小说与文学2013news.ycombinator.com
Ask HN：你读些什么文学作品？
Ask HN: What literature do you read?
导读
这是 Hacker News 上一则“你读什么文学作品”的问答，评论者分享了从黑塞、吉姆·汤普森到科幻三部曲的私人书单，并顺带谈了对写作本身的观察。对写作者的价值在于：它示范了如何从阅读中提炼可用的写作标准——第一人称的沉浸感、紧凑凌厉的文字、主题的预见性，以及科幻最致命的“不可信”问题。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
第一人称要贴着角色的处境写：让读者成为那个又蠢又怕、杀手就在身后的小混混，沉浸感来自视角与危机的高度重合。
- 02
把“紧凑、凌厉”（taut）当成风格目标：吉布森三部曲被读者视为写作范本，说明密度与节奏本身就是可学习的手艺。
- 03
类型写作的底线是可信：科幻设定再宏大，一旦“根本不可信”就垮掉，细节必须经得起推敲。
- 04
用长系列观察主题如何在社会、神话、宗教、道德与技术等层面逐层展开，再反哺自己的选题。
HN 评论精选
第一人称加绝境处境能制造强烈沉浸感，结尾的“反套路”让读者久久难忘。
赫尔曼·黑塞的《玻璃球游戏》非常精彩。想体验“脑洞大开”的话，可以看看吉姆·汤普森的犯罪小说：第一人称，你是又蠢又怕的小混混，想杀你的人就在身后，大多数书最后一句就是你被抓住干掉。读完要一两天才能从书里的现实里缓过来。
bsenftner查看英文原文
Herman Hesse "The Glass Bead Game" is incredible. For great mind fucks, check out the crime fiction of Jim Thompson: 1st person, you're a petty crook, dumb & scared, people trying to kill you are right behind you, and most the books end with you being caught and killed in the last sentence. It takes a day or two to shake off his books' reality.
系列长篇让主题在千年尺度上展开，跨类型阅读互相滋养。
读完《权力的游戏》后想多读些系列，就转向了科幻：从《沙丘》开始（加五本），接着《安德的游戏》（加三本续集），现在在读《基地》（加五本）。这些书都横跨数千年，触及社会、神话、宗教、道德以及身心技术的不同观念。此外还喜欢一些经典文学：《禅与摩托车维修艺术》、詹姆斯·克拉维尔、村上春树，以及关于费曼的书。
enra查看英文原文
After reading Game of Thrones I wanted to read more book series, so went with science fiction ones: Started with: Dune, by Frank Herbert (+ 5 books in the series) Continued to: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (+ 3 sequels) Now reading: Foundation by Isaac Asimov (+ 5 books) All those are pretty great in sense of that they take set in span of thousands of years, and touch bit different ideas around society, myths, religion, morals, physical and mental technologies. Other than that, been been enjoying some classic literature, Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, James Clavell, Haruki Murakami and books about Richard Feynman.
好故事能把社会议题（技术精英与大众的分化）具象成可感的分裂，主题的预见性来自对当下的敏锐观察。
最近在啃尼尔·斯蒂芬森的书。他早期作品在总体主题上颇有预见性，新作则提出有趣的社会议题，尤其是政府与技术的关系。另一个我觉得特别切近的主题是技术熟练者（甚至只是懂技术的人）与技术门外汉的分化。《阿纳森》里那种分裂，不管有意无意，很可能正代表了当下社会里黑客/科技精英的讨论。《阿纳森》很值得一读，《密码宝典》则纯粹好玩（也许比它刚出版时更应景）。
BWStearns查看英文原文
I've been chewing through some Neil Stephenson books lately. I think a lot of his earlier work was somewhat prescient (in terms of general themes) and some of his newer work bring up some interesting societal points especially about the role of government with regards to technology. Another theme that I feel is particularly relevant lately is the bifurcation of the technically skilled (or even aware) and the technically unskilled. He puts up an interesting split in Anathema which wittingly or not might well represent a lot of the current hacker/tech-elite discussion in society at large. Anathema is well worth a read and Cryptonomicon is just plain fun (perhaps more relevant lately than it was in its own time).
把“紧凑凌厉”当作写作标准；科幻最怕设定不可信，可信度是类型写作的底线；读好作品的同时也要敢于挑剔大多数同类作品。
《神经漫游者》《燃烧的铬》《蒙娜丽莎超速档》三部曲至今是我最爱的小说，也示范了我若写小说想追求的那种“紧凑、凌厉”的文字——这是我唯一读过不止一遍的三部曲。我十三四岁读到它们，引发了对日本的迷恋、重新点燃了对计算的兴趣，大概也促成了我二十年后成为住在东京的程序员。我最爱伟大的科幻，但认为大多数是垃圾，包括我从小读的老派纸浆科幻和阿西莫夫、星战/星旅等。除吉布森外，真正出色的还有极其致密、毫不惊悚的《火星》三部曲（红/绿/蓝火星），以及节奏飞快又精彩的威尔逊《旋涡》（这让我读完了他的所有书）。霍尔德曼也值得一读，虽然并非每本都到位。伟大的科幻是我最爱的小说，但大多数败在“根本不可信”。其他类型里我认为伟大的作品包括《艺伎回忆录》《冷山》《REAMDE》《儿子》《路》《狗星》《盗城》《所有漂亮的马》及其续集。
veidr查看英文原文
The trilogy of Neuromancer, Burning Chrome, and Mona Lisa Overdrive is still my favorite work of fiction, and also, to my mind, exemplifies the kind of taut, awesome writing that I would want to do if I wrote novels. It the only series of 3 books I have read more than once. I caught these books at just the right time in my life (age 13 or 14), leading my high-school fascination with Japan and rekindled interest in computing, and probably played an inordinately large role in me ending up as a programmer who lives in Tokyo, two decades later. I like great sci fi best, but I think most of it is crap, including virtually all of the old pulp sci fi and Asimov I grew up reading (which was basically all of it), Star Wars/Trek, etc. Other than Gibson's stuff, some of the truly spectacular sci fi I have read is the very-dense-and-not-at-all-thriller-ish Mars trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars), and the fast-paced-and-awesome Spin by Robert Charles Wilson. That led me to read all of Wilson's books, many of which are also good. Also Haldeman is an author worth reading, though not all of his books hit their mark. Great sci fi is my favorite fiction, but IMO most of it is broken by being fundamentally implausible. Other fiction I consider great in other genres include Memoirs of a Geisha, Cold Mountain, REAMDE, The Son, The Road, the lighter but still version of that post-apocalyptic concept The Dog Stars, City of Thieves, and All the Pretty Horses and its sequels. It's probably symptomatic of a major flaw in my character that despite also buying dozens of nonfiction works (Lincoln, On China, and so forth) over the past few years, I haven't finished any of them.
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