小说与文学2012newyorker.com
威廉·吉布森：在科幻中预见未来
William Gibson: Seeing the Future in Science Fiction
导读
这是《纽约客》对科幻作家威廉·吉布森的人物报道，讲他如何在科幻中“看见未来”。值得写作者读：它展示了一种写法——不预言遥远的技术奇观，而是捕捉技术融入日常生活那一刻的细微变化，这正是让“未来感”可信的关键。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
写“未来”不要堆砌奇观，要写技术如何像日用品一样自然嵌进生活，让人毫无察觉。
- 02
像吉布森那样“逐句向当下收敛”：每一句都紧贴眼前的细节，未来感会自己浮现。
- 03
用读者熟悉的具体物件（如老式转盘电话）作参照，能让陌生的技术变化变得可感。
- 04
晦涩不等于深刻；读者被挡在门外，再好的构思也传不到人。
HN 评论精选
技术越是自然地融入生活、越显得平淡，写科幻就越难——未来感往往藏在“毫无察觉”的日常里。
让我高兴的一点是，日常生活里有确凿迹象表明我确实活在童年想象中的未来：手机、笔记本、我的工作，这些东西当年不仅不是现在这样，连早期版本都不存在。例外大概是我的 iPhone——它有个前身，就是家里那部带螺旋线的沉重机械转盘电话（我还记得号码 0345-12119）。但这恰恰说明技术演进多快：如今手机不仅能通话，还能接入庞大的信息库、预约理发和出行，几乎能搞定生活里的一切。日常技术最优雅之处，是它以自然又经济的方式融入我们的生活。这既让好的科幻小说很难写，也让我们很难体会技术每年进化得有多快。智能手机是我手臂和心智的自然延伸，我的身体刚好适配我的车，在众多联系方式之间我几乎不做有意识的选择——顺手拿起手机，Skype、Facebook、邮件、Gtalk、Twitter，哪个方便用哪个，却很少想到这些几年前都还不存在。
martinkallstrom查看英文原文
One thing I am very happy about is the undeniable signs in my everyday life that tell me that I without a doubt now live in the future of my childhood. My phone, laptop, my work are all things that not only didn't exist as they are back then, but didn't even exist in earlier versions. The exception, in one way, is my iphone which had a precursor in our heavy mechanic rotary dial landline telephone with spiral cord back home (still remember our phone number - 0345-12119). But it is just an example of how extremely fast technology has moved, since my phone now serves me with not just the ability to talk to others but to access vast libraries of information, schedule my haircut and transportation, and just about anything at all in life. One of the most elegant qualities about everyday technology is how it fits into our lives in a very natural and economical manner. This is both what makes it very hard to write good science fiction, and what makes it hard to simply appreciate how quickly technology evolves every year. My smartphone is a natural extension of both my arm and my mind, my body just fits into my car and I rarely make a concious choice between the numerous different ways I have to get in touch with any of my acquaintances. I just reach for my cellphone, skype, facebook, email, gtalk, twitter etc whatever is more convenient without much thought about how none of those existed just a few years ago. This brings to me a deep awe and trust in my current future. I am very comfortable to say that in ten and twenty years I will be equally satisfied with the mind blowing pace of tech evolution. And it makes it even more awesome that every step on the way will fit so perfectly into my life that it is only in hindsight I will recognize the sheer magnitude of it's awesomeness.
吉布森靠“逐句向当下收敛”写出未来感，细节的密度比宏大预言更重要。
吉布森的推特账号很值得一看（@GreatDismal）。他推文里那些零散冷僻的琐碎细节，是理解他科幻风格的窗口。他之所以擅长“在科幻中看见未来”，是因为他总在向眼前的瞬间收敛——我说的是一句到下一句、一部到下一部那样的短程收敛。在我看来，《零历史》《幽灵国度》《模式识别》（即“Bigend 三部曲”）比《神经漫游者》更科幻。
orbitingpluto查看英文原文
Gibson has a great twitter feed: https://twitter.com/#!/GreatDismal The disjoint collection of esoteric minutia on his feed is a window into Gibson's brand of science fiction. The reason he is so good at 'seeing the future in science fiction' is that he is always converging onto an immediate moment. And I mean that in the short term, from sentence to sentence, and from novel to novel. IMHO, Zero History, Spook Country and Pattern Recognition (the Bigend trilogy) are more sci-fi than Neuromancer.
晦涩不等于深刻；可读性直接决定读者能否进入你的世界。
我刚开始读“螺旋”三部曲，这是我第一次读吉布森的小说，觉得它们生硬造作又令人困惑。我跟别人聊过，至今没人反对。我也想找出这种写法背后的理由，但找不到……像是为了让人困惑而故意写得困惑。书还是好书（几天前我刚读完《神经漫游者》），我会推荐给本来就爱科幻的读者。但我也认为它们代表了科幻最糟糕的一面：不只是难读，对非硬核读者简直劝退。《安德的游戏》恰好相反——算不上伟大的科幻，但非常好读，不管你如何看待科幻，都会喜欢上安德，并深深关心他的故事。
latch查看英文原文
I just started reading the Sprawl trilogy, my first Gibson novels. I find them contrived and confusing. I've talked to others about this, and so far no one has disagreed. Also, I've tried to see a reason for it to be like this, and I can't...confusing for the sake of being confusing. They are still good books (I finished Neuromancer a few days ago) and I'd recommended them to people who are already into science fiction. Having said that, I hope you'll understand when I say that I also consider them the worst that science fiction has to offer. They aren't only inaccessible but actually off putting to anyone but a dedicated reader. I'm not a fan of it, but Ender's Game is the exact opposite. Not great science fiction, but very accessible. Whatever your thoughts on SciFi, you'll fall in love with Ender and take a very deep interest in his story.
写作者可以靠想象写出超越亲历的东西，但亲历的粗糙细节往往会打破想象。
我在某处读到，吉布森写《神经漫游者》时从没拥有过电脑，所以对电脑的能力还抱着一些理想化的想象。等他终于有了一台 Macintosh，开机时软驱机械的旋转和嗡嗡声让他很失望。
damian2000查看英文原文
I read somewhere that when Gibson wrote Neuromancer he had never owned a computer and so still had some lofty ideals of what they were capable of. When he finally got a Macintosh, the mechanical spinning and whirring of the floppy during boot disappointed him.
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