刘慈欣：中国的亚瑟·克拉克[1]_时事

刘慈欣：中国的亚瑟·克拉克[1]

Much of "The Three-Body Problem" is set during the Cultural Revolution. In "The Wages of Humanity," visitors from space demand the redistribution of Earth's wealth, and explain that runaway capitalism almost destroyed their civilization. I doubt that any Western sci-fi writer has so thoroughly explored the theme of filial piety.

小说《三体》的故事背景大抵都是文化大革命 But it's not cultural difference that makes Liu's writing extraordinary. His stories are fables about human progress—concretely imagined but abstract. Take the novella "Sun of China," which follows Ah Quan, a young man from a rural village that has been impoverished by drought. In the first three chapters, Ah Quan sets out from the village and finds work in a mine; he travels to a regional city, where he learns to shine shoes, and moves to Beijing, where he works as a skyscraper-scaling window-washer. Then the story takes a turn.

刘慈欣作品的特别之处并非在于文化差异。他的故事都是一些有关人类发展的寓言——既是具体的想象，同时又是抽象的概念。在他的短篇小说《中国太阳》We discover that it's the future: China has constructed a huge mirror in space called the China Sun, and is using it to engineer the climate. Ah Quan gets a job cleaning the reflective surface of the China Sun. It turns out that Stephen Hawking is living in orbit, where the low gravity has helped to prolong his life; Hawking and Ah Quan become friends and go on space walks together. The physicist teaches the worker about the laws of physics and about the vastness of the universe, and Ah Quan’s mind begins to dwell on the question of humanity’s fate: Will we explore the stars, or live and die on Earth? Soon afterward, he is saying goodbye to his parents and setting out on a one-way mission to explore interstellar space. By the end of the story, Ah Quan’s progress is representative of humanity’s. He has traversed an enormous social and material distance, but it pales in comparison to the journey ahead.