼓吹者，代表不了整个领域（何况坎贝尔已去世五十年）。
cstross查看英文原文
SF author here: I was invited to participate in Project Hieroglyph and declined to do so, because the explicit remit was essentially to write panglossian techno-optimism rather than downbeat realist-mode depictions of our more likely futures. Attacking a propaganda exercise for being propaganda seems, well, a trifle spurious ...! (Also: essay falls into the classic pitfall of assuming that a genre of fiction has to be didactic and educational. Hugo Gernsback and John W. Campbell might have declared that to be their intentions, but both of them were propagandists for their own peculiar ideological shibboleths, and they don't speak for the field as a whole. Oh, and Campbell died 50 years ago.)
“work the problem”正是现实解决问题的方式，文章既不懂工程也不懂科幻。
这篇文章让我读得越读越觉得自己变笨了。《火星救援》还不够激励人投身科学吗？只因为它用聪明点子“work the problem”？现实中解决问题几乎只有这一条路——服务器宕机，work the problem；数据看不懂，work the problem；被困火星，work the problem。然后作者又谈现实、谈科幻如何不匹配现实？把政治现实纳入大规模技术问题的解决恰恰非常重要；说科幻（安迪·威尔、星际迷航、尼尔·斯蒂芬森都是好例子）没有处理这一点，是浅薄的分析。《火星救援》主要是冒险故事，但《万福玛丽计划》大量处理政治现实，TNG 也谈社会议题，最好的几集正是围绕这些展开。作为工程师、老科幻迷、正在转行学生物信息学的人，这篇文章像是从未真正动手做过东西的人写的。
jaegerpicker查看英文原文
Not to be offensive but this article made me feel dumber just reading it. THE MARTIAN isn't enough to inspire people to pursue science? Why? Because it uses clever ideas to "work the problem"? I'm not sure about his background but that is pretty much the only way to solve problems in the real world. Servers down you "work the problem", a researcher who doesn't understand why data looks like it does - "work the problem", trapped on Mars - "work the problem". Then he talks about reality and how Sci-Fi doesn't match up with reality!? Including political realities is absolutely important when designing technology to solve large scale problems. Acting like SciFi (Andy Weir, Star Trek, and Neil Stephenson are all good examples) doesn't address that is a shitty shallow analysis. The Martian, is mostly an adventure story but Project Hail Mary deals with the political reality heavily and TNG talked about political reality and social issues and in fact the best episodes revolved around that. As someone that is an engineer, a life long SciFi fan, and am studying to change careers as a scientist (Biology/Data Science) this article reads seems pretty terrible as analysis/criticism of Sci-Fi like someone that has never actually built anything.
技术乐观主义只是科幻的一个子类型，刻意用它塑造未来既天真又窄化。
未来以难以预测著称，试图用科幻刻意塑造它，近乎堂吉诃德式的空想。正如科幻作家阿尔吉斯·布德里斯在 1960 年代所说：“黄金时代”科幻反复出现的倾向是：纯粹的技术成就就能解决所有问题，欢呼吧，而且所有问题都如表象所见。技术乐观主义只是科幻的一个类型，不是主流类型。我 1970 年代初开始读科幻，是太空时代的孩子，吸收了不少那种乐观情绪，但少年时也读到一些令人恐惧的科幻——光哈兰·埃里森那篇《无声狂啸》的标题就够吓人了，它 1968 年获雨果奖，讲的是超级计算机 AM 导致人类近乎灭绝，并因自身痛苦向人类复仇。我后来才发现菲利普·K·迪克。
mwattsun查看英文原文
The future is notoriously hard to predict and attempting to deliberately shape it with SF seems like a quixotic idea. As the sci-fi writer Algis Budrys put it in the 1960s, the “recurrent strain in ‘Golden Age’ science fiction [was] the implication that sheer technological accomplishment would solve all the problems, hooray, and that all the problems were what they seemed to be on the surface.” Techno-optimism is one genre of Science Fiction, but not the dominant genre. I started reading Science Fiction in the early 70's. I was a space age kid and picked a lot of that optimism, but I read some SF as a teen that was horrifying. Just the title of Harlan Elisons story is horrifying "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream". It won the Hugo Award in 1968. Allied Mastercomputer (AM), the supercomputer which brought about the near-extinction of humanity. It seeks revenge on humanity for its own tortured existence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth,_and_I_Must_Scream https://wjccschools.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/01/I-Have-No-Mouth-But-I-Must-Scream-by-Harlan-Ellison.pdf I didn't even discover PK Dick until later in life.
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