【翻译练习】黑暗的左手序言——by Ursula K. Le Guin ，1976
科幻文学一直以来被描述，甚至被定义为，一种推断。一位科幻作者理应提炼当下的流行和现象，并将其增强为戏剧性的效应，再使之延续到未来。“如果照此发展，这就是将会发生的事。”一个预言就此诞生。条件和结果好比科学家喂给大鼠们提纯并浓缩的食品添加剂，希望借此了解如果人长期食用小剂量会发生什么。不可避免的后果似乎就是致癌症。亦如从推断得出的结果。完全预测式的科幻作品的的内容就和罗马俱乐部*对未来的预测结果一样：介乎与逐渐消失的人类自由和彻底消失的陆生生物之间。
这似乎可以解释为什么很多人不读科幻文学，他们认为这是“逃避现实”，但当深入地思考了这个问题以后，他们承认不读的原因是：“这太致郁了”。
如果不致癌的话，所有事物达到其逻辑极限的时候都会致郁。
幸好，这种推断只是科幻文学的元素之一，并不是其全部意义。仅用推断来满足作者抑或读者想象力丰富的头脑，实在过于理性主义和简单粗暴了。毕竟富于变化才是生命最好的调味品。
这本书无关推断。如果你喜欢，你可以读读它，以及许多其他的科幻作品，权当是一项思维实验。假设（玛丽。雪莱）那个年轻的医生在他的实验室里创造出了人；假设（菲利普·狄克）盟军输掉了二战；假设这样或那样的情形，然后看看会发生什么。。。在现代小说结构下的故事中，不存在为了复杂的道德标准而作出的牺牲，也无需设置任何的僵局；思维和直觉自由游走，对它们只需实验性的设限，而这种界限实际上可能是非常宽泛的。
这项思维实验的目的，就像是薛定谔和其他物理学家曾做的那样，并非是对于未来的预测而是描述当今世界的现实。诚然，薛定谔最著名的思维实验就是用量子能级形式展示了“未来”的不可预测性。
科幻文学是描述性的，而并非具有预言性。
作出预言的人是先知（不收钱），通灵者（通常收钱，因此在他们的时代比先知更有地位），还有算命的（明码标价）。预言是先知、通灵者和算命的工作。但它不是小说家的，小说家的工作是说谎。
气象局会告诉你下周二的天气，兰德公司会告诉你下个世纪会是什么样。我不是建议你从虚构文学作者那里寻求这样的信息。他们不干这个。他们试图做的是，告诉你他们是什么样，你是什么样——现在正在发生什么——现在的天气，今天，此时，或雨或晴，看啊！睁大你的双眼；听，仔细听。这是小说家会做的事情。但是他们不会告诉你，你将会看到和听到什么.他们只能告诉你，他们在世上的所见所闻，在余下的时间里，一半用来睡觉和做梦，剩下的一半都用在说谎上了。
“真相与世界相悖！”——是的，确实。虚构作者们，至少在他们最有勇气的时刻，是渴望真相的：了解真相，说出真相，服务于真相。但是他们处理真相的方式是古怪而狡黠的，表现为虚构出永远不会真实存在的人物、地点、以及事件，细致入微长篇累牍，还加进了丰富的情感，当他们写完这大堆谎言的时候，他们会说，这里！这就是真相！
他们很可能会用大量的事实去佐证他们那套谎言。他们可能会描写马绍尔西拘留所*，那是个曾经存在的地方；或是博罗金诺战役*，那也真的发生过；或者是克隆的过程，的确发生在实验室里；或是退化的人性，在心理学教科书里都有真实的记载；或者其他种种事实。真实的地点-事件-现象-行为给予的厚重感，让读者们忘记了他们在阅读纯粹的虚构，一段从未发生过的历史，只存在于作者那不合逻辑的脑子里。事实上，当我们阅读小说的时候，我们是疯狂的--一群疯子。我们坚信一群不存在的人的存在，我们能听到他们的声音，我们和他们一起观看博尔金诺战役，我们甚至可能认为自己就是拿破仑本人。当书合上的时候（大多数案例里）才能恢复理智。
这就是为什么正派体面的社会里没人相信艺术家。
但是我们的社会，一直被混乱困扰，一直在寻求方向，有时候会彻底陷入相信艺术家的错误中，把他们当成先知和算命的。
我不是说艺术家不能顿悟而成为预言家，不是说阿温精灵*从不曾光临过他们，神明不曾借他们的口讲话。那些不相信这些的人怎么能被称之为艺术家呢？如果他们不相信，那又如何能借由他们的舌头和双手感知神与他们同在呢？也许只有一次，一生中只有那么一次，但这一次已经足够。
我也并非认为只有艺术家才背负如此重荷同时也享有如此特权。科学家们也有负有同样的使命，日以继夜的工作，不管是在梦中或是清醒，他们都做好了顿悟的准备。就像毕达哥拉斯所知道的那样，无论是几何学或是梦境都皆可作为神明话语的载体；纯粹思维的和谐同等于音律上的和谐；数字和词语同样重要。
但是词语会造成麻烦和误会。我们现在需要词语只体现它的一个功用：符号。我们的哲学家们，他们中的一些人，会让我们同意一个词语（句子，定义）具有的的价值，在一定程度上含义单一，特指一个事物，能让具有理性领悟力的人完全理解，符合逻辑的发音并且理论上可量化。
阿波罗，代表光明、平衡，和谐、数字的神祗，他使那些过于靠近的信徒盲目。不要直视太阳。得时不时地去黑暗的酒吧和狄奥尼索斯喝杯啤酒。
谈到神明，我是个无神论者。但是我也是个艺术家，所以也是个骗子。不要相信我说的任何话。我可是实话实说。这是我唯一能说或是付印的真话，在逻辑学上是个谎言。心理学上是个象征。审美学上是个隐喻。
哦，能被邀请参加未来学研讨会感觉真好，尤其是看到系统科学中出现出了这样华丽天启式的图示。但是被要求跟报纸谈谈2001年美国会是个什么样，这真是个可怕错误。我是写科幻文学的，但些科幻并不是关于未来的。我对未来的了解绝对不比你们多，甚至很有可能更少。这本书与未来无关。是的，书的开头处的确宣称的年代是“艾克曼纪年1490-97”，不过你们肯定不会相信的。
的确，书中的人种是雌雄同体的，这并不代表我预测在一千多年以后我们都会变成那样，或者宣布我认为大家铁定都要变成雌雄同体。我只是观察，用一种古怪的，狡黠的和思维实验性的合理态度对待科幻文学，就像你在一天里在固定的一段尴尬的时间里和固定的天气下看着我们，大家已经这样做了。我不是在预测，或限定什么。我在描述。我在用小说家的方式描述特定心理特征下的真实，通过精心捏造一堆详尽的谎言。
在阅读一本小说的时候，任何一本，我们都需要确切的知道整本书都是胡说八道，然后在读的时候相信书里写的的每一个字。最终，在读完的时候，我们可能会发现——如果是本好书——我们跟读之前有那么一点不同了，我们被改变了那么一点点，就像遇见一个新面孔，横穿了一条没走过的马路一样。但是很难说我们究竟学到了什么，我们的改变也就这么多了。
艺术家的工作远非词语可以表述。
艺术家的媒介就是虚构，以致言语无法承载。小说家声称言语无法描绘言语本身。
言语可以被用得如此似是而非自相矛盾，正是因为其同时具有符号学的用途，象征或隐喻的用途。（他们同时也具有声音——语言学的实证主义者们对此并不感兴趣。一个句子或短语就像音乐里的和弦或曲调： 尽管只是被默读出来，一个专注耳朵对乐章的理解要比专注的领悟力明晰得多）
所有的虚构都是隐喻。科幻文学也是。使它不同于传统虚构文学的似乎就是其使用了全新的隐喻，取材于占据我们当代生活主导地位的事物之中——科学，所有的科学学科、技术以及相对论和历史性的突破。
太空旅行即是隐喻之一；截然不同的社会、生物；未来则是另一种。未来，在虚构作品里是一种隐喻。
是关于什么的隐喻呢?
如果我必须说它没有隐喻的特质，我就不会写下这些文字，这部小说；并且金利.艾也不会在我的桌旁，用尽了我的墨水和打字机的色带，相当庄严的告诉你我，真实是想象的基石。
—Ursula K. Le Guin 1976
注释：
*罗马俱乐部是关于未来学研究的国际性民间学术团体，也是一个研讨全球问题的全球智囊组织 ，旨在研究未来的科学技术革命对人类发展的影响，阐明人类面临的主要困难以引起政策制订者和舆论的注意 。
*绍尔西拘留所，参见狄更斯的《小杜丽》。
*博罗金诺战役，是所有拿破仑战争中最大和最血腥的一天战斗，超过二十五万士兵投进了战场，造成至少七万人死伤。战斗发生在莫扎伊斯克镇以西的博罗金诺村附近。法军虽然夺取了各个重要据点，俄军也因战略考量和差劣的军队素质被迫撤退，战果却没有让拿破仑有半点高兴。这次战斗是拿破仑在俄罗斯境内的最后一次攻势，是侵俄战役中的转折点。
*阿温精灵，威尔士神话里的精灵，相当于缪斯。
附原文：
Science fiction is often described, and even defined, as extrapolative. The science fiction writer
is supposed to take a trend or phenomenon of the here-and-now, purify and intensify it for
dramatic effect, and extend it into the future. "If this goes on, this is what will happen." A
prediction is made. Method and results much resemble those of a scientist who feeds large
doses of a purified and concentrated food additive to mice, in order to predict what may happen
to people who eat it in small quantities for a long time. The outcome seems almost inevitably to
be cancer. So does the outcome of extrapolation. Strictly extrapolative works of science fiction
generally arrive about where the Club of Rome arrives: somewhere between the gradual
extinction of human liberty and the total extinction of terrestrial life.
This may explain why many people who do not read science fiction describe it as ‘escapist,’ but
when questioned further, admit they do not read it because ‘it's so depressing.’
Almost anything carried to its logical extreme becomes depressing, if not carcinogenic.
Fortunately, though extrapolation is an element in science fiction, it isn't the name of the game
by any means. It is far too rationalist and simplistic to satisfy the imaginative mind, whether the
writer's or the reader's. Variables are the spice of life.
This book is not extrapolative. If you like you can read it, and a lot of other science fiction, as
a thought-experiment. Let's say (says Mary Shelley) that a young doctor creates a human
being in his laboratory; let's say (says Philip K. Dick) that the Allies lost the second world war;
let's say this or that is such and so, and see what happens… In a story so conceived, the moral
complexity proper to the modern novel need not be sacrificed, nor is there any built-in dead
end; thought and intuition can move freely within bounds set only by the terms of the
experiment, which may be very large indeed.
The purpose of a thought-experiment, as the term was used by Schrodinger and other
physicists, is not to predict the future—indeed Schrodinger's most famous thought-experiment
goes to show that the ‘future,’ on the quantum level,cannot be predicted—but to describe
reality, the present world.
Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.
Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge); by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee,
and are therefore more honored in their day than prophets); and by futurologists (salaried).
Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of
novelists. A novelist's business is lying.
The weather bureau will tell you what next Tuesday will be like, and the Rand Corporation will
tell you what the twenty-first century will be like. I don't recommend that you turn to the writers
of fiction for such information. It's none of their business. All they're trying to do is tell you
what they're like, and what you're like—what's going on—what the weather is now, today, this
moment, the rain, the sunlight, look! Open your eyes; listen, listen. That is what the novelists
say. But they don't tell you what you will see and hear. All they can tell you is what they have
seen and heard, in their time in this world, a third of it spent in sleep and dreaming, another
third of it spent in telling lies.
“The truth against the world!”—Yes. Certainly. Fiction writers, at least in their braver
moments, do desire the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. But they go about it in a peculiar
and devious way, which consists in inventing persons, places, and events which never did and
never will exist or occur, and telling about these fictions in detail and at length and with a great
deal of emotion, and then when they are done writing down this pack of lies, they say, There!
That's the truth!
They may use all kinds of facts to support their tissue of lies. They may describe the
Marshalsea Prison, which was a real place, or the battle of Borodino, which really was fought,
or the process of cloning, which really takes place in laboratories, or the deterioration of a
personality, which is described in real textbooks of psychology; and so on. This weight of
verifiable place-event-phenomenon-behavior makes the reader forget that he is reading a pure
invention, a history that never took place anywhere but in that unlocalisable region, the
author's mind. In fact, while we read a novel, we are insane—bonkers. We believe in the
existence of people who aren't there, we hear their voices, we watch the battle of Borodino with
them, we may even become Napoleon. Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.
Is it any wonder that no truly respectable society has ever trusted its artists?
But our society, being troubled and bewildered, seeking guidance, sometimes puts an entirely
mistaken trust in its artists, using them as prophets and futurologists.
I do not say that artists cannot be seers, inspired: that the awen cannot come upon them, and
the god speak through them. Who would be an artist if they did not believe that that happens?
if they did not know it happens, because, they have felt the god within them use their tongue,
their hands? Maybe only once, once in their lives. But once is enough.
Nor would I say that the artist alone is so burdened and so privileged. The scientist is another
who prepares, who makes ready, working day and night, sleeping and awake, for inspiration.
As Pythagoras knew, the god may speak in the forms of geometry as well as in the shapes of
dreams; in the harmony of pure thought as well as in the harmony of sounds; in numbers as well
as in words.
But it is words that make the trouble and confusion. We are asked now to consider words as
useful in only one way: as signs. Our philosophers, some of them, would have us agree that a
word (sentence, statement) has value only in so far as it has one single meaning, points to one
fact which is comprehensible to the rational intellect, logically sound,
and—ideally—quantifiable.
Apollo, the god of light, of reason, of proportion, harmony, number—Apollo blinds those who
press too close in worship. Don't look straight at the sun. Go into a dark bar for a bit and have
a beer with Dionysios, every now and then.
I talk about the gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust
everything I say. I am telling the truth. The only truth I can understand or express is, logically
defined, a lie. Psychologically defined, a symbol. Aesthetically defined, a metaphor.
Oh, it's lovely to be invited to participate in Futurological Congresses where Systems Science
displays its grand apocalyptic graphs, to be asked to tell the newspapers what America will be
like in 2001, and all that, but it's a terrible mistake. I write science fiction, and science fiction
isn't about the future. I don't know any more about the future than you do, and very likely less.
This book is not about the future. Yes, it begins by annnouncing that it's set in the ‘Ekumenical
Year 1490-97,’ but surely you don't believe that?
Yes, indeed the people in it are androgynous, but that doesn't mean that I'm predicting that in
a millennium or so we will all be androgynous, or announcing that I think we damned well ought
to be androgynous. I'm merely observing, in the peculiar, devious, and thought-experimental
manner proper to science fiction, that if you look at us at certain odd times of day in certain
weathers, we already are. I am not predicting, or prescribing. I am describing. I am describing
certain aspects of psychological reality in the novelist's way, which is by inventing elaborately
circumstantial lies.
In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense,
and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may
find—if it's a good novel—that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that
we have been changed a little, as if by having met a new face, crossed a street we never
crossed before. But it's very hard to say just what we learned, how we were changed.
The artist deals with what cannot be said in words.
The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words . The novelist says in words what cannot
be said in words.
Words can be used thus paradoxically because they have, along with a semiotic usage, a
symbolic or metaphoric usage. (They also have a sound—a fact the linguistic positivists take
no interest in. A sentence or paragraph is like a chord or harmonic sequence in music: its
meaning may be more clearly understood by the attentive ear, even though it is read in silence,
than by the attentive intellect).
All fiction is metaphor. Science fiction is metaphor. What sets it apart from older forms of
fiction seems to be its use of new metaphors, drawn from certain great dominants of our
contemporary life—science, all the sciences, and technology, and the relativistic and the
historical outlook, among them. Space travel is one of these metaphors; so is an alternative
society, an alternative biology; the future is another. The future, in fiction, is a metaphor.
A metaphor for what?
If I could have said it non-metaphorically, I would not have written all these words, this novel;
and Genly Ai would never have sat down at my desk and used up my ink and typewriter ribbon
in informing me, and you, rather solemnly, that the truth is a matter of the imagination.
—Ursula K. Le Guin
这似乎可以解释为什么很多人不读科幻文学，他们认为这是“逃避现实”，但当深入地思考了这个问题以后，他们承认不读的原因是：“这太致郁了”。
如果不致癌的话，所有事物达到其逻辑极限的时候都会致郁。
幸好，这种推断只是科幻文学的元素之一，并不是其全部意义。仅用推断来满足作者抑或读者想象力丰富的头脑，实在过于理性主义和简单粗暴了。毕竟富于变化才是生命最好的调味品。
这本书无关推断。如果你喜欢，你可以读读它，以及许多其他的科幻作品，权当是一项思维实验。假设（玛丽。雪莱）那个年轻的医生在他的实验室里创造出了人；假设（菲利普·狄克）盟军输掉了二战；假设这样或那样的情形，然后看看会发生什么。。。在现代小说结构下的故事中，不存在为了复杂的道德标准而作出的牺牲，也无需设置任何的僵局；思维和直觉自由游走，对它们只需实验性的设限，而这种界限实际上可能是非常宽泛的。
这项思维实验的目的，就像是薛定谔和其他物理学家曾做的那样，并非是对于未来的预测而是描述当今世界的现实。诚然，薛定谔最著名的思维实验就是用量子能级形式展示了“未来”的不可预测性。
科幻文学是描述性的，而并非具有预言性。
作出预言的人是先知（不收钱），通灵者（通常收钱，因此在他们的时代比先知更有地位），还有算命的（明码标价）。预言是先知、通灵者和算命的工作。但它不是小说家的，小说家的工作是说谎。
气象局会告诉你下周二的天气，兰德公司会告诉你下个世纪会是什么样。我不是建议你从虚构文学作者那里寻求这样的信息。他们不干这个。他们试图做的是，告诉你他们是什么样，你是什么样——现在正在发生什么——现在的天气，今天，此时，或雨或晴，看啊！睁大你的双眼；听，仔细听。这是小说家会做的事情。但是他们不会告诉你，你将会看到和听到什么.他们只能告诉你，他们在世上的所见所闻，在余下的时间里，一半用来睡觉和做梦，剩下的一半都用在说谎上了。
“真相与世界相悖！”——是的，确实。虚构作者们，至少在他们最有勇气的时刻，是渴望真相的：了解真相，说出真相，服务于真相。但是他们处理真相的方式是古怪而狡黠的，表现为虚构出永远不会真实存在的人物、地点、以及事件，细致入微长篇累牍，还加进了丰富的情感，当他们写完这大堆谎言的时候，他们会说，这里！这就是真相！
他们很可能会用大量的事实去佐证他们那套谎言。他们可能会描写马绍尔西拘留所*，那是个曾经存在的地方；或是博罗金诺战役*，那也真的发生过；或者是克隆的过程，的确发生在实验室里；或是退化的人性，在心理学教科书里都有真实的记载；或者其他种种事实。真实的地点-事件-现象-行为给予的厚重感，让读者们忘记了他们在阅读纯粹的虚构，一段从未发生过的历史，只存在于作者那不合逻辑的脑子里。事实上，当我们阅读小说的时候，我们是疯狂的--一群疯子。我们坚信一群不存在的人的存在，我们能听到他们的声音，我们和他们一起观看博尔金诺战役，我们甚至可能认为自己就是拿破仑本人。当书合上的时候（大多数案例里）才能恢复理智。
这就是为什么正派体面的社会里没人相信艺术家。
但是我们的社会，一直被混乱困扰，一直在寻求方向，有时候会彻底陷入相信艺术家的错误中，把他们当成先知和算命的。
我不是说艺术家不能顿悟而成为预言家，不是说阿温精灵*从不曾光临过他们，神明不曾借他们的口讲话。那些不相信这些的人怎么能被称之为艺术家呢？如果他们不相信，那又如何能借由他们的舌头和双手感知神与他们同在呢？也许只有一次，一生中只有那么一次，但这一次已经足够。
我也并非认为只有艺术家才背负如此重荷同时也享有如此特权。科学家们也有负有同样的使命，日以继夜的工作，不管是在梦中或是清醒，他们都做好了顿悟的准备。就像毕达哥拉斯所知道的那样，无论是几何学或是梦境都皆可作为神明话语的载体；纯粹思维的和谐同等于音律上的和谐；数字和词语同样重要。
但是词语会造成麻烦和误会。我们现在需要词语只体现它的一个功用：符号。我们的哲学家们，他们中的一些人，会让我们同意一个词语（句子，定义）具有的的价值，在一定程度上含义单一，特指一个事物，能让具有理性领悟力的人完全理解，符合逻辑的发音并且理论上可量化。
阿波罗，代表光明、平衡，和谐、数字的神祗，他使那些过于靠近的信徒盲目。不要直视太阳。得时不时地去黑暗的酒吧和狄奥尼索斯喝杯啤酒。
谈到神明，我是个无神论者。但是我也是个艺术家，所以也是个骗子。不要相信我说的任何话。我可是实话实说。这是我唯一能说或是付印的真话，在逻辑学上是个谎言。心理学上是个象征。审美学上是个隐喻。
哦，能被邀请参加未来学研讨会感觉真好，尤其是看到系统科学中出现出了这样华丽天启式的图示。但是被要求跟报纸谈谈2001年美国会是个什么样，这真是个可怕错误。我是写科幻文学的，但些科幻并不是关于未来的。我对未来的了解绝对不比你们多，甚至很有可能更少。这本书与未来无关。是的，书的开头处的确宣称的年代是“艾克曼纪年1490-97”，不过你们肯定不会相信的。
的确，书中的人种是雌雄同体的，这并不代表我预测在一千多年以后我们都会变成那样，或者宣布我认为大家铁定都要变成雌雄同体。我只是观察，用一种古怪的，狡黠的和思维实验性的合理态度对待科幻文学，就像你在一天里在固定的一段尴尬的时间里和固定的天气下看着我们，大家已经这样做了。我不是在预测，或限定什么。我在描述。我在用小说家的方式描述特定心理特征下的真实，通过精心捏造一堆详尽的谎言。
在阅读一本小说的时候，任何一本，我们都需要确切的知道整本书都是胡说八道，然后在读的时候相信书里写的的每一个字。最终，在读完的时候，我们可能会发现——如果是本好书——我们跟读之前有那么一点不同了，我们被改变了那么一点点，就像遇见一个新面孔，横穿了一条没走过的马路一样。但是很难说我们究竟学到了什么，我们的改变也就这么多了。
艺术家的工作远非词语可以表述。
艺术家的媒介就是虚构，以致言语无法承载。小说家声称言语无法描绘言语本身。
言语可以被用得如此似是而非自相矛盾，正是因为其同时具有符号学的用途，象征或隐喻的用途。（他们同时也具有声音——语言学的实证主义者们对此并不感兴趣。一个句子或短语就像音乐里的和弦或曲调： 尽管只是被默读出来，一个专注耳朵对乐章的理解要比专注的领悟力明晰得多）
所有的虚构都是隐喻。科幻文学也是。使它不同于传统虚构文学的似乎就是其使用了全新的隐喻，取材于占据我们当代生活主导地位的事物之中——科学，所有的科学学科、技术以及相对论和历史性的突破。
太空旅行即是隐喻之一；截然不同的社会、生物；未来则是另一种。未来，在虚构作品里是一种隐喻。
是关于什么的隐喻呢?
如果我必须说它没有隐喻的特质，我就不会写下这些文字，这部小说；并且金利.艾也不会在我的桌旁，用尽了我的墨水和打字机的色带，相当庄严的告诉你我，真实是想象的基石。
—Ursula K. Le Guin 1976
注释：
*罗马俱乐部是关于未来学研究的国际性民间学术团体，也是一个研讨全球问题的全球智囊组织 ，旨在研究未来的科学技术革命对人类发展的影响，阐明人类面临的主要困难以引起政策制订者和舆论的注意 。
*绍尔西拘留所，参见狄更斯的《小杜丽》。
*博罗金诺战役，是所有拿破仑战争中最大和最血腥的一天战斗，超过二十五万士兵投进了战场，造成至少七万人死伤。战斗发生在莫扎伊斯克镇以西的博罗金诺村附近。法军虽然夺取了各个重要据点，俄军也因战略考量和差劣的军队素质被迫撤退，战果却没有让拿破仑有半点高兴。这次战斗是拿破仑在俄罗斯境内的最后一次攻势，是侵俄战役中的转折点。
*阿温精灵，威尔士神话里的精灵，相当于缪斯。
附原文：
Science fiction is often described, and even defined, as extrapolative. The science fiction writer
is supposed to take a trend or phenomenon of the here-and-now, purify and intensify it for
dramatic effect, and extend it into the future. "If this goes on, this is what will happen." A
prediction is made. Method and results much resemble those of a scientist who feeds large
doses of a purified and concentrated food additive to mice, in order to predict what may happen
to people who eat it in small quantities for a long time. The outcome seems almost inevitably to
be cancer. So does the outcome of extrapolation. Strictly extrapolative works of science fiction
generally arrive about where the Club of Rome arrives: somewhere between the gradual
extinction of human liberty and the total extinction of terrestrial life.
This may explain why many people who do not read science fiction describe it as ‘escapist,’ but
when questioned further, admit they do not read it because ‘it's so depressing.’
Almost anything carried to its logical extreme becomes depressing, if not carcinogenic.
Fortunately, though extrapolation is an element in science fiction, it isn't the name of the game
by any means. It is far too rationalist and simplistic to satisfy the imaginative mind, whether the
writer's or the reader's. Variables are the spice of life.
This book is not extrapolative. If you like you can read it, and a lot of other science fiction, as
a thought-experiment. Let's say (says Mary Shelley) that a young doctor creates a human
being in his laboratory; let's say (says Philip K. Dick) that the Allies lost the second world war;
let's say this or that is such and so, and see what happens… In a story so conceived, the moral
complexity proper to the modern novel need not be sacrificed, nor is there any built-in dead
end; thought and intuition can move freely within bounds set only by the terms of the
experiment, which may be very large indeed.
The purpose of a thought-experiment, as the term was used by Schrodinger and other
physicists, is not to predict the future—indeed Schrodinger's most famous thought-experiment
goes to show that the ‘future,’ on the quantum level,cannot be predicted—but to describe
reality, the present world.
Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.
Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge); by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee,
and are therefore more honored in their day than prophets); and by futurologists (salaried).
Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of
novelists. A novelist's business is lying.
The weather bureau will tell you what next Tuesday will be like, and the Rand Corporation will
tell you what the twenty-first century will be like. I don't recommend that you turn to the writers
of fiction for such information. It's none of their business. All they're trying to do is tell you
what they're like, and what you're like—what's going on—what the weather is now, today, this
moment, the rain, the sunlight, look! Open your eyes; listen, listen. That is what the novelists
say. But they don't tell you what you will see and hear. All they can tell you is what they have
seen and heard, in their time in this world, a third of it spent in sleep and dreaming, another
third of it spent in telling lies.
“The truth against the world!”—Yes. Certainly. Fiction writers, at least in their braver
moments, do desire the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. But they go about it in a peculiar
and devious way, which consists in inventing persons, places, and events which never did and
never will exist or occur, and telling about these fictions in detail and at length and with a great
deal of emotion, and then when they are done writing down this pack of lies, they say, There!
That's the truth!
They may use all kinds of facts to support their tissue of lies. They may describe the
Marshalsea Prison, which was a real place, or the battle of Borodino, which really was fought,
or the process of cloning, which really takes place in laboratories, or the deterioration of a
personality, which is described in real textbooks of psychology; and so on. This weight of
verifiable place-event-phenomenon-behavior makes the reader forget that he is reading a pure
invention, a history that never took place anywhere but in that unlocalisable region, the
author's mind. In fact, while we read a novel, we are insane—bonkers. We believe in the
existence of people who aren't there, we hear their voices, we watch the battle of Borodino with
them, we may even become Napoleon. Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.
Is it any wonder that no truly respectable society has ever trusted its artists?
But our society, being troubled and bewildered, seeking guidance, sometimes puts an entirely
mistaken trust in its artists, using them as prophets and futurologists.
I do not say that artists cannot be seers, inspired: that the awen cannot come upon them, and
the god speak through them. Who would be an artist if they did not believe that that happens?
if they did not know it happens, because, they have felt the god within them use their tongue,
their hands? Maybe only once, once in their lives. But once is enough.
Nor would I say that the artist alone is so burdened and so privileged. The scientist is another
who prepares, who makes ready, working day and night, sleeping and awake, for inspiration.
As Pythagoras knew, the god may speak in the forms of geometry as well as in the shapes of
dreams; in the harmony of pure thought as well as in the harmony of sounds; in numbers as well
as in words.
But it is words that make the trouble and confusion. We are asked now to consider words as
useful in only one way: as signs. Our philosophers, some of them, would have us agree that a
word (sentence, statement) has value only in so far as it has one single meaning, points to one
fact which is comprehensible to the rational intellect, logically sound,
and—ideally—quantifiable.
Apollo, the god of light, of reason, of proportion, harmony, number—Apollo blinds those who
press too close in worship. Don't look straight at the sun. Go into a dark bar for a bit and have
a beer with Dionysios, every now and then.
I talk about the gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust
everything I say. I am telling the truth. The only truth I can understand or express is, logically
defined, a lie. Psychologically defined, a symbol. Aesthetically defined, a metaphor.
Oh, it's lovely to be invited to participate in Futurological Congresses where Systems Science
displays its grand apocalyptic graphs, to be asked to tell the newspapers what America will be
like in 2001, and all that, but it's a terrible mistake. I write science fiction, and science fiction
isn't about the future. I don't know any more about the future than you do, and very likely less.
This book is not about the future. Yes, it begins by annnouncing that it's set in the ‘Ekumenical
Year 1490-97,’ but surely you don't believe that?
Yes, indeed the people in it are androgynous, but that doesn't mean that I'm predicting that in
a millennium or so we will all be androgynous, or announcing that I think we damned well ought
to be androgynous. I'm merely observing, in the peculiar, devious, and thought-experimental
manner proper to science fiction, that if you look at us at certain odd times of day in certain
weathers, we already are. I am not predicting, or prescribing. I am describing. I am describing
certain aspects of psychological reality in the novelist's way, which is by inventing elaborately
circumstantial lies.
In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense,
and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may
find—if it's a good novel—that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that
we have been changed a little, as if by having met a new face, crossed a street we never
crossed before. But it's very hard to say just what we learned, how we were changed.
The artist deals with what cannot be said in words.
The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words . The novelist says in words what cannot
be said in words.
Words can be used thus paradoxically because they have, along with a semiotic usage, a
symbolic or metaphoric usage. (They also have a sound—a fact the linguistic positivists take
no interest in. A sentence or paragraph is like a chord or harmonic sequence in music: its
meaning may be more clearly understood by the attentive ear, even though it is read in silence,
than by the attentive intellect).
All fiction is metaphor. Science fiction is metaphor. What sets it apart from older forms of
fiction seems to be its use of new metaphors, drawn from certain great dominants of our
contemporary life—science, all the sciences, and technology, and the relativistic and the
historical outlook, among them. Space travel is one of these metaphors; so is an alternative
society, an alternative biology; the future is another. The future, in fiction, is a metaphor.
A metaphor for what?
If I could have said it non-metaphorically, I would not have written all these words, this novel;
and Genly Ai would never have sat down at my desk and used up my ink and typewriter ribbon
in informing me, and you, rather solemnly, that the truth is a matter of the imagination.
—Ursula K. Le Guin
