罗伯特 J. 索耶访谈（完整版）－大江东去科幻论坛

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罗伯特 J. 索耶访谈（完整版）

2005-03-31 19:38:16

问：你觉得主要有什么作者对你的写作产生了影响？ 答：在SF领域，影响我最深的作者应该算C.CLACK。我写了第一部小说——《金羊毛》向他的《2001》致敬。里面写了一台飞船上的科学计算机进行谋杀犯罪的故事。我1968年8岁的时候看了《2001》的第一场宽银幕首映式。那时还是70MM胶片——相当不错。我一直在我的作品中尝试CLACK营造的那种宏大氛围，那是一种仿佛被奇观所震撼的前瞻性，他做的实在是天下无两。 尽管我曾经做过三步曲，比如说Far-Seer, Fossil Hunter, 还有Foreigner ，但我并不真正喜欢做三步曲。CLACK曾经说过，完成一本书最好的方法就是让读者最终能在他们脑海里画出整个结局。看《2001》时你感受到了这一效果，Childhood's End也是，还有约会拉玛也是。实际上，约会拉玛是最好的例子。因为它结束于伟大的一句："The Ramans do everything in threes."。于是他居然，和GENTRY LEE一起，就这样完成了这一结局——酷。谁知道呢，或许没这样做更好，总之现在我的书的结尾经常有一个尾声或者一个场景打开一片新天地，但我不再继续下去。我让读者们自己去想象。人们总是问我，“什么时候出金羊毛的结局？什么时候出星丛的结局？什么时候出Terminal Experiment的结局？我的回答是：当你静静地坐下来，想出你心目中的结局时，那就是它。 另一个对我影响巨大的作者是Frederik Pohl,不过确切地说是他在70年代的作品。相对于他多产而平庸的一生，70年代他确实写出了一些相当有特点的小说。他写的GATEWAY，我想这是他最好的一部作品，还有MAN PLUS，GEM，和THE COOL WAR，我全部读过。那时我还小，我几乎倾囊而出买了他的那些全新的硬装书。实在是太好了。我从里面学到了他用于作品里的两大概念：其一是硬科幻的概念，就是现在我所偏好的，当然他的是以人物为基础的。CLACK从不关心人物塑造，但FREDERIK POHL，他非常擅长。GATEWAY就是一本反应硬科幻思想的人物小说。人物和科幻常常被分开成两部分，但这一整部小说都是基于人物塑造的。 POHL做的另一件事，你仍可以从GATEWAY看到，他的主角不是英雄，甚至不是好人。GATEWAY 里面有一个令人非常诧异的场景——这也是我第一次在SF里看到——主角ROBINETTE BROADHEAD对那位请求和他继续星际旅行的残疾人朋友说：“当然可以，我们是兄弟。”但转个背他就想方设法把他排除在任务之外，原因仅仅是对他看不惯。我在成长的过程中所看的SF比如说60年代的星际险航，都是毫无质疑的充满希望的，富有积极意义的，主角们都比我更好或比我所知道的任何一个人更好。他们都是你景仰的榜样，当然也都是不切实际的。你可以发现60、70年代的SF书都是这些角色。Paul Atreides在《沙丘》里就是这样一个模式化的英雄，这本书每时每刻都在歌颂他的英雄主义。但POHL总是故意把他的主角写得富有争议，这对我而言真是个巨大的启示。我认识到了主角确实并非都必须是英雄。现在你可以看到，TERMINAL EXPERIMENT 里：PETER HOBSON也是个极端有争议的角色，小说里有关他的片段他都不会被读者完全仰慕或喜欢。我想这样做你的角色会更有趣，更有说服力和更多层面，有助于你的小说显得更世故。可爱的角色总是倾向于只有一个层面：他们在所有环境里只做对的事情。KIRK船长是一个完美典型，我伴随着KIRK船长长大，他对我有巨大影响力。他是个伟大的领袖，他犯了什么错误都会道歉。你可以看到他训斥UHURA 或者SCOTTY后向他们道歉。甚至当他变坏时他还会归来。非常模式化的英雄。但是我觉得有争议的角色写起来更有趣，拜POHL所赐。 在SF领域之外，HARPER LEE的 TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD 是对我一生影响最大的小说。我想这是我读过的最好的一部小说。我喜欢它是因为有两部分工作他完成得实在是太好，太好了：其一是书的表面写了两个小孩在暑假冒险的故事。但他的主要内容却是关于种族主义和成长的美国南方与黑奴制度抗争的，同时这些小孩也成长起来。这本书的寓意远远地隐藏在字面意思之后。我的一本书，叫FOSSIL HUNTER的，写关于某星球上一只聪明的恐龙进行斗争的故事，实际上它写的是天主教的节育观和堕胎主张。其诉求完全与小说的字面意义脱离。这些都是来自于HARPER LEE的写作模式。 问：可以谈谈FRAMESHIFT吗？ 答：Avi Myer 实际上在FRAMESHIFT里进行了反思，因为它对他一直影响巨大。我想他们让你在高中时阅读了大量的书，而这本就是那种少数能影响你一生的几本之一。就象确有一些东西能对人产生巨大冲击一样。 另一个巨大的影响是经典的希腊悲剧——Sophocles, Aeschlyus, Euripedes ，我详细的研究过，他们是叙述性的。如果你对他们熟悉的话，你可以在我的作品如FOSSIL HUNTER里看到他们的影子。这部书里有一个角色叫WATCHER，他出现在篇章之间起注释作用，反复咏叹希腊式悲剧的意念。在我刚完成的一本叫Flashforward的书里, 我第一次使用了希腊人做主角。希腊悲剧以人为的错误判断推动剧情，而他是这一经典模式的反映——有冲破宿命的方法吗？《金羊毛》完全以一台电脑的视角——依靠墙上的摄像头和麦克风来捕捉信息，但这一视角亦来自于希腊的悲剧。 Robert B. Parker的思宾塞对我也有巨大的影响，ERIC WRIGHT，另一个加拿大神秘作家，对细节的把握很强，对我影响很大。加拿大的Terence M. Green，他的文体也是非常独到的。 问：近来你在读哪位作家的作品呢？ 答：在SF，最有趣的是Jack McDevitt的 Ancient Shores，属于世界考古科幻系列。这本书做了一件我也很想做好的事情，就是写出非科幻迷也会看的书。比如说，你拿起FRAMESHIFT，你不用读过海因莱因或阿西莫夫，你也不用知道机器人三定律，你也不需知道什么是ANSIBLE 和FTL，它就是一本所有人都可以读的书，但刚好是科幻而已。没有多少作者正在做这件事情，太多的作者把读者限定在那些从六岁就开始读科幻的人群里。MCDEVITT就非常聪明，他把这本书写成了大家都能读的小说。我觉得倒是HarperPrism做的封面阻碍了科幻迷以外的人群阅读的欲望。封面上有异国情调，大波妹等东西。其实这本书始终都在南DACOTA的田园牧歌风光中进行。他几乎是——你可能在物理课上看过的宇宙动物园的翻版——两个人在野餐时交谈，然后他们一直往前回朔，回朔，仿佛时光倒流，直到你看见整个宇宙。感觉上，他几乎去到了宇宙的另一面。这是我在90年代看过的最好的小说，我敢说，比我的都好。 SF范围之外，我读过最好的小说是Carol Shields的 The Stone Diaries，一个加拿大作者写的书并搞到了朴利策奖。我花了很多时间教别人写科幻，还有些时间用来做编辑——最近做的是TESSERACTS 6，我还为POTTERSFIELD PRESS完成了另一文选叫CROSSING THE LINE。科幻，比其他种类更加依靠作者的作坊。一些人在CLARION不知何故能买到文凭自称科幻作家，他们根本没出过书，只是交了钱，上了课。我在RYERSON上过科幻写作课，多伦多的另一所大学。我发现在SF里——你会看见他们出了很多书评，但很多书评是初级作者写的。他们的作品重来没有发表过（我觉得作者应该把时间花在写作上而不是花在评论别人的书上）。你得到的只是些初级作者，他们只写书评，他们指指画画，好象是小说里那种有争议的人物。他们耍小聪明稍微突破了某些标准，就说自己上的是创造性的写作课（you get these beginning writers who do book reviews and they'll always point out, as if it's a flaw in a novel, when somebody does something that violates one of the standard bits of received wisdom that is foisted upon you in a creative writing class.）。在THE STONE DIARIES，CAROL SHIELDS打破了所有你听过的创造性写作的规则。这就是这条规则：展示，而不是告诉。有人跟你说了50叶书却没有展示任何东西——当然这也很聪明：在每个场景只展现一个人的视角。她象比赛里的乒乓球一样从一个人跳向另一个人。但是也很迷人就是了，因为这样写效果也不错。。 问：那么，从结构上来说，有趣的事情发生了...... 答：一本结构上华丽的书，他的passive, correspondence或者diary entries上的要求是这么多，一名创造性写作的老师一定会扼杀那些想在文本上仅想做些许改动的作者。他们会对他说：你不能那样做。不仅仅是好书，还因为他是CAROL SHEILDS。你如何写故事是不限制方法的，需要注意的不是学校里他们给你的那些指南，而是读者在读完你的书后会有什么样的效果。我的建议就是：即使你是在读科幻，你也应该先考虑那是一篇值得一读的小说。 问：你看了什么好看的电影吗？最近。 答：实际上，我倾向于认为最好的电影是人们无法认出那是部使用了科幻的影片。我想，我提名雨果奖的那篇LIAR是最好的了。LIAR很好，如果他不算科幻，那么也是最好的推理片和幻想片。他使用了传统的引擎：让一个小孩的生日愿望实现。这也是里面唯一的一个取巧的元素。但它确实是合理的，整部片子依靠它自然地发展着。我觉得他确实是相当神奇的做法。最近几年我发现科幻电影和科幻小说是两种不同的艺术模式，现在的科幻电影显然地正在用他们自己的路做的更好。而最糟糕的科幻电影倒是他们使用了科幻小说作为改编。POSTMAN，显然地，是经典例子，STRASHIP TROOPERS不用说更是个倒退。SPHERE 是个好例子，CONTACT也是。他做的唯一比较好的是比书稍微差点。里面所提到的哲学，我觉得破化了小说传递的信息。CONTACT传递的信息是两个信任系统，宗教和科学。科学是较强大的系统，你只能选择一种。不管哪一种你比较喜欢，他们都是合法的。如果一个男人想损害一个女人的生活，象MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY 对JODI FOSTER做的那样，仅因为他不同意她的哲学，那么对，没关系。所以我认为他们实际上只是在推销SAGAN的理论。所以我有预感当电影拍出来以后他们将会相当遗憾。 SF电影里我比较欣赏去年的GATTACA，没有任何其他技巧，他们依靠不同的方式完成了象我在FRAMESHIFT做的工作。一些人关注遗传学的所有变化，并试着用故事说出来。如果你或长或短地思考这个故事，他会断裂。但没关系。电影没必要在任何时刻严格按线形发展。他只需用震撼的视觉效果最后打动你。 那就是说，我很喜欢我的书拍成电影得到的那些钱，但我不可想象我会很高兴发生这件事情。我听说过的因此而乐不可支的作者是FRANK HERBERT，他说沙丘出来后他狂喜。当然也还不错。好象还是同性恋，当然，聪明的同性恋。他喜欢呆在镁光等下多过顾及他所尝试建立的东西被破坏。总之我是不可能允许这样做的，那样的话我就引退，反正我有足够的钱退休了，我的财政困难已经过去。 问：告诉我们那些买断了你书版权的那些电影怎样？ 答：象ILLEGAL ALIEN，我们有两个竟拍的，一个在好莱坞一个在多论多。我是个加拿大爱国者所以我想让加拿大拿到。钱出的差不多，所以我给了加拿大，这样我好去看他们的设备。我想这个拿到了我版权的家伙，DAVID COATSWORTH，一个制片人。MICHAEL LENICK，一个特效设计师，他们应该做得不会让我丢脸。另外那些家伙想把我的ALIENS 更人性化一点。在ILLEGAL ALIEN里我很痛苦地设置了非人异形。加拿大团队说：那真是个挑战因为没人做过。他们已经做了些异形，就象《异形》里的那些阴影下的异形和动作场景中的异形。但没有一本小说让主角与一名完全特效制作的角色说话和交流。在Larry Niven的RINGWORLD里做过，我想他们会喜欢这挑战而且正在进行中，我对此相当赞赏。 The Terminal Experiment目前已经被转手，当初我们卖给了个英国人，版权是两年。但是后来他离开了伦敦的公司，改投洛杉机。他对我们说：“把时间延长些吧，我不想在英国拍这片子，我11月中旬去洛杉机但我知道11月初版权到期了。我想到了美国后签了新公司再为你的版权续约。”于是我们就说：“好吧。”我们放任了他，这就是为什么在那段时间我们让这合同空置着直到他在美国回到了原来的位置才续签的原因。他去美国以后开始倒是非常热情的，但最终他还是没搞定。所以我的事务所只好又把它的版权出售了。我们向很多人兜售，其中有一个叫Jon Landau。泰坦尼克号得奥斯卡奖最佳影片奖的时候有两个人登台领奖——两个制片人——一个是James Cameron，另一个就是Jon Landau。虽然卡梅龙的名字和泰坦尼克号紧密相连，其实Jon Landau是他的唯一制片合伙人。所以Landau也是最新一届的奥斯卡最佳影片奖得主。现在他掌握了The Terminal Experiment的版权。 问：你和他之间一定发生了愉快的交谈吧。 答：实际上，他是个令人惊异的家伙。除了他在电影界的生意，他还是Bruce Springsteen的经理人。你把你的书向各种各样的人兜售，结果一个刚刚创造了好莱坞动作片票房记录的人把它买了去，这实在令人振奋。 问：你说过你写硬科幻，你可以给硬科幻下个定义吗？ 答：有两点：一，科学的细节一定要完整；二，科学内容一定要被严格研究过，使得书里的所有内容都是真的或是由真的东西推理出来的结论。并不是说这本书每秒钟都是有关科学的，Gregory Benford 就是这样的作家，他的书科学是本质的，人物都是第二位。但我不认为硬科幻一定都要无人物驱动。不是说GREG都不营造大角色，但角色确实不是写书的理由，书的理由是宣传科学。Charles Sheffield 是另一个这样写东西的人。个人以为，作为一个怀疑论者，我在读或者写科幻的时候，我潜意识里会认为确实有些东西是会发生的。我没有什么耐心关注纯幻想的任何东西。我没法读，没法享受。作为成年人，我觉得这很愚蠢。但SF，我越读就会越相信，我会被作者和作者的探索说服，那就是说，如果不是非常可能的，也是似是而非。那对我很重要。这就是我为什么很喜欢STAR TREK这样的硬SF。在另一面，软科幻随心所欲地塑造他们的东西，堆积术语来增加科学氛围，然后神和人又共同生下后代。太荒谬了。硬科幻里科学是无懈可击的。 问：你干吗写硬科幻？ 答：问得好，我确实没有科学方面的学位。我只有RYERSON的艺术学位和电视艺术学位。但我一直很喜欢科学——它实在令我心醉。针对科学并非提供答案的最佳工具这个问题，我不认为你能用一两句说得清楚。它显然是回答诸如你在地里能种出什么来这种问题的最佳工具。但我也认为，它也是回答诸如有没有上帝这种问题的最佳工具。几千年来我们发展了一个系统用来咨询，当你想做点什么的时候，你当然会立刻想到它。写本书说点什么是对我非常重要的，并非只写些情节。并非只为说点故事。我是为了让书里有些哲学，宣扬某些原理。对我来说，最好的宣扬方法就是科学。问问题，然后寻求解答，再检验答案。如果一些原理不好说明，就用别的原理诠释。如果你有些似乎合理的原理和一些可以用于证明的证据，你就要找个方法来阐述这些证据，解释你的原理。确保你的想法能被别的人理解，于是他们也能看到你的思想。想想看，几千年来发生了那么多愚蠢的战争只是因为有个人说看见了上帝，但其他人却没有看到。假如他的谎言被真理阻止，那么悲剧就不会被重演。我想这是必须增进人们的交流的原因。不管我写的是什么，SF或非小说或长篇大论的演讲，她们都将是严肃的出版物，我想科学是解释自然界所有问题的正确方法。 问：你说你反对纯幻想，但是你也写过一点纯幻想是吗？ 答：我写纯幻想的时候，那时我以为我在写SF呢。我引入了一些不可思议和不可能之类的一些元素。如果你接受了可以超光速旅行，不管怎样你已经把魔幻的元素引入了你的故事中。我从没有故意地去写过一个纯幻想的故事。我写过的纯幻想小说都是我被雇佣的情况下写的。一个编辑说：写这个好不好啊，或这书啊？我重来都不写短篇除非那有个时间限制，或者谁来委托。所以当某人说：YEAH，我要买这故事如果你写的话，但一定是个幻想情节的哦——象我在DARK DESTINY3里的小说“PEKING MAN”，或在DANTE‘S DISCIPLE里面的“ABOVE IT ALL“——我会感到靠。不管怎样这都是荒谬。好的SF，反映的都是这个世界无法回避的问题的。是一种引你深思的文化。我刚刚读过NORTHERN DREAMERS 里的一个针对DAVE DUNCAN的访谈，里面他说幻想的东东是一个从加拿大的冬天来到热带的旅行，幻想小说是一种逃避，让你无法集中注意力。 所有的幻想小说都是基于荒谬东西的。完全的正义与完全的邪恶相冲突。你可以轻易分清谁是谁。在现实世界我们都很难这样做。现实并没有完全的善与恶。西特勒也许可以算，但整个世界完全被分成善恶两部分，却从来没有找到过证据。那么我们干嘛要沉迷地读这些玩意？你可能正在写一本书，里面的人一边说着文绉绉的压韵的话，一边又把准备要说的无论什么话刺在手上。两大阵营不是完全坏就是完全好。这也许有些代沟的原因在里面，我可以解读他们的心理状态——对于现今的道德模糊现象，很多人感到无力和挫折感，于是他们站在了道德争论之外。他们不参与，他们说，我对堕胎没有观点，我不知道怎么维护少数民族权益，我不能确认南非的种族隔离制度会带来什么。人们为逃避现实寻找借口，而幻想小说里没有现实。现实在第一页就已经交代清楚：这是好人，这是坏人，这是白帽子，这是黑帽子。我们等着看吧，好人是怎样一步步取得胜利的。反正好人最终胜利，那会让人舒服。不过我不认为成年人需要这种安全蓝。小孩也许对单纯的白和黑、善和恶的故事感到快乐。不过我不认为他能对久经事故的成年人提供营养。 问：作为一个硬SF作家，你是怎么获得灵感和进行研究的呢？ 答：反过来，实际上，你进行研究，灵感就跳出来。经典的例子是FRAMESHIFT，我刚坐下，我知道我要写本新小说，于是我开始写些比较丰富的地方或值得扩展的地方的LIST。我写下了人工智能，我写下了与异形的第一次接触，我还写下了遗传学，我还写下了三四个其他东西。然后我从LIST那儿凝视一会儿。然后我决定你不能拿起报纸，或读什么纽约时报，MACLEAN’S之类的东东。不要持续的看遗传学方面的书以寻求突破，只管写：他们发现了这方面的基因，他们发现了那方面的基因。然后我觉得这将是个很丰富的地方。我并没有一个明确的提纲，除了我想写一篇关于遗传学的书，我没有其他东西。我会坐下来读两个月关于遗传学的东西，对于要找什么东西，我没有任何明确的目的。记下值得关注的地方，戏剧性的情景。什么是遗传学的现状？我有一个人用来解释这些现状吗？人们常问我你是怎么获得灵感的好象他们都是现成的。好象你获得灵感就象你的心在燃烧，似乎他们突然出现在那儿。其实并非如此。你花了几个月探询一个主题，那些词明显的就会一个接一个一次次出现，GENETIC TESTING，discrimination by insurance companies等等，在反对遗传学研究的文章中，你会持续听到纳粹，克隆之类的词。在FRAMESHIFT里面，就包括了人类克隆，人类染色体工程中可能出现的纳粹主义研究，保险公司对基因缺陷人类进行歧视，以及对人种的预测造成的社会冲击。现实在研究中都有，而我只是为这些素材找到戏剧性的主题而已。 我不知道我首先要做什么主题，任何人都能对任何事物有一个初始的简单观点。比如说巴基斯坦有了核武器，我们可以很容易说应该如何如何。但实际上你必须仔细考虑这些问题并决定我们真正应该怎么做。要经过仔细的思考，不是诸如：好的，我们要做的就是把和平带给世界。把拥有了核武的巴基斯坦和印度rush到石器时代，这问题就解决了。简单的回应是非常容易的。我写完FRAMESHIFT时我对所有的事件都有了立场。但他们都不是膝跳反射似的立场。他们都是思考后的立场。最大的一个是遗传学革命绝对地控制了社会药品需求。最直接的方法就是让遗传学时代的健康保险完全社会化。让社会的所有人群平均地分摊风险。因为除此之外就不是保险了。如果我说给我个你的细胞吧，或者我说你在45岁将会得心脏病。我并不能为你担保。或者我说你在66岁得ALZHEIMER，SORRY我也不能担保。你42岁会DEVELOP LOW SPERM MOTILITY，那么就超出我的LIST了。那也不能被保险。唯一的方法是你PLAY THE HAND YOU ARE DEALT，but everybody shares the risk across the board。如果说FRAMESHIFT在某种角度上来说是一部重要的小说的话，就是它的最大听众至今为止在美国，这是他们需要听的。 问：我们真的非常喜欢星际险航里的异形，你是怎么创造这一角色的？ 答：这就是，在第一次会面的时候，星丛里异形的秘密。回到1980年，我尝试写一本星际旅行的小说——那还是在星际险航5之前。那时只有星际险航电影。我尝试写一篇公司遇到上帝的小说。编辑很喜欢我的小说但却拒绝了他，说小说里关于航线的争议太大了。那书里我引入了星际险航电视版非常受欢迎的异形并着手让人类与之合作。异形里有一种叫Tellarites，长得很象猪，很吵的一种异形。于是我坐下来开始考虑：你都是成年人了怎么还想得出这些点子，成年人难道会花他们所有的时间来相互争吵吗？于是我终止了为这些Tellarites写back-story的想法。基于：好，干吗不用不可思议地争吵着的男人们呢？也许仅仅是因为有7个男人而只有1个女人，只有一个男人有繁殖机会，所以男人们不得不竞争。这本书后来就是围绕着这一主题发展起来的。在我从终点开始，写回前面的时候，我改变了一些细节，让异形们长出了触手。我从终点开始写是想证明，尝试象生理学、进化论那样证明他们发展的方向。 相同的事情发生在Far-Seer, Fossil Hunter,和Foreigner里面，我写着星际险航时我问自己——记得星际险航“ARENA”那章里的相当领地化的爬虫GORNS吗？他们发展了文明，却仍然固执地坚持领地化观念，因为人类殖民地离他们太近而破坏他们，最终又会怎样？于是我又从后往前写，在那种情况下如果你读了整个系列，你就会发现针对狂暴的领地化观念的分析，用心理方面的分析超过了他在生理方面的分析。这是一个方法。星际险航里的异形以没意思开始，以吸引人结束，我证明了他. 星际险航的设定没有结束，几百万年来，这些种族穿越previous cycle of big bang-big crunch，又被这个宇宙改变了生命形态。异形们，还有上帝，都决定去死。但又不能自杀。于是他们决定指导星系里的生命形式进行进化，指导所有的种族，直到产生一些暴力的种族，达到能够挑战他们并杀死他们的水平。我看着星际险航里的这些不同的种族，发现他们最普遍的属性就是好斗：Klingons,Romulans,Gorns,Tellarites都是渣滓，Andorians则是骄傲的战士，他们一拨拨的涌现。在星际险航的第二集里有个飞行员说，“哪是人没去过的”，我们介绍了有能量壁垒环绕着星系的概念。于是我想，好的，上帝选出一个星系，并为之构筑了壁垒使生命无法逃逸，又花费数百万年的时间指导他们进化直到他们最终达到真正的无耻至极，然后让他们向自己冲来以了此残生。我发现这真是个好设定，我现在还很想把它写进书里去。但我又想：这些渣滓种族对此自己会有什么解说呢？解释非常简单——版块漂移使人群分离几千年，某天他们相遇，于是就打起来，这就是我们星球的血腥历史。如果我们是经常在一起聊天或一起散步，而不是远隔万水千山的话，那么我不认为我们还会发生那种程度的冲突。这也是异形创意的方法之一。 另一方法，实际上是更令人满意的方法，是我在非法异形里做的，无须另外的材料，只须从远古的历史开始。如果你读过Burgess Shale写的关于几亿年前的British Columbia省发生的寒武纪大爆发的资料，你就会发现5亿年前的化石里有数十种不同的肌体结构，他们只出现了很短的一段时间，后来全死了。仅存的很少的肌体结构之一就有我们的结构——有中央脊柱的左右对称结构。当然也还有其他很多不同样子的。众所周知， Stephen J. Gould是当中最负盛名的一个，他的书Wonderful Light里说所有这些肌体结构看起来都是非常适应5亿年前的地球环境的。这些远古的信息确实对当今非常有启发，当然其他的信息也很有启发。我想，我们干吗不从一个相当不同的肌体结构开始呢？为了在非法异形中做出异形，相对于平时轴对称的动物那种肩膀长两肢，臀部长两肢的情况，我使用中心对称结构代替了轴对称结构，让四肢很均匀地分置在臀部上。我的进展十分顺利，我在5亿年的进化时间里穿行。他们从水生演变到陆生时变成了什么样？他们是怎样开始使用脚的？他们又如何把肢体从运动的目的中解放出来，演变为操作的目的？当你沿着因果链追索，从最原始的地方开始并继续，你就以肢体结构为基础为异形发展出了一部心理学。在非法异形里，这方法还挺管用。他们进化成一种四肢从肩膀悬垂的体形，两个长在左边两个在右边，右边的比较长，垂落在地可以行走，左边两个一个在前一个在后，成为可操作的肢体。但他们倾向于使用前面那支，所以前面那个叫强手，后面那个叫弱手。人类心理学中的概念全部都是来自与左右对称的肌体的，我们感到非常合理地用这些概念谈论问题，从左到右地。但这些以单边状态发展起来的生物和我们完全不同，他们某方面的心理状态会迅速明显地强烈起来。The psychology that permeates Illegal Alien came from going right back five hundred million years and evolving forward a life form and seeing what it would develop. 所以有两种基本方法进行设定，一种是使用以前的产品，当然前提是他足够有趣。这样你可以引用他一些有趣的属性。Spock是相当无趣的种族，人们只关心他的耳朵是尖的还是圆的，所以那可不行。但不管怎样，那些你觉得永远不可能共存的恐怖异形，已经在星际险航中遭到抛弃的，却在我写的三本书中成了有血有肉的东西。 问：你说过你以前写过一些星际险航之类的书。你现在还想写诸如星际航行或者星球大战甚至是novelization的东西吗？ 答：我是否写那样的小说取决于我对原始资料是否非常感兴趣。所以也许经典的星际旅行，或者人猿星球之类的才是我的所爱，又也许只有机会自己出现在我面前时我才会感兴趣。曾经——我跟John Ordover探讨过，他对我写一部星际旅行小说表现了当然的兴趣。但从根本上来说，franchise fiction和media tie-ins 对流派是很坏的，上十年他们严重地损害了科幻。他们所有的shelf space已经离开了科幻的领地。星际险航是60年代关于未来的视频作品，星球大战是70年代的视频，但90年代了我们还必须靠这些产品热销吗？我实在感到非常失望，这些东西到现在还充斥着市场。如果你写franchise fiction的话，我还有个感觉，那就是如果你有being taken seriously的渴望，你就会很受伤。对Joe Haldeman，几乎所有人都知道：他在70年代写了两本星际旅行的书，他又是第一个写星际旅行的人。他赢得了雨果奖而且我想他们还为此花了上百万的钱买了他的书——在70年代那是很多的了，就为了这两本书。还有James Blish，他写了电视版星际旅行的所有剧本，也因A Case of Conscience获雨果奖。但这已经是这个游戏很早期的故事了。可你看一看今天的作家们，他们根本没有exception second string writers，那些没有significant following for their solo, stand-alone work的人。但他们持续说，简直都成了他们的咒语：要转向了！上百万的人掏钱买他们的书，百分之一的话也有上万，为买他们的书口袋被洗干。但毫无证据表明anything more than a couple of dozen readers give a damn that so-and-so is the author, and will seek out so-and-so's work.他们所关心的是Luke, Han,和Leia;或Kirk, Spock,和McCoy;或Picard, Data,和Riker的下一次历险。谁也不会关心下本书是by fill-in-the-name的。 问：是什么让你拿起笔的，你是怎么开始写作的呢？ 答：我很小的时候就开始写东西了——我常写些故事。我开始职业生涯是因为1979年那年，我老爸到纽约离ochester很近的地方渡假，我刚好赶上参加ochester的Strasenburgh天文馆的科幻小故事比赛，小故事会在 一个dramatic star show上展出。我当时是个天文迷，到到哪个城市玩我都会去天文馆，我常到纽约的这个天文馆看展览都快5年了。他们做的东西非常富有创意，所有天文馆能做出来的东西，没有比他们更强的了。他们是个小馆，预算也少，但做了很多发明展览和有趣的特效，绝对不是McLaughlin那种对天文学不可思议的乏味的长篇大论。这次科幻小故事比赛是阿西莫夫做的评判：为一次star show写一篇5000到3500字的小故事。我非常喜欢阿西莫夫而且我也热爱天文馆，于是我就写了故事，可惜我没赢。他们写了封信来说我没有赢，但有个招待会欢迎所有的参赛者来参加。于是我想爽。于是我就去Rochester了，谁知我到了以后他们对我说：我们找了你几个星期，你都不在。瞧，我很聪明地用了我在美国渡假的地址可是整个冬天都没人在那儿。于是我觉得他们歧视加拿大人——我一生中仅有这次几乎要真的相信了——不过最后确实还不是真的。他们说的很对，阿西莫夫拿起了我的故事，觉得这确实是个好故事但我们可以在7分钟之内读完了。不过它确实是个他很喜欢的小punchline故事。为了拉长它，他们决定把我的和其他两个故事拉长。那两个家伙的，据我所知，再也没在以后的任何时间发表过什么东西。我是唯一离开了还做点什么的人。他们做的工作，我想，我不敢说那是星丛的最早版本，因为他们的plot line是完全不同的，但这故事确实说的是飞船上的星丛，他的人物和基本设定被我后来引入了我写的星丛一书中。书是1996年出版的，但那个star show是1980年夏天举行的，所以可以说经历了16年，他才被写成了书。但他确实是我的开端，从此我开始把它当作我严肃的追求，创作并挣点钱，并因此入迷，一直写科幻到现在。 问：你的网站对你的职业生涯有什么帮助吗？ 答：太多了。对任何作家而言，最难的事情是让人们了解你的作品。大多数人都是很省的。这就是为什么星战和星际险航这么好卖的原因。因为至少你知道你会得到什么东西，你知道那将会是个什么样的故事，你知道等式是什么——我花了这些钱，我得到了这些无须思考的，无害的娱乐。当你去写一本小说，人们并不知道你，他们以前从来没有读过你的书，而且现在小说又他妈的贵。精装本的Frameshift就要32.95加元，那只是个小交换，对吧？我认为他的每一分钱都值，但那确实是个小交换不是吗？你怎么样让人们尝试你写的小说呢？传统的方法就象出版社所做的：做一个漂亮的封面，做些具有诱惑力的广告，三到四个句子解释你的书。我觉得一个更有效的方法就是说，象我对我所有的小说做的那样：这有小说里的opening chapters，空闲的时候读一读，打印出来，上厕所时也看看吧，无论怎样。给他们一个尝试，你不花一个子儿。说句老实话，效果奇佳。我接触过所有那些网上冲浪的的人，他们点点这，点点那，最后都停在我的网页上，读几章后就到书店或雅玛逊把它买走。从这点来说，这是招揽新读者十分有效的手段。 其二，我并非那种写短篇而多产的作家，但我又有一些得过奖的小故事，可惜不够出合集，于是我把他们放到我的网页上。人们说你疯了那会影响你的再版市场。实际上，恰恰相反，我可以把它们的再版权卖到这儿，卖到那儿，到处卖，随时卖。我就把三个小故事卖到波兰去了，他们花掉250美圆买了我的一个含有三个小故事的文件包。对波兰人来说那可是笔大钱了。我把故事放在那儿，他们就来读了，读了以后就问，我可以把他们翻译过来用在我们的杂志上吗？如果我没有这样做，他们还不知道怎样找到我呢。我为Altair做的专栏，由澳大利亚出版的，本质上也是我为On Spec做的东西。那人在网上浏览，发现了我在On Spec做的专栏，于是他说，如果再版的话你想要什么？我就说我提供的话你想要什么？结果他们第一次就出了比On Spec高两倍的价格。但是用美圆代替加圆。于是我想，好啊，只要你想要。所以人们一直在我的网页上挑选他们喜欢的故事或小说专栏并买下再版权。网页在这方面也是有很大作用的。 第三，这次我有点象中了大奖——1998年7月我是USA Today Online的每月名家，他们每个月用一名作者的传记为该作者高亮显示，并为此作者在barnesandnoble.com的作品建立连接，他们一整个月都为你的作品促销。该活动的运作方式只是举办方在网上浏览，挑选有趣的作者的网页，我的网页刚好制作得比较精美，而且也比较全面和有趣，她就说了：你有兴趣成为我们的7月作家吗？实在是海量——USA Today Online每天有3500万次点击，它是全世界最流行的网站之一。它是USA Today报的电子版。虽然不是所有的点击都会点进图书那页，但数据显示它给我带来的收益超过了迄今为止所有出版社帮我做的广告的总和。这直接来自于一个网页，但又不仅仅是一个网页——很多作者有一些小小的网页，或者一张带猫的照片啊，一个又老又短的故事啊，一个出版时刻表但三年都没有更新啊。我每周更新一次我的网页，让人们经常回来看看。代价是如此 infinitessimal而成果是如此显著地大，我都无法想象怎么他们会没有一个好的，固定的网站呢？太奇妙了，所以把连接说给你听：URL: sfwriter.com。 问：你好象当选了Science Fiction Writers of America的主席是吗？ 答：实际上是the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America。 问：在这个组织里你想干点什么呢？ 答：Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America是世界上最大和最老的职业科幻作家组织。我们有1400个成员，其中有1100个投票选出的会员，300个编辑或封面画家或书评员。人们喜欢这样，把全世界23个国家的职业人员联结起来。不过尽管我们来自23个国家，我们还是叫Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America。我要做的事情是让他更国际化，正如它现在正在做着的一样。所有主要的美国出版企业基本上都掌握在外资手里，他们大多数来自德国或者日本。我们在1998年假装科幻出版业——即使办公室在纽约的企业——仍然是一件美国控制的东西，太愚蠢了，实际上并非如此，他们被欧洲和远东控制着。认识到科幻作为产业，它的外表是国际化的这非常重要。假装认为美国出版业只需要考虑美国是目光短浅的。现在，如果你卖一篇短的故事，我们实际上还有一条愚蠢的规定，它是我前辈当作遗物赠送给我的：我们接受美洲上用英语写的会员信（加拿大，美国，墨西哥，中美洲，南美洲）。但不包括英国。于是如果你卖了一篇小说去HarperCollins Voyager，英国最大的科幻出版商，或英国最强的科幻杂志Interzone，对不起，你不能加入 SFWA了。但你卖小说给一个小的英语出版社比如Guatamala，那么你又可以了。总之是十分荒谬。所以我现在想改变这一现状。我想保证让世界范围内的英语科幻出版业都能享受到这些专业利益。我觉得尝试使用和改变其他语种现在还太早了些，但是我们没有意识到英国、澳大利亚、新西兰的作家都在为同一家公司写作，并处于相同的法人旗下的事实，这太荒谬了。所以我要做这件事。 另一件事情是，33年来SFWA存在着一个事实，坦率的说，是他的组织有太多陈枝旧节。我们有一个条文规定：一旦你成为会员，你就是终身制的。我1983年参加SFWA，在入会章程中里他们广告说：如果你在你的手稿上写下“SFWA活跃会员”的字样，你的稿件就会居于编辑们要审校的稿件堆的顶端，不管是Asimov's, Analog,或F&SF。因为那说明你是个职业作者，值得认真考虑。Speculations杂志，一家致力于科幻写作生意的美国semi-prozine，他们去年做了个调查，他们竟然真的问了业内的主要作家，还有出版商和杂志编辑，问他们到底“SFWA活跃会员”意味着什么？每个人私下里都说，那不再是个祝福了。原因就是太多的人在SFWA里面得到了“SFWA活跃会员”待遇而谁也不知道是什么原因。还有些人只是在50，60或者70年代发表过一两个故事然后就销声匿迹了，甚至那些故事都卖到了有问题的市场里。所以那已经不是一个纯粹职业的会员标志了。 至于我，我得过星云奖，我四次获得雨果奖提名，我是否在我的手稿上标明“SFWA活跃会员”已经无所谓，我很容易获得注意，SFWA里的大名们也一样。所以我想做的是重新介定会员资格：每五年需要会员们注册一次。这些事情以前做过，但老家伙们阻止新会员的加入，这与我们的初衷完全相背。我们要重新为新人授权。如果你卖出了三个故事但还没有人知道你的名字，你就是这块领域的新人，你才刚刚开始，你卖出了故事给Asimov's或者F&SF或者TOR地买给了哪个合集，你想有一个机会让编辑们知道你的水平已经达到了一定标准，这个标准也是编辑们把来稿分类的标准。好的——“SFWA活跃会员”，我会让他们引起足够重视。我会让助手们读到他们并没有任何理由认为他们只是玩笑。我想把这些归还那些新作者。这行业最近是越来越艰难了，甚至是god's sakes这样的小说，杂志社也只paying only in copies。这是科幻领域出现以来最艰难的时刻，也是新手们能够参与进来并以新手的名义站稳脚跟的最艰难时刻。所以我想把这些机会给回新手们，这得下狠手，估计会有很多人反对该计划，不过我的基础不错，我在竞选过程中比我的对手Norman Spinrad多出了50多个点。我赢得了竞选，但我们要重新介定会员资格，那仍是场硬仗。这是我今年在任上想做的另一件事情。 问：从国际化的角度出发，我们很想知道美-加之间的不同点，另外作为一个加拿大作家，你是怎么评价你自己的呢？ 答：我想现在加拿大科幻作家已经泛滥天下了——过去几年出现了一大堆。七八十年代的时候常常有很多学院went around potificating美国科幻和加拿大科幻的不同点。他们经常做得很阴险，他们仅仅忽视一些作家的理论。现在加拿大有了那么多的作家，而我们又是那么各不相同，那种用三到四个作家来举例说明加拿大科幻和美国科幻是不同的做法，已经不是那么无懈可击的了。David Ketterer写的那本经典的非小说类书籍叫Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy的，里面说加拿大人没写过硬科幻——即使Phyllis Gotlieb在那个时代已经是一个奠基者的名字，即使McGill University的Donald Kingsbury也在写硬科幻，即使我在写硬科幻，即使Steve Stirling在写硬科幻，还有Spider Robinson也在写硬科幻，他还是那样说。他到处宣扬这一观点——就想学院们做的那样，发表一个观点然后让他们成为自己的宠物观点——可惜漏洞百出。 Robert Runté有一个观点是说：美国科幻喜剧收场，加拿大科幻悲剧收场，英国科幻没收场。到真是妙人妙语，自然也是漏洞百出。他的话太抬举加拿大科幻了——我从未自己这样写过——但证据太多了。美国科幻里就有能让你恨不得割腕自杀的故事。在所有种类里，科幻是最没有民族性的。西部片自然是美国西部的故事。神秘小说里也能清晰地分辨哪是英国的神秘，哪是美国的神秘。尝试寻找William Gibson, Robert Sawyer, Charles de Lint, Terence M. Green, James Alan Gardner, Julie Czerneda, Michelle Sagara, Tanya Huff, Guy Gavriel Kay的理论依据和一致的流派，那是荒谬的。根本没有。假如说有什么事情是真的话，那就是最近准备出版的，至少正在卖的那些加拿大科幻，是真正的好东西。我想我们正在生产有品质的东西，我不认为你能指认这个国家里的哪个作者在最近的市场里是象摇色子那样一个又一个地把垃圾货摇出来的。在美国你倒是能看到无尽的名单，他们写一些填充起来的东西，毫无雄心，不是particularly well-written的。 问：你最新的一本书 Factoring Humanity，能告诉我们一些它的情况吗？ 答：好的，我写了些有关人工智能的东西，也写了些童年创伤的记忆恢复，还有量子计算机，外星信息等等和另外一大堆东西。你可能自己去读才行了。 当你写一个神秘小说，你会简化这个世界，你会说：好的，那是60亿人，有8个可能犯下了这宗谋杀。还有个人将侦破该案，还有杀人犯必定是处于一个简单的，可定义的动机下。本质上他就变成了一幕道德剧：一个好侦探，难逃法网的罪犯，再没什么需要分析的了。 当你写一本科幻小说，你最大的快乐就是你投入了古老的，永恒的宇宙的怀抱，它如此巨大，复杂，充满了不同种类的东西。写科幻最棒之处在于你有巨大的画布，如果你获得了如此大的空间，一个作家为什么愿意把自己局限在狭窄的情节中呢？那让我觉得没意思。当然也有很多作家在那样的格局下做得很好。很多作家写了大量的这种类型的小说。但那不是我想做的，作为艺术家，那不是我的出发点。我的出发点是：把一大堆不同的东西组织在一起，象抽象拼图。Science Fiction Book Club对我的Terminal Experiment做了个有漂亮封面的版本，那封面就是抽象拼图风格的：一些脑电图元素，一个手表，还有电脑组件。如果我搞视觉艺术，就象我写的东西一样，我要的就是抽象拼图相对于肖像画的感觉。 问：你可以告诉我们一些针对于你的书里面的伦理观点的回应吗？ 答：大部分的回应都是正面的。我很期待能得到人们针对我在Terminal Experiment里的堕胎观点的支持或反对的意见，虽然大部分来自美国的负面回应都是关于Frameshift里的pro-socialized-medicine的地位的，但对于堕胎观的意见也逐渐出现了。实际上，很多人对我比较中立的堕胎观表示了欣慰，看上去很多人对这点还是不置可否的。但不置可否令人很不舒服，因为在这个问题上处于“正确”的一边看起来十分重要（怎么样才算正确，很大程度上取决于你住在哪个地方）。于是我猜测我可能为公费医疗指引了一条相当保险的道路（我确实觉得这样做还挺没脑子）；很多美国佬感激我这样做让他们获得了启发。确实有个活跃的极端主义分子想鼓动民众禁止我的Terminal Experiment，因为她反对器官移植。当然那很没意思，不过面对那些明显脱离了现实的人，你能做的确实很少。我希望针对我书里面反映的伦理问题最多的评论是这样：我不必同意你，但你确实让人陷入沉思了。”我不能再期待太多了。 问：在Far-Seer，你谈到Quintaglios必须经历一个成人仪式，而在星从，Keith也通过相同的经历认识了人类。你觉得我们的文明下一次也将要经历什么仪式吗？需要经历什么仪式呢？ 答：好的，首先，我们已经经历了一个仪式：我觉得我们已经通过了核战的时代。可惜印度和巴基斯坦仍然朝着这条通往地狱的道路前进，我非常悲哀。于是，我猜测禁止核武器将是我们的文明下一个将要经历的仪式。在那以后，我们将面对第一台可思考的机器的诞生。那意味着，照字面意思，你创造了一个你自己的继任者。一些人正在hell-bent似的做着这件事情。不过还有希望的是，我们还能有这个聪明在他们成功以前阻止他们。这是我写 Factoring Humanity时发掘到的一个主题。 Interview with Robert J. Sawyer Here is our complete interview with Robert J. Sawyer. An abridged version appears in Challenging Destiny Number 5. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- interview by James Schellenberg & David M. Switzer CD: Are there particular writers you consider major influences on your writing? RJS: Within the SF field, the biggest influence on me was Arthur C. Clarke. My first novel, Golden Fleece, was clearly an homage to 2001. It's about a sentient computer aboard a spaceship that commits murder, which is a premise that obviously impressed me greatly when I first saw 2001 in 1968, when I was eight years old. We got to go see it in its first run on the big screen, in 70 mm -- it was wonderful. The sense of wonder in Clarke's work is something that I always try to bring to my work, this kind of transcendental sense that somehow by reading SF you've sort of touched the infinite. I think he does that very well. Although I did once do a trilogy -- Far-Seer, Fossil Hunter, and Foreigner -- I did not in fact enjoy doing a trilogy, and Clarke once said the best way to end a book is so that the reader can write the sequel in his or her own mind. You see that in 2001, you see it in Childhood's End, and you see it in Rendezvous With Rama. In fact, Rendezvous With Rama is the perfect example, because it ends with that great line, "The Ramans do everything in threes." Then he actually, with Gentry Lee, wrote the sequels -- which sucked. It would have been much better not to do that. So you'll find often at the end of my books that there's an epilogue or a final scene that opens up a whole new doorway, but I never go there. I leave it for the reader to go there. People keep asking me, "When's there going to be a sequel to Golden Fleece? When's there going to be a sequel to Starplex? When's there going to be a sequel to Terminal Experiment?" And my answer is: Whenever you sit down and think it up in your own mind, that's when there'll be a sequel. The other writer in SF who had a huge influence on me was Frederik Pohl, but only really the work he did in the 1970's. In the 1970's he did a few really spectacular novels, in a career that before and since was prolific but relatively mediocre. In the seventies he did Gateway, which I think is the finest SF novel ever written, and he also did Man Plus, and Gem, and The Cool War. I read all of those, and as a teenager I was shelling out to get new Pohl in hardcover, because it was so good. There were two things that he brought to his work that I took from him. The first was the idea of doing hard SF, which is what I do, but that was character-based. Clarke has never been a characterization person but Pohl, when he's good, is. Gateway is a brilliant novel of characterization set against a brilliant hard SF idea. You do the idea in two paragraphs, and the whole novel's exploring the characterization. The other thing that Pohl did, and you see it again in Gateway, is use main characters who are not heroic, and not necessarily even good people. There's a very poignant scene in Gateway -- and this was the first time I'd read something like this in SF -- where the main character, Robinette Broadhead, had become friends with a handicapped person who wanted to go on this space voyage with Robinette. Robinette told him: oh for sure, we're buddies, you're coming with me, no problem. And then when the guy wasn't around, Robinette went and arranged to make sure that this guy would be excluded from the mission, because he was uncomfortable with him and didn't want him around. And every bit of SF I'd ever seen -- and I grew up watching Star Trek in the 1960's -- was incredibly hopeful, positive, and all the characters were better than I was or anybody else I knew was. They were something that you would strive to be, but were unrealistically good characters. You saw this so much in the SF that was influential, certainly in the sixties and seventies: Paul Atreides in Dune is like a quintessential hero, and there's nothing less than heroic about him for even a moment of the book. But Pohl wrote characters that were deeply flawed, and weren't necessarily even likable, and this was a big epiphany for me, the realization that the protagonist doesn't necessarily have to be a hero. And I think you see that a lot in Terminal Experiment: Peter Hobson is a deeply flawed character around whom events flow in the novel without him necessarily being entirely admirable or likable. I think that makes for much more sophisticated fiction when you put aside the idea that the character has to be somebody you admire, and I think you get much better fiction if the character is somebody who is interesting and believable and multi-layered. Admirable characters tend to have only one layer: they do the right thing in all circumstances. Captain Kirk is a perfect example. I grew up with Captain Kirk, who had a huge impact on me. This was a man who was a great leader, and when he made a mistake he would always apologize. You would see him say he was sorry to Uhura or Scotty if he had been harsh with them. Even when he was bad he went and rectified it afterwards, and that was the quintessential SF hero. But I realized that flawed characters were much more interesting characters to write about, and that came from Pohl. Outside of SF, Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird is the novel that influenced me the most in my life. I think it's the best novel I've ever read. I like it because it does a couple of things really, really well. One is: the main story is apparently about a couple of kids having adventures over a summer holiday, but what it's really about is racism and the coming of age of the South in dealing with black civil rights in the South, at the same time that these kids are coming of age. The idea that the overt content, what the book appears to be about, isn't really what it's about at all has appealed to me enormously. A novel of mine, Fossil Hunter, which appears to be about a power struggle on a planet of intelligent dinosaurs, in fact is about the Roman Catholic Church and its stance on birth control and abortion. What it's really about is completely different from what the surface content appears to be, and certainly that's something that Harper Lee gave me as a mode of writing. CD: You mention that book specifically in Frameshift. RJS: Avi Myer in Frameshift actually ruminates on the book because it had a profound effect on him. I think they make you read a lot of dumb books in high school English class, but that's one of the few ones that I can see you giving to a student that they would carry with them for the rest of their life, as something that really had an impact on them. Another enormous influence is classical Greek tragedy--Sophocles, Aeschlyus, Euripedes -- I studied that at length; it's a narrative form that, if you're familiar with, you see all kinds of echoes of. In Fossil Hunter, there's a character called The Watcher, who appears between chapters and makes commentary -- he's just the chorus out of a classic Greek play. In Flashforward, that I just finished, for the first time I have a main character who's Greek, and he's reflecting on the hamartia that propels Greek tragedy -- is there a way to avoid your fate? Golden Fleece again is told entirely from the point of view of a computer, which is really just the eyes and ears on the wall in the novel and really I was telling the novel from the point of view of the chorus in a Greek tragedy. Robert B. Parker's Spenser novels had a big impact on me, for dialogue. Eric Wright, a Canadian mystery writer, had a big influence on me for his eye for detail. Terence M. Green, another SF writer who's also Canadian, stylistically. CD: What authors do you read these days? RJS: In SF, one of the most interesting things that I've read recently is Jack McDevitt's Ancient Shores, which is archaeological SF set entirely on Earth, and does one of the things that I also try to do well. One of the things that I try to do is write SF that can be read by people who are not SF fans. If you pick up Frameshift, for instance, you don't have to have read Heinlein and Clarke and Asimov, you don't have to know the three laws of robotics, you don't have to know what an ansible is or what FTL means or any of those things. It's a story that anybody can read that happens to be a SF story. And there aren't a lot of authors who are doing that. Far too many authors are mining this very narrow vein of SF for people who have read SF since they were six years old. McDevitt, brilliantly, in that book writes a mind-expanding SF novel that could be read by anybody. I think it's severely hampered by the cover that HarperPrism gave it, which is a cover that would turn off anybody except a dedicated SF reader. It's got this alien vista, it's got the requisite buxom woman on it and all of that. The book starts off in this bucolic setting in North Dakota on farm land, and it's almost like -- maybe you saw in physics class once upon a time this movie Cosmic Zoo where two people are having a picnic and they keep pulling back, back, back until it's the entire universe -- he almost pulls that off, in a sense, in this novel. And I think it's the best SF novel I've read in the 1990's including, I dare say, even my own work. Outside of SF, the best novel that I've read is Carol Shields' The Stone Diaries, a Canadian-authored book and Pulitzer Prize winner. I spend a lot of time teaching SF writing, and also a fair bit of time editing -- recently doing Tesseracts 6, and I just finished another anthology for Pottersfield Press called Crossing The Line. SF, more than any other genre, is ruled by writers workshops. People who go to Clarion have somehow bought themselves a credential to call themselves an SF writer, without ever having published anything -- you pay the money, you take the course. I have taught an SF writing course at Ryerson, and another one at the University of Toronto. I find that in SF -- and you see this in book reviews because book reviews tend to be written by beginning writers (more experienced writers have more valuable things to do with their time than reviewing other people's work) -- you get these beginning writers who do book reviews and they'll always point out, as if it's a flaw in a novel, when somebody does something that violates one of the standard bits of received wisdom that is foisted upon you in a creative writing class. In The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields breaks every single rule you'll ever hear from a creative writing instructor. There's that rule: Show, don't tell. She tells for fifty pages without showing you a single thing, but it's brilliant. There's that rule where you should only have one viewpoint character in every scene. She's bopping around from head to head like a ball in a pinball game, and yet it's fascinating because it works really well. CD: So, structurally, a lot of interesting things are happening. RJS: A structurally fascinating book, so much of it is passive, correspondence or diary entries, all the kinds of things that a creative writing instructor would go and kill in a writer, a writer who had the idea of trying something stylistically a little bit different. They'd just say: you can't do that. Not only was it a great book, but also it was Carol Shields, who herself has gone through what we all do of teaching creative writing at some point, thumbing her nose at all the other creative writing teachers, and saying you can tell a really good story, and there are no limits on how you can tell it. What counts is not the checklist of things that they give you as guidelines in a creative writing class, what counts is the effect that the reader is left with at the end of the tale. She did that brilliantly, so that's my recommendation. Even if all you read is SF, that one is well worth reading for getting a sense of how good fiction that isn't like the Clarion cookie-cutter can be. CD: Have you seen any good movies lately? RJS: Actually, I tend to think that the best SF movies are the ones people won't even recognize as being SF. I thought -- and I nominated for the Hugo -- that Liar, Liar was the best, if not SF, then certainly speculative fiction or fantasy film of the last few years. It takes that classic thing, that one premise, which is: suppose a little boy's birthday wish could come true. That's the only speculative element in it, but it's there, and the entire film evolves naturally from that. I thought it was a brilliant piece of fantasy film-making. One of the things the last couple of years of movies has made apparent to me is that SF books and movies are different art forms, and they work better when they follow their own separate paths. The worst SF films of the last few years in many cases have tended to be the SF films based on novels. The Postman, obviously, is the classic example. But Starship Troopers is a letdown, and Sphere is a good example. And even Contact, which I thought was brilliantly done, was so much less than what the novel was, and philosophically, I thought it destroyed the message of the novel. The message of the novel Contact is there are two belief systems, there's religion and there's science, and science is the superior belief system. In the movie, one or the other, you take it or you leave it, whichever one you prefer, they're both equally valid. And in fact if a man wants to ruin a woman's career, as Matthew McConaughey does to Jodi Foster, just because he doesn't agree with her philosophically, well that's okay too. So I thought what they actually did was a dumbing down of what Sagan set out to say, and I rather suspect that he would have been quite vocally disappointed with the film had he lived to see it come out. But the SF film that I thoroughly enjoyed last year was Gattaca, which is not based on anything except somebody doing in many ways similar stuff to what I was doing in Frameshift, somebody looking at everything that's happening in genetics, and trying to come up with a story to tell about it. If you think about the Gattaca story for any length of time, it falls apart, but that's okay, because film isn't necessarily about a rigorous linear narrative that makes sense at each and every instant. It's about stunning visual images that leave you again with an effect or an impact at the end. That said, I would love to have the money that goes with having one of my books turned into a film, but I can't imagine being happy with it. The only author I ever heard of being happy with his adaptation was Frank Herbert, who was said to be ecstatic with Dune -- which just sucked. This was a guy, normally a brilliant guy, who just got so dazzled by the klieg lamps and so forth that he had no sense at all of how they were dumbing down, destroying and muddifying what he had been trying to do. There's just no way you can go into it with anything other than: this is my retirement, if they do it, I've got money for retirement now, my financial woes are over. CD: Tell us about the film rights that have been optioned on your books. RJS: With Illegal Alien, we had two competing bidders, one in Hollywood and one in Toronto. I am a Canadian patriot and my hope was that we could end up going with the Canadian one. Ultimately, the bids ended up being so similar in terms of the amount of money being offered and the other terms, that it really just came down to me choosing, and I chose the Canadian one, in part because it's a lot easier for me to go visit the set. And because I think the guys who have optioned it -- which are David Coatsworth, who is a major producer, and Michael Lenick, a major special effects designer -- I think they really can do it and will do it in a way that I won't be ashamed of. One of the things the other guys were talking about was making the aliens humanoid. In Illegal Alien I went to great pains to devise non-human aliens, and the Canadian group said: that's a real challenge because no one's ever done that. They've done non-human aliens like in Alien that you see in the shadows, or you see them in action scenes, but you've never had a novel that was essentially characters talking and interacting where the other character had to be done entirely by special effects, computer graphics, prosthetics and all of that. Nobody has ever really done that sort of thing. It's comparable to trying to do Larry Niven's Ringworld and have somebody believably do the Puppeteer as somebody you would talk to. I think these guys were excited by the challenge of that, and are undertaking to do it so I'm very pleased about that. The Terminal Experiment has just recently changed hands. It was under option for two years to a British producer, and he left the company he was with in Great Britain. What he said to us was: I'm leaving my company in Great Britain at the beginning of November, and I'm coming to Los Angeles by the middle of November, and I know the option expires at the beginning of November. I don't want to renew it while I'm with the British company, I want to come to the States and renew it with my new company. So we said: that's fine, we gave him an indulgence, that is we were going to let the contract lapse but still let him pick it up at basically the same place he'd been. And he got to the States and he seemed to express great enthusiasm but nonetheless was dragging his heels, and so finally my agent started shopping the book around again. One of the people he sent it to was Jon Landau. When Titanic won the Oscar for best picture, two people went up on stage to accept the Oscar, the two producers of Titanic, James Cameron and Jon Landau. Although Cameron is the name always associated with Titanic publicly, Landau was in fact his full partner in the production of the film. So Landau actually has now the most recent best picture Oscar, and he's optioned The Terminal Experiment. CD: You've had a lot of experience with some pretty intense negotiations. RJS: Exactly. And he's an amazing guy. In addition to all the film-related stuff he does, he's also Bruce Springsteen's manager. You send out these books and you try all sorts of people, but this guy just came off of doing the biggest money-maker in the history of motion pictures, and now he's optioned my book so I'm just ecstatic. CD: You mentioned that you write hard SF. Could you give us your definition of that? RJS: For me, hard SF is SF in which: one, science is integral to the plot; two, the science is rigorously researched so that whatever is in the book either is true or is a reasonable extrapolation of things we know to be true. It doesn't necessarily mean that the book is about science per se. There are writers like Gregory Benford who write hard SF in which the science is in essence the book, and the character stuff is all secondary to that. And I don't think hard SF necessarily has to be non-character-driven SF. Not to say that Greg doesn't do great characters, but they clearly aren't the reason for the book. The reason for the book is the exploration of science. Charles Sheffield is another writer like that. But I think it's just a mindset of saying it's important to me as a skeptical person that the story that I'm reading, or writing, is something that might really possibly happen. I just have no patience whatsoever with fantasy. I can't read it, I don't enjoy it, I find it a silly thing for adults to be spending their time on. But SF, if as long as I'm reading it I'm willing to believe, I'm convinced by the writer and by the writer's research that this is, if not probable, at least plausible. That's important for me. That's what I refer to as hard SF. Star Trek, on the flip side, is soft SF where they just make up stuff as they go along, and Vulcans and humans can breed and produce offspring, which is ridiculous. That's hand-waving and giving an air of science by throwing in some jargon. Hard SF is where the science is pretty bullet-proof. CD: Why do you write hard SF? RJS: That's actually a very good question because I don't have a science degree, I have an arts degree in radio and television arts from Ryerson. But I've always loved science -- I just find science fascinating. I don't think there's a single question that you can ask about anything for which the scientific method isn't the best tool for providing the answer. It's obviously the best tool for providing: What crop should I grow in this field? But I think it's equally the best tool for answering: Is there a God? Or anything in between. We have developed over thousands of years a system of inquiry that works for whatever you want to throw at it. And writing books about something is important to me, not just writing plots, not just telling stories, but having books that have a philosophical content to them, that explore something important. For me, the right tool for exploring just about any important issue is science. Ask the questions, put forward a theory, test that theory, if the theory is no good discard it and come up with another theory. If you have a theory that seems to be working and new evidence presents itself, find a way to either incorporate that new evidence or again discard the theory. Make sure that what you see can be replicated by somebody else, so that they see it too. Think of all the stupid wars that have been fought over all the thousands of years by one guy who says he saw a god, and nobody else was able to see it but he's damned if he's going to be dissuaded by the fact that his results are irreproducible. I think it's a reasonable approach for structuring any sort of human intellectual inquiry, and no matter what I was writing, whether it's SF or nonfiction or haranguing tracts or something, they would be about serious issues and I think science is the right tool for addressing serious issues of any nature. CD: You mentioned that you have a thing against fantasy, although you have written a few fantasies. RJS: When I have written fantasy stories, they still seem to me like SF stories, although I have accepted something implausible or impossible as being part of them. And if you accept faster-than-light travel, you probably are putting a magical element in the story anyways. I have never of my own volition written a fantasy story. All the fantasy stories I've ever written I was commisioned to write -- an editor said: Will you write this story, or this book? I never write short fiction unless there's some pressing deadline, unless somebody's commisioned something. So when somebody says: Yeah, I'll buy this story if you write it, but it's for a fantasy themed anthology -- like my story "Peking Man" in Dark Destiny 3, like my story "Above It All" in Dante's Disciples -- I figure what the hell. But nonetheless it's all ridiculous. The thing is, SF, when it's good, is the farthest thing in the world from escapism. It's a literature that's designed to make you think. I just finished reading an interview with Dave Duncan in the book Northern Dreamers that just came out, where he talks about fantasy being a tropical vacation from the Canadian winter. Fantasy is getting away from it all, fantasy is putting aside your cares. Almost all fantasy is based on a fundamentally ridiculous assumption, which is that there is pure good and there is pure evil and they are in conflict, and you can always identify which is which. And we don't see that hardly ever in the real world. Hardly ever have we seen any example of pure good or pure evil. Hitler comes the closest probably to being pure evil of anybody who's walked around in the twentieth century and had any kind of major role to play. But the idea that the entire universe breaks down into this struggle between light and dark, or good and evil -- there's just no empirical evidence that that in fact has any basis in reality, so why would we revel in reading stories about this? You might as well write stories about characters who on the one hand all of them speak in rhyming verse, and on the other hand all of them tattoo into each other's arms whatever it is they're going to say. Two opposing camps that are as ridiculous as the camps of pure good and pure evil. But for some reason there's a segment of the population, and I can understand the psychology -- there's a frustration and also an inability on the part of a lot of people to deal with moral ambiguity, and so they stay out of moral debates. They don't weigh in, they say I don't have an opinion about abortion, I don't know what we should do about aboriginal rights, I'm not sure what should happen in the post-apartheid trials in South Africa. People look for excuses to avoid having to face isssues, and in fantasy there are no issues, the issue is given to you on page one: here are the good guys, here are the bad guys; here are the white hats, here are the black hats. We'll wait and see what course of action will be required for good to triumph, but it always does. And I can see how that's comforting, but I like to think that adult readers aren't looking for security blankets. A child might take some pleasure out of a simplistic black and white, good and evil story, but I don't think it provides much nourishment for a sophisticated adult. CD: As a hard SF writer, how do you get your ideas and research them? RJS: It's the flip side, actually: you start doing the research and then the ideas just pop up. A classic example is Frameshift. I just sat down -- I knew I had to write a new novel -- and I started making a list of topics that sounded like they would be fruitful areas to explore. I wrote down artificial intelligence, I wrote down first contact with aliens, I wrote down genetics, I wrote down three of four others. Then I just stared at the list for a while, and I decided you could not pick up a newspaper, or read Time or Maclean's, without constantly seeing articles about genetics, and breakthroughs: they've discovered the gene for this and the gene for that. And I thought this has to be a very fruitful area. I didn't have a plot at all, I didn't have anything other than: I was going to write a book about genetics. I sat down and spent two months just reading about genetics, without any preconception of what I was going to find, just reading articles about genetics and books about genetics, and noting down things that I thought might make interesting, dramatic situations. What were the issues in genetics? And was there a human being that I could use to illustrate those issues? People always ask where do you get your ideas as if they appear full-blown, as if you get ideas the way you get heartburn, it just suddenly is there. It doesn't happen that way. You spend months digging into a topic. For Frameshift, the words that kept coming up over and over again obviously were genetic testing, and discrimination by insurance companies, and in articles against genetic research you kept hearing the phrase Nazism being bandied about, and cloning. When you look at Frameshift, it's a story that involves human cloning and the search for a possible Nazi war criminal who might be in the human genome project, insurance companies discriminating against those who have genetic disabilities, and the impact of predictive testing on a specific human being. The issues were all there in the research, and I just kept looking to see ways to dramatize these to make a point about them. And I didn't know what point I wanted to make at first. Anybody can have a facile opinion about anything. It's easy to say I think we should do this about Pakistan having done nuclear testing, but you have to really chew on this and decide what we really should do, after careful consideration, not: well, what we should do to restore peace to the world now that Pakistan and India are using nuclear weapons is we should nuke them all back into the stone age, and that'll solve the nuclear problem. The facile responses are easy to come by. By the time I finished Frameshift I had positions on all of those issues, but they weren't knee-jerk positions, they were considered positions. The big one that I came to that I feel quite passionately about is that the genetic revolution absolutely mandates the requirement for socialized medicine. The only effective way to have any kind of health insurance in the genetic age is if it's entirely socialized, if you share the risk across the entire population, because otherwise it just isn't insurance. If I go and say give me one of your cells, and I say you're going to have a heart attack at 45, we're not going to insure you for that; you're going to have Alzheimer's at 63, sorry we're not going to insure you for that; you're going to develop low sperm motility at 42, that one goes off the list too. That just isn't insurance. The only way to do it is you play the hand you're dealt, but everybody shares the risk across the board. And Frameshift, if it's in any way an important novel, it's important because its largest audience by far is in the United States, and that's a message that they need to hear. CD: We really liked the aliens in Starplex. How do you create an alien race? RJS: Here is, in the first interview ever, the secret of the Starplex aliens. Back in 1980, I tried to write a Star Trek novel -- this was before Star Trek V, back when there only was Star Trek: The Motion Picture -- and I tried to write a novel where the Enterprise met God. The editor loved the novel but rejected it on the basis that it was too controversial for their Star Trek line. One of the things that I set out to do in writing that novel was incorporate alien races that had been significant in the classic Star Trek TV series. They had a race called the Tellarites, who were these pig-like, quarrelsome aliens. And I sat down and thought to myself: how do you get to this point where you've got supposedly adult, mature beings who spend all their time arguing with each other? And I ended up developing a back-story for the Tellarites, based on: well, why would you end up with incredibly competitive, argumentative males? Maybe because there are seven males for every female and only one of them gets to breed, and that would engender a sort of competiveness. It's basically worked out from that point of view, where I started with an end point, and I changed a few details to give them extra arms and so forth. But I started with an end point that I wanted to justify, and then I tried to work backwards as to what physiology, and what evolutionary biology would have led to that. The same thing happened with the Quintaglios in Far-Seer, Fossil Hunter, and Foreigner, where again when I was working on the Star Trek novel I tried to ask myself -- remember the Gorns from the Star Trek episode "Arena," who were these incredibly territorial, reptilian aliens. How does an alien end up having a civilization while still being so territorial that they wiped out a whole human colony because they got anywhere near them? And again I worked backwards, and in that case if you read the whole series it turns out to be a psychological rather than a biological explanation for that level of rabid territoriality. That's one way to do it. I just started with an alien that had intrigued me in Star Trek but on the surface made no sense, and how would I justify that. The premise of the Star Trek novel that never got finished was that some millions of years ago, this being had come through the previous cycle of big bang-big crunch, and had been shaping life in this universe. The alien, the god, had decided that it wanted to die, but had no way to commit suicide, so it decided to guide the evolution of one galaxy, guide the evolution of all the races in that galaxy, to produce incredibly violent beings, and then go and challenge them so they would all come and kill it. So I was looking at all the different beings in Star Trek, and one thing they all have in common is they tend to be quite belligerent: the Klingons, the Romulans, the Gorns, the Tellarites were shown to be nasty guys. The Andorians we were told were a proud, warrior race. This kept coming up over and over again. In "Where No Man Has Gone Before," which is the second Star Trek pilot, we're introduced to the concept that there is this energy barrier around the galaxy. So I thought, okay, so the god had taken one galaxy, put a big barrier around it so none of these races could ever get out, then spent millions of years guiding their evolution so that they'd all end up being the meanest sons of bitches possible, and then have them all come at him so that he could finally die. I thought it was a really good premise, and I may still turn it into a novel at some point, but it set me to thinking: what kind of explanations could there be for all these violent races? The explanation on Earth is the simplest one of all, which is you just set plate tectonics going and you isolate populations for thousands of years, and then once they reach a level where they're sea-faring, suddenly they meet each other, and of course we have conflict, which is the whole bloody history of our planet. I don't think we ever would have had that level of conflict if we'd always been able to walk and talk to each other, instead of having mountain barriers and ocean barriers between us. So that's one way to do it. The other way, which is in fact the more satisfying way because it has no other source material, is what I did in Illegal Alien, where you just start in the ancient past. If you followed all the information that came out from the Burgess Shale, which is this fossiliferous area from five hundred million years ago in British Columbia, it documents clearly something called the Cambrian Explosion. Five hundred million years ago dozens of different fundamental body plans appeared in the fossil record, and they were around for a short period of time, and almost all of them died out. One of the very few that survived was our body plan, which is a central spinal chord with two sets of parallel limbs off of it. But there were dozens of other different ones. And as many people have observed, Stephen J. Gould being the most famous one in his book Wonderful Light, any one of those body plans seemed to be just as good for the environment that existed five hundred million years ago. Now granted, this one did turn out to be pretty good for today, but the other ones might have as well. So I just thought, well why don't we just go back and start with a different fundamental body plan, and for the aliens in Illegal Alien, I started off with quadrilateral symmetry instead of bilateral symmetry, and with four limbs that were evenly spaced around shoulders, rather than two sets of limbs, one set of shoulders and one set of hips. And I started developing forward, running through five hundred million years of evolution. What would they look like after they got out of the water onto the land? How would they start using their limbs? How would they free up limbs for manipulative purposes while still having limbs for locomotive purposes? And when you follow that chain of reasoning, starting at the very beginning and going on, you develop a psychology for the aliens that's based on the body plan. In Illegal Alien it worked out perfectly. They had developed an asymmetry with four limbs that hung off the shoulders. The two on the left and the right remained long and hung down to the ground so that they could walk, and the ones in the front and the back became the manipulatory ones, but they gave preference to the one in the front, so that there's a strong front arm and a weak back arm. All of the concepts that we have in human psychology based on the two sides to every story, and everything moving from a continuum -- we talk about that in politics all the time, from the left to the right -- none of that exists for these people because they have a psychology that's based on one side always being immediately obviously stronger than the other side. The psychology that permeates Illegal Alien came from going right back five hundred million years and evolving forward a life form and seeing what it would develop. So those are the two fundamental ways to do it. You either start with a finished product, and if it's an intriguing enough product, then you can backtrack some interesting stuff. Spock is an unintriguing alien because who cares why his ears are pointed instead of rounded, there's nothing intriguing about that. But aliens who are territorial and you would think could never even work together but somehow are, which is a throwaway in Star Trek, became the meat for three full novels that I wrote. CD: You mentioned that you started writing a Star Trek novel. Would you consider writing one of these Star Trek or Star Wars novels or even a novelization these days? RJS: The only kind of product like that that I would be remotely interested in doing would be one that I actually loved the source material for. So classic Star Trek, maybe Planet of the Apes which I also have a great fondness for. I might be intrigued if the opportunity presented itself to me. Well, it has -- I talked to John Ordover and he certainly expressed interest in having me write a Star Trek novel. But fundamentally I think franchise fiction and media tie-ins are bad for the genre, I think they've hurt SF enormously over the last decade. All the shelf space for them has come out of the SF section. Star Trek is a 1960's vision of the future, Star Wars is a 1970's vision, and yet these are the best-selling SF products that we have to offer in the 1990's? It's really disappointing for me how these things have flooded the marketplace. Also, there is a perception if you write franchise fiction, I think it really does hurt any aspirations you have of being taken seriously. Everybody points to Joe Haldeman: he wrote two Star Trek novels back in the 1970's. He was one of the first to write Star Trek novels. He won the Hugo for The Forever War and I think they paid him a hundred thousand dollars a book -- which was a lot of money back in the 1970's -- for these two Star Trek novels. And James Blish, who wrote all the novelizations of the original Star Trek TV shows, was a Hugo winner for A Case of Conscience. But this was early on in the game. When you look at the writers who are doing it today, they're almost without exception second string writers, writers who have no significant following for their solo, stand-alone work. And they all keep saying -- it's almost like a mantra for them -- that there's going to be crossover. That of the million people who buy the Star Wars novel, one per cent, which would be ten thousand, will run out and buy their novel. But in fact there's zero evidence that anything more than a couple of dozen readers give a damn that so-and-so is the author, and will seek out so-and-so's work. All they care about is the next adventure of Luke, Han, and Leia; or Kirk, Spock, and McCoy; or Picard, Data, and Riker. They don't care at all about the next book by fill-in-the-name. CD: What inspired you to write, and how did you get started writing? RJS: Well, I've been writing stories since I was a little kid -- I've always written stories. What got me started writing professionally was: in 1979 the Strasenburgh Planetarium in Rochester, New York -- my parents happen to have a vacation home near Rochester -- had a contest to write a SF story that would be adapted into a dramatic star show for the planetarium. I'm a planetarium junky, whenever I go to a town I go to the planetarium -- I'd been going to this planetarium for five years at that point. They were doing really creative stuff, so much better that what McLaughlin was doing. They were a smaller planetarium, smaller budget, but doing much more inventive shows and interesting special effects, and just not this incredibly ponderous approach to astronomy that McLaughlin had been doing. And they had this contest, judged by Isaac Asimov: write a short story up to five thousand or seventy-five hundred words, that could be adapted into a star show. And I entered and I thought that's great, I love Asimov, I love planetariums. I wrote the story, and I didn't win. They sent a letter out saying you didn't win, but we're having a reception for all the participants anyways who entered the contest. And I thought what the heck, I'll go down to Rochester for this event, and when I arrived they said: we've been trying to reach you for weeks. See, I cleverly used my U.S. vacation home address with nobody there in the winter, because I thought there might be a prejudice against a Canadian writer -- the only time in my life when I thought that might be true -- but it turned out there was no truth in it at all. They said well, Asimov picked this story and it was a great story but we can do it in seven minutes, it's just a short little punchline story that he really liked. To fill up the hour we want to do two other stories as well, and we want to do yours. So they actually did mine and two other people's. The other two guys never, as far as I know, published anything else ever again. I'm the only one who went off and did anything. And the story they did actually was, I wouldn't say it's an early version of the Starplex novel because the plot line is not the same at all, but it was about the starship Starplex, and introduced the characters and settings that I used subsequently in the book Starplex. That book came out in 1996, and this was a star show in the summer of 1980, so it took sixteen years for it to appear in book form. But that's what got me started. And after that, my first serious attempt, it was produced and I got some money, I was hooked and I just kept writing SF. CD: How has your web site helped your career? RJS: It's helped my career in a number of ways. The hardest thing for any writer is to get people to try their work. People are enormously reluctant. This is why the Star Wars and Star Trek crap continues to sell, because at least you know what you're getting, you know what kind of story it's going to be, you know what the equation is. I put down this amount of money, I get that many hours of relatively mindless, inoffensive entertainment. When you go and do a novel, people don't know you, they've never tried your work before, and these days novels are pretty damn expensive. Frameshift in hardcover was $32.95 Canadian, and that's a piece of change, right? I think it's worth every penny, but it's a piece of change. How do you convince people that they should try a novel? The traditional ways are what the publishers d you try to put a good cover on, you try to have an intriguing blurb, three or four paragraphs that describe the book. I think a much more effective way is to say, as I do for all my novels: here are the opening chapters, read them at your leisure, print them out, read them in your bathroom, whatever. Give them a try, it doesn't cost you a thing. Try them at your leisure and if it intrigues you, then you can go to the bookstore and buy it. And that's been very effective. I've got all kinds of people who've said they're surfing the net, click here, click there, and end up at my web page, have never heard of the guy, try a few chapters and go to the bookstore or amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com and buy everything. So from that point of view, it's been effective in gathering new readers -- one. Two, I'm not a prolific short story writer, but I do have a number of award-winning short stories. I don't have enough, though, to make a collection, so I put them all on my web page. People said you're crazy doing that because that'll kill your reprint market. In fact, exactly the opposite has happened. I keep selling reprint rights to my stories left, right, and centre all the time. I just sold three to a publisher in Poland, they bought the package of three of them for $250 U.S., which by Polish standards is a lot of money. I put the stories up there and the guy went and read them and said, can I publish these in my Polish magazine in translation, I want to translate them and put them in my Polish magazine. He never would've found me if it hadn't been for that. The column that I do for Altair, the Australian publication, is essentially the same column I used to do for On Spec. The guy had been looking at web pages, found my old On Spec columns, and he said, what do you want for reprint rights? And I said what do you want to offer? Well, he ended up offering double what On Spec had been offering for them the first time out, but in U.S. dollars instead of Canadian dollars. So I thought, yeah, okay, if you want. And it's constantly getting people picking up stories off my web pages or columns on fiction and wanting to pay to reprint them. So that's been enormously useful. The third thing -- I've kind of hit the jackpot with this -- is in July 1998 I was USA Today Online's author of the month. They have one author every month that they highlight with a biography and links to buy their stuff at barnesandnoble.com, and they promote you for an entire month. The books editor does this just by going around, bopping around on the internet looking for interesting authors' pages. And because mine is elaborate and comprehensive and interesting, she said: would you like to be our author of the month for July? And this is huge: USA Today Online has thirty-five million hits a day. It's one of the most popular web pages in the world. It's the electronic edition of the USA Today newspaper. Not every one of those thirty-five million is going to go to the books page, but the amount of exposure that I'm getting through that is clearly more that all of my advertising all of my publishers have done for all of my books to date. And that comes directly from having done not just a web page--lots of authors have really weenie little web pages, maybe a picture of themselves and their cat, one old short story, and then a schedule of their public appearances that hasn't been updated for three years. I update my web page and something new goes up at least once a week, to keep people coming back. The cost of doing it is so infinitessimal and the results have been so outstandingly large that I can't imagine why anybody would not have a good, solid author's website. It's wonderful. So mention the URL: sfwriter.com. CD: You were just elected president of the Science Fiction Writers of America. RJS: It's actually the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. CD: What are you hoping to do with that organization? RJS: Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America is the oldest and largest professional association of SF writers in the world. We've got fourteen hundred members, of which eleven hundred are voting members and three hundred are editors or cover artists or book reviewers, people like that, allied professionals, in twenty-three countries around the world. Despite the fact that we're in twenty-three countries around the world, we still are the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. One of the things I want to do is get the organization more international in what it actually does. All of the major U.S. publishing companies are owned by non-American concerns, they're mostly owned by either German or Japanese companies. It's silly that we're pretending in 1998 that SF publishing -- even though the offices are in New York -- is still an American-controlled thing, when in fact it isn't, it's controlled in Europe and in the Far East. I think it's important that we recognize that aspect of it, that SF as a business is international. It's parochial and provincial of us to pretend that American publishing is the only thing that counts. Right now, if you sell a short story, we actually have a stupid rule, a legacy of one of my predecessors as president, which is: we accept for membership credentials publication in English anywhere in the Americas (Canada, the United States, Mexico, Central America, South America). But not in Great Britain. So if you sell a novel to HarperCollins Voyager, which is the big SF publisher in Great Britain, or to Interzone which is the top British SF magazine, you can't join SFWA. But if you sell a story to a little publication in Guatamala that happens to publish in English, you can. It's just ridiculous. So I want to rectify that; I want to make sure that we represent the professional interests of everybody who's publishing English language SF worldwide. I think it's premature for us to try and tackle the other languages, but it's ridiculous that we don't recognize the fact that British, Australian, New Zealand writers are all writing for the same companies anyway, in ultimately the same corporate hands. So that's one thing. The other thing that's happened to SFWA over thirty-three years now that it's been in existence is, frankly, we've got a lot of deadwood in the organization. We have a policy that once you qualify for membership, you're a member for life. When I joined SFWA in 1983, they advertised in their recruiting brochures that if you put "active member SFWA" on your manuscript and sent it to a magazine like Asimov's, Analog, or F&SF, you'll go to the top of the slush pile, because it means that you're a professional and worthy of serious consideration. A survey was done last year by the magazine Speculations, which is an American semi-prozine devoted to the business of writing SF, and they actually went and asked every major editor in the field, book publishers and magazine editors, and said, what does it mean when it says "active member SFWA"? And every single one of them said not a blessed thing any more. The reason is that there's so many people in SFWA who either nobody even knows why they got awarded active membership status, or sold one story or even three stories in the fifties, sixties, or seventies and nothing since, or sold to questionable markets, that it no longer actually is the badge of an accomplished professional. For me -- I've sold twelve novels, I've won the Nebula award, I'm a four-time nominee for the Hugo award -- it makes no difference whether I put "active member SFWA" or not on my manuscripts. I get attention immediately, and so do all the big names in SFWA. What I want to do is have membership requalification: require every five years everybody to reapply for membership. This has been tried before, but it was perceived as the old guard trying to keep out newcomers, which is exactly the opposite of what we're trying to accomplish. We're trying to re-empower the newcomers. If you sold three stories but nobody knows your name, you're a newcomer to the field, you've just started out, you've sold to Asimov's and F&SF and an anthology published by Tor, you want to be able to have some way of making sure that the editor knows that you've reached a certain level of stature, just as they're sorting the manuscripts when they come in. "Active member SFWA" -- okay, I've got to give that one serious attention. That one over there I'll let the assistant read because there's no reason to think that it's anything but junk. I want to give that back to the beginning writers. The field is the toughest it has ever been. There are even magazines paying only in copies these days for god's sakes. It is the toughest it's ever been to make a living in this field, and the toughest for anybody to get into the field and catch on as a new name. I want to give that back to the beginning writers, and to do that, it's going to be acrimonious, there are going to be a lot of people who are against it, but I ran on a platform based on doing this, and I beat my next nearest opponent Norman Spinrad by a fifty per cent margin. I won on this issue, but nonetheless it's going to be an acrimonious battle to see if we can actually bring in the requalification. That's the other big thing I want to accomplish this year. CD: Tying into the international aspect of it, we'd like to ask about perceived Canadian-American differences, and how you see yourself as a Canadian writer? RJS: I think there are an awful lot of Canadian SF writers right now -- a whole bunch of them emerged in the last couple of years. It used to be in the 1970s and 80s a bunch of academics went around potificating about the differences between Canadian and American SF. They always did it in a crafty fashion, because they would simply disregard certain authors to make their theory work. And now Canadian SF has so many authors, and we're also such a diverse lot that there just is nothing defensible that you can say about what makes Canadian SF different from American SF without somebody else immediately coming up with three or four writers who are counter-examples. David Ketterer wrote the classic nonfiction book about Canadian SF called Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy, in which he said Canadians don't write hard SF -- and he said that even though Phyllis Gotlieb had already been an established name for twenty years at that time, even though Donald Kingsbury from McGill University was writing hard SF, even though I was writing hard SF, Steve Stirling was writing hard SF, and Spider Robinson was writing hard SF. He just asserted this -- which is what academics do, they assert a position and this becomes their pet theory -- but it just doesn't hold water. Robert Runté had this theory that American SF had happy endings and Canadian SF had sad endings and British SF had no endings at all. It's a good quip, but it just doesn't hold up at all. There's incredibly uplifting Canadian SF -- I don't usually write it myself -- but there is such stuff out there, and there's American SF that makes you want to slit your wrists. Of any genre, SF is the least national. The western is clearly a novel of the American southwest, and in mystery there's clearly a diference between the British and the American hard-boiled mystery. To try and find a way of theorizing William Gibson, Robert Sawyer, Charles de Lint, Terence M. Green, James Alan Gardner, Julie Czerneda, Michelle Sagara, Tanya Huff, Guy Gavriel Kay and look for a theme or style uniformity -- it's just ridiculous. It just isn't there. The one thing that might possibly be true is most of the Canadian SF that's getting published these days, at least the stuff that's selling, is in fact really good. I think we're producing quality material. I don't think there's an author you can point to in this country who's just cranking out crap after crap book at the low end of the marketplace. There's an endless number of names in the States that are just producing filler stuff, nothing ambitious, isn't particularly well-written. CD: Could you tell us about your latest book, Factoring Humanity? RJS: Well, there's stuff about artificial intelligence, there's stuff about recovered memories of childhood abuse, there's stuff about quantum computing, there's stuff about radio messages from aliens, and there's a whole big other thing that's in it too. You'll have to read the book to find out. When you write a mystery novel, you enormously simplify the universe, you say: OK, there are 6 billion human beings, there are 8 who might have committed this murder, and there's one guy who will solve the murder, and the murder usually was committed with a simple, definable motive. It's in essence a morality play: there's the good detective, and the bad person who has to get caught, and there's not a whole lot of analysis of that. When you write a SF novel, one of the great joys is that you embrace the fact that we live in a huge, complex, ancient long-lived universe that's full of diverse things. The great thing about writing SF is that you have that huge canvas, and if you've got all of that, why would a writer want to narrow himself to one narrow little plotline? It doesn't make any sense to me, and yet there are writers who do that very, very well. There are lots of writers who prosper doing that in this genre. But it's not what I want to do, it's not what I set out to do as an artist. This is what I set out to d bring a whole bunch of different things together, like a collage. The Science Fiction Book Club did an edition of The Terminal Experiment that had a wonderful cover because it was a collage: a little bit of an EEG printout, a watch, computer components. If I were a visual artist, collages, as opposed to portraits, would be the kind of thing I would do. CD: Could you tell us about some of the responses you've received to the ethical points you've made in your books. RJS: By and large the reaction has been extremely positive. I expected to take some flak from people on both sides of the abortion issue for what I said in The Terminal Experiment, and a lot of flak from Americans over the pro-socialized-medicine position taken in Frameshift. But very little of that has emerged. Indeed, most people have been pleased that I took a reasonable middle-ground approach to abortion; it seems lots of people really are ambivalent about this issue, but aren't comfortable articulating that ambivalence, because it's so important to be seen to be on the "right" side of the question (which side is right, of course, depending enormously on where you live). And I guess I made the case for socialized medicine in a pretty iron-clad way (I really do think it's a no-brainer); many Americans have thanked me for making the case in a way that finally makes sense to them. I did have one rabble-rousing extremist try to get The Terminal Experiment banned because it did not, in her view, support organ donation; of course that's utter nonsense, but there's very little you can do when confronted by someone who is clearly out of touch with reality. I suppose the comment I get most often about the ethical issues I raise in my novels is, "I don't necessarily agree with you, but you did make me think." I can't ask for anything more than that. CD: In Far-Seer, you talk about how the Quintaglios need to undergo a rite of passage as a race, and in Starplex, Keith comes to realize the same thing about humans. What rite of passage do you think our civilization will go through next? Should go through next? RJS: Well, first of all, I thought we'd actually gone through one of the major rites of passage: I thought we'd passed through the era of nuclear combat. I'm enormously distressed to see India and Pakistan pursuing that particular road to hell again. So, I guess that banning nuclear weapons is the right of passage our civilization has to pass through next. After that, it's facing the crisis that will occur when the first thinking machines are created. It is, quite literally, suicide to create your own successors; some people are hell-bent on doing that; hopefully, we'll be smart enough to stop them before they succeed. This is a theme I explore at some length in Factoring Humanity. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

兔子等着瞧

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2005-04-12 08:35:23

校对版本来了，冲刺阿问：有哪些作者对你的写作产生了影响？答：在SF领域，影响我最深的作者应该算C.CLACK。我写了第一部小说——《金羊毛》向他的《2001》致敬。里面写了一台飞船上的科学计算机进行谋杀犯罪的故事。我1968年8岁的时候看了《2001》的第一场宽银幕首映式。那时还是70MM胶片——相当不错。我一直在我的作品中尝试CLACK营造的那种宏大氛围，那是一种仿佛被奇观所震撼的前瞻性，他做的实在是天下无两。 尽管我曾经写过三步曲，比如说Far-Seer, Fossil Hunter, 还有Foreigner ，但我并不真正喜欢三步曲。CLACK曾经说过，完成一本书最好的方法就是让读者最终能在他们脑海里画出整个结局。看《2001》时你感受到了这一效果，童年的终结Childhood's End也是，还有与拉玛相会Rendezvous With Rama也是。实际上，与拉玛相会是最好的例子。因为它结束于这伟大的句子："The Ramans do everything in threes."。于是他就和GENTRY LEE一起，真的这样写出了续集——那个倒不怎么样。谁知道呢，或许没这样做更好，总之现在我的书的结尾经常有一个尾声或者一个场景打开一片新天地，但我不再继续下去。我让读者们自己去想象。人们总是问我，“什么时候出金羊毛的结局？什么时候出星丛的结局？什么时候出Terminal Experiment的结局？我的回答是：当你静静地坐下来，想出你心目中的结局时，那就是。 另一个对我影响巨大的作者是Frederik Pohl,不过确切地说是他在70年代的作品。在他多产而相对平庸的职业生涯中，70年代他确实写出了一些相当有特点的小说。他写的GATEWAY，我想这是他最好的一部作品，还有MAN PLUS，GEM，和THE COOL WAR，我全部读过。那时我还小，我几乎倾囊而出买了他的那些全新的硬装书。实在是太好了。我从里面学到了他用于作品里的两大概念：其一是写硬科幻的想法，就是现在我所做的，当然是以人物为基础。CLACK从不关心人物塑造，但FREDERIK POHL，在鼎盛的时候，这样做。GATEWAY就是一本相比其光辉的硬科幻想法更为辉煌的人物塑造小说。讲述科幻想法只用了两段，而整部小说则在探索塑造人物。 POHL做的另一件事，你也可以从GATEWAY看到，他的主角不是英雄，甚至没必要是好人。GATEWAY 里面有一个令人非常诧异的场景——这也是我第一次在SF里看到——主角ROBINETTE BROADHEAD对那位请求和他继续星际旅行的残疾人朋友说：“当然可以，我们是兄弟。”但转个背他就想方设法把他排除在任务之外，原因仅仅是对他看不惯。我在成长的过程中所看的SF比如说60年代的星际险航，都是毫无质疑的充满希望，富有积极意义的，主角们都比我更好或比我所知道的任何一个人更好。他们都是你景仰的榜样，当然也都是不切实际的。你可以发现60、70年代的SF书都是这些角色。Paul Atreides在《沙丘》里就是这样一个模式化的英雄，这本书每时每刻都在歌颂他的英雄主义。但POHL总是故意把他的主角写得富有争议，这对我而言真是个巨大的启示。我认识到了主角确实并非都必须是英雄。现在你可以看到，TERMINAL EXPERIMENT 里：PETER HOBSON也是个极端有争议的角色，小说里有关他的片段他都不会被读者完全仰慕或喜欢。我想这样做你的角色会更有趣，更有说服力和更多层面，有助于你的小说显得更世故。可爱的角色总是倾向于只有一个层面：他们在所有环境里只做对的事情。KIRK船长是一个完美典型，我伴随着KIRK船长长大，他对我有巨大影响力。他是个伟大的领袖，他犯了什么错误都会道歉。你可以看到他训斥UHURA 或者SCOTTY后向他们道歉。甚至当他变坏时他也会迷途知返，典型的科幻主人公。但是我觉得有争议的角色写起来更有趣，这一点拜POHL所赐。 在SF领域之外，HARPER LEE的TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD 是对我一生影响最大的小说。我想这是我读过的最好的一部小说。我喜欢它是因为他有两件事完成得实在是太、太棒了：其一是书的表面写了两个小孩在暑假冒险的故事。但他的主要内容却是关于种族歧视和正在到来的美国南方对待黑人民权的时代，同时这些小孩也成长起来。这本书的寓意远远地隐藏在字面意思之后。我的一本书，叫FOSSIL HUNTER的，写关于某星球上一只聪明的恐龙进行斗争的故事，实际上它写的是天主教的节育观和堕胎主张。其诉求完全与小说的字面意义脱离。这些都是来自于HARPER LEE的写作模式。问：你在FRAMESHIFT中特别提到了这本书。答：在FRAMESHIFT中Avi Myer 确实对此书进行了反思，因为它对他影响巨大。我想他们让你在高中语文课时阅读了大量的书，而这本就是那种我认为你能介绍给一个学生，而能影响他们一生的少数作品之一，因为确有一些东西能对人产生巨大冲击。 另一个巨大的影响是经典的希腊悲剧——索福克勒斯Sophocles,埃斯库罗斯 Aeschylus, 欧里庇得斯Euripides （汗，竟然原文名字都错了……），我详细的研究过，他们是一个叙述模式，如果你对他们熟悉的话，你可以找到各种对之的摹仿。在FOSSIL HUNTER这部书里，有一个角色叫WATCHER，他出现在篇章之间起注释作用，他脱胎于希腊悲剧中的合唱队。在我刚完成的一本叫Flashforward的书里, 我第一次使用了希腊人当主要人物，其反映了希腊悲剧中推动剧情的悲剧所在——有冲破宿命的方法吗？《金羊毛》完全以一台电脑的视角——墙上的摄像头和麦克风，而这一讲述的视角亦来自于希腊悲剧的合唱队。 Robert B. Parker的斯宾塞系列小说在对话方面对我有巨大的影响。ERIC WRIGHT，一个加拿大神秘小说作家，对细节的关照影响我甚大。还有也是加拿大的Terence M. Green，在文体上。问：近来你在读哪位作家的作品呢？答：在SF，最有趣的是Jack McDevitt的 Ancient Shores，一本设定在地球的考古科幻。这本书做了一件我也很想做好的事情，就是写出非科幻迷也会看的书。比如说，你拿起FRAMESHIFT，你不用读过海因莱因或阿西莫夫，你也不用知道机器人三定律，你也不需知道什么是即时通讯装置ANSIBLE 和超光速FTL或者其它这些东西。它是一本所有人都可以读的书，但刚好是科幻而已。没有多少作者正在做这件事情，太多的作者把读者限定在那些从六岁就开始读科幻的人群里。MCDEVITT就非常聪明，他把这本书写成了大家都能读的小说。我觉得倒是HarperPrism做的封面阻碍了科幻迷以外的人群阅读的欲望。封面上有异国情调，大波妹等东西。其实这本书始终都在南达科他的田园牧歌风光中进行。他几乎是——你可能在物理课上看过的宇宙动物园的翻版——两个人在野餐时交谈，然后他们一直往前回朔，回朔，仿佛时光倒流，直到你看见整个宇宙。感觉上，他几乎去到了宇宙的另一面。这是我在90年代看过的最好的小说，我敢说，比我的都好。SF范围之外，我读过最好的小说是Carol Shields的 The Stone Diaries，一个加拿大作者写的书并搞到了普利策奖。我花了很多时间教别人写科幻，还有些时间用来做编辑——最近做的是TESSERACTS 6，我还为POTTERSFIELD PRESS完成了另一文选叫CROSSING THE LINE。科幻，比其他种类更加依存于作者工坊。一些人在CLARION不知何故能买到文凭自称科幻作家，他们根本没出过书，只是交了钱，上了课。我在RYERSON上过科幻写作课，多伦多的另一所大学。我在SF中发现这些——而且你会发现在书评中特别明显，因为书评逐渐趋向于初级作者所写（更有经验的写作者有更有价值的事情去做而不是花时间在评论别人的书上）。你看到的一些初学者，写书评并总是指出，比如小说中的一个瑕疵，有人稍稍冒犯了他们在一堂创造性写作课中被灌输的标准哲理。在THE STONE DIARIES，CAROL SHIELDS打破了所有你听过的创造性写作的规则。一条规则是：展示，而不是讲述；而她跟你讲了50页书却没有展示任何东西，但才气闪耀。另一条规则是在每个场景只展现一个人的视角；而她象比赛里的乒乓球一样从一个人跳向另一个人，而也很迷人，因为效果非常好。问：那么，在结构上发生了一些有趣的事情。答：一本结构上吸引人的书，里面大量的被动语态（拿不准）passive、书信体correspondence或者日记体diary entries，所有这些会被一名创造性写作的老师扼杀，那些想在文本上做些许尝试的作者。他们会说：你不能那样做。这不仅是好书，还更是CAROL SHEILDS，她自己经历了我们在不同程度上教授的创造性写作，蔑视所有这些创造性写作教师，并且说你可以写出好故事，讲故事是不受限制的。重要的不是他们在讲习课里给你的那些指南，而是读者在读完你的书后会有什么样的效果。她做的很聪明，而我的建议是：即使你只读科幻，这本书也是你值得一读，以了解好小说的感觉是与哪些糟粕不同的。问：你最近看了什么好看的电影吗？答：实际上，我倾向于认为最好的电影是人们甚至不认为那是部科幻的影片。我想，我提名雨果奖的那篇大话王（编辑插话：这外国人的标准，汗）Liar, Liar 是最好的了，如果他不算科幻，那么也是近几年来最好的推测性小说或幻想电影。他使用了传统的剧情，一个假设：让一个小孩的生日愿望实现。这也是里面唯一的一个推测性元素。但有了它，整部片子从中自然地发展起来。我觉得它确实是幻想电影中相当精彩的作品。最近几年我发现科幻电影和科幻小说是两种不同的艺术模式，现在的科幻电影显然在他们自己的路上做的更好。而最糟糕的科幻电影倒是那些用科幻小说改编的。POSTMAN，明显是个经典例子，STARSHIP TROOPERS不用说更是个倒退。SPHERE 是个好例子，还有CONTACT，我认为做的很好，不过还是比书稍微差点，而里面的哲学味道，我觉得破坏了小说传递的信息。CONTACT传递的信息是两个信仰系统，宗教和科学，科学是其中较强大的。在电影中，你只能选择一种，不管你比较偏爱那一个，他们都同样具有合法性。其实如果一个人想毁掉一个女人的事业，象MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY 对JODI FOSTER做的那样，仅因为他不同意她的哲学观，那么也没关系。所以我认为他们实际上只是在向大众灌输SAGAN的理论，所以我怀疑当如果萨根活到看到它的一天，会表示明显的不满。SF电影里我比较欣赏去年的GATTACA，没有任何其他技巧，他们依靠不同的方式完成了象我在FRAMESHIFT做的工作。一些人关注遗传学的所有变化，并试着用故事说出来。如果你稍稍思考一下这个故事，他就站不住脚。但没关系。电影没必要在每个时刻严格遵循线形叙事来合情合理。他只需用震撼的视觉效果或者冲击性的结局来打动你。那就是说，我很喜欢我的书拍成电影得到的那些钱，但我不可想象这么做会很高兴。我唯一知道因此而高兴的作者是FRANK HERBERT，他说沙丘出来后他狂喜——那部滥片子。有某个家伙，通常很聪明，他被镁光灯等等晃得眼花缭乱，对他们灌输的东西没有任何概念，在摧毁和修正他曾经尝试要做的东西。（？）总之我是不可能允许这样做的，除非我引退，他们这样做的话，我已经有足够的钱退休，我的财政困难已经过去。问：告诉我们那些买断了你书版权的那些电影怎样？答：象ILLEGAL ALIEN，我们有两个竟拍的，一个在好莱坞一个在多论多。我是个加拿大爱国者所以我想让加拿大拿到。钱出的差不多，所以我给了加拿大，这样我好去看他们的设备。我想这个拿到了我版权的家伙，DAVID COATSWORTH，一个制片人。MICHAEL LENICK，一个特效设计师，他们应该做得不会让我丢脸。另外那些家伙想把我的ALIENS 更人性化一点。在ILLEGAL ALIEN里我很痛苦地设置了非人异形。加拿大团队说：那真是个挑战因为没人做过。他们已经做了些异形，就象《异形》里的那些阴影下的异形和动作场景中的异形。但没有一本小说让主角与一名完全特效制作的角色说话和交流。在Larry Niven的RINGWORLD里做过，我想他们会喜欢这挑战而且正在进行中，我对此相当赞赏。The Terminal Experiment目前已经被转手，当初我们卖给了个英国人，版权是两年。但是后来他离开了伦敦的公司，改投洛杉机。他对我们说：“把时间延长些吧，我不想在英国拍这片子，我11月中旬去洛杉机但我知道11月初版权到期了。我想到了美国后签了新公司再为你的版权续约。”于是我们就说：“好吧。”我们由他去，这就是为什么在那段时间我们让这合同空置着直到他在美国回到了原来的位置才续签的原因。他去美国以后开始倒是非常热情的，但最终他还是没搞定。所以我的事务所只好又把它的版权出售了。我们向很多人兜售，其中有一个叫Jon Landau。泰坦尼克号得奥斯卡奖最佳影片奖的时候有两个人登台领奖——两个制片人——一个是James Cameron，另一个就是Jon Landau。虽然卡梅龙的名字和泰坦尼克号紧密相连，其实Jon Landau是他的唯一制片合伙人。所以Landau也是最新一届的奥斯卡最佳影片奖得主。现在他掌握了The Terminal Experiment的版权。问：你和他之间一定发生了愉快的交谈吧。答：实际上，他是个令人惊异的家伙。除了他在电影界的生意，他还是Bruce Springsteen的经理人。你把你的书向各种各样的人兜售，结果一个刚刚创造了好莱坞动作片票房记录的人把它买了去，这实在令人振奋。问：你提到你写硬科幻，你可以给硬科幻下个定义吗？答：有两点：一，科学对情节很重要；二，科学内容一定要被严格研究过，使得书里的所有内容都是真的或是推理出来我们认为是真的。并不是说这本书每秒钟都是有关科学的，Gregory Benford 就是这样的作家，他的书科学是本质的，人物都是第二位。但我不认为硬科幻一定都要无人物驱动。不是说GREG都不营造大角色，但角色确实不是写书的理由，书的理由是拓展科学。Charles Sheffield 是另一个这样写东西的人。个人以为，作为一个怀疑论者，我在读或者写科幻的时候，我会认为那些东西是确实会发生，而我说这对我很重要的时候是一种思想倾向。我就是没有什么耐心关注纯幻想的任何东西。我没法读，没法享受。作为成年人，我觉得这很愚蠢。但SF，我越读就会越相信，我会被作者和作者的探索说服，那就是说，如果不是非常可能的，也是似是而非。那对我很重要。这就是我所认为的硬科幻，而STAR TREK，在另一方面，是那种随心所欲地随着剧情组合材料，而且沃尔坎人和人还能共同生下后代的荒谬软科幻。他们靠堆砌术语营造科学氛围。硬科幻里的科学是无懈可击的。问：你干吗写硬科幻？答：问得好，我确实没有科学方面的学位。我只有RYERSON的艺术学位和电视艺术学位。但我一直很喜欢科学——它实在令我心醉。针对科学并非提供答案的最佳工具这个问题，我不认为你能用一两句说得清楚。它显然是回答诸如你在地里能种出什么来这种问题的最佳工具。但我也认为，它也是回答诸如有没有上帝这种问题的最佳工具，还针对两种问题之间的一切。几千年来我们发展了一个系统用来咨询，当你想做点什么的时候，你当然会立刻想到它。写本书说点什么而并非只写些情节对我非常重要。并非只为说点故事。我是为了让书里有些哲学，宣扬某些原理。对我来说，最好的宣扬方法就是科学。问问题，然后寻求解答，再检验答案。如果一些原理不好说明，就用别的原理诠释。如果你有些似乎合理的原理和一些可以用于证明的证据，你就要找个方法来阐述这些证据，解释你的原理。确保你的想法能被别的人理解，于是他们也能看到你的思想。想想看，几千年来发生了那么多愚蠢的战争只是因为有个人说看见了上帝，但其他人却没有看到。假如他的谎言被真理阻止，那么悲剧就不会被重演。我想这是必须增进人们的交流的原因。不管我写的是什么，SF或非小说或长篇大论的演讲，她们都将是严肃的出版物，我想科学是解释自然界所有问题的正确方法。问：你说你反对纯幻想，但是你也写过一点纯幻想是吗？答：我写纯幻想的时候，那时我以为我在写SF呢，所以我引入了一些不可思议或不可能的元素。如果你接受了可以超光速旅行，你或许就是在把神秘元素引入你的故事中。我从没有故意地去写过一个纯幻想的故事。我写过的纯幻想小说都是我被约稿的。一个编辑说：写这个，这本书好不好？我从来都不写短篇除非有时间限制，或者谁约稿。所以当某人说：嘿，如果你写这个我就买，这个放在幻想小说选集中——象我在DARK DESTINY3里的小说“PEKING MAN”，或在DANTE‘S DISCIPLE里面的“ABOVE IT ALL“——我想管他呢。但虽然这些都是荒谬的。这种东西，如果是好的科幻，是距离现实最远的想象。是一种引你深思的文学。我刚刚读过NORTHERN DREAMERS 里的一个针对DAVE DUNCAN的访谈，里面他说幻想是一次从加拿大的冬天来到热带的旅行，幻想小说是一种逃避，转移你的注意力。 所有的幻想小说都是基于荒谬的假设。绝对的正义与绝对的邪恶相冲突。你可以轻易分清谁是谁。在现实世界我们都很难这样做。现实并没有完全的善与恶。在二十世纪掌握点权力的人中，希特勒也许可以算一个。但是宇宙分成两部分，光明与黑暗、正义与邪恶互相争斗的想法，找不到一点现实根据，那么我们干嘛要沉迷地读这些玩意？你最好写一本书，里面的人一边说着韵文，一边又把准备要说的无论什么话刺在手上。两个对立的阵营不是完全坏就是完全好。出于一些理由将人们分开，我可以理解这种心理状态——对于现今道德的不确定性，很多人感到无力和挫折感，于是他们站在了道德争论之外。他们不参与，他们说，我对堕胎没有观点，我不知道怎么维护少数民族权益，我不能确认南非的种族隔离制度会带来什么。人们为逃避现实寻找借口，而幻想小说里没有现实，其中的现实在第一页就已经交代清楚：这是好人，这是坏人，这是白帽子，这是黑帽子。我们等着看吧，好人是怎样一步步取得胜利的。反正好人最终胜利，那会让人舒服。不过我不认为成年人需要这种安全毯（编辑：snoopy……）。小孩也许对单纯的白和黑、善和恶的故事感到快乐。不过我不认为他能对久经事故的成年人提供营养。问：作为一个硬SF作家，你是怎么获得灵感和进行研究的呢？答：其实这不是很重要：你进行研究，灵感就跳出来。经典的例子是FRAMESHIFT，我刚坐下，我知道我要写本新小说，于是我开始写那些可能会很丰富的主题列表。我写下了人工智能，我写下了与异形的第一次接触，我还写下了遗传学，我还写下了三四个其他东西。然后我对列表凝视一会儿，决定不能拿起报纸、读纽约时报、MACLEAN’S之类的东东，而没有持续看遗传学和突破方面的文章：他们发现了这个基因，他们发现了那个基因。然后我觉得这将是个很有料的地方。我根本没有任何提纲，除了我想写一篇关于遗传学的书，我没有其他东西。我会坐下来读两个月关于遗传学的东西，没有什么特别的目的性，只是读文章读书，记下我认为有趣的东西和戏剧性的状况。遗传学的话题在哪里？有没有一个人可以用来表现这些话题？人们常问我你是怎么获得灵感的好象他们都是现成的，就好象你心中有感，他们就突然出现了。其实并非如此。你花了几个月探询一个主题，比如在Frameshift中，那些明显反复出现的词是，基因测试、被保险公司歧视对待，在反对遗传学研究的文章中，你会经常听到纳粹这个词，还有克隆。在FRAMESHIFT里面，就包括了人类克隆，寻找人类基因组工程中可能出现的纳粹战争罪行，保险公司对基因缺陷人类进行歧视，以及对人种的预测造成的社会冲击。这些话题就在研究中，而我只是找到为之立论的戏剧性方式。一开始我并不知道要写什么主题，任何人都能对任何事物有一个肤浅观点。比如说巴基斯坦有了核武器，我们可以很容易说应该如何如何。但实际上你必须仔细考虑这些问题并决定我们真正应该怎么做。要经过仔细的思考，不是诸如：好的，我们要做的就是把和平带给世界。把拥有了核武的巴基斯坦和印度踏平到石器时代，这问题就解决了。简单的回应是非常容易的。我写完FRAMESHIFT时我对所有的事件都有了立场。但他们都不是膝跳反射似的立场。他们都是思考后的立场。我对之感觉兴奋的一个就是遗传学革命将会满足公费医疗的需求。遗传学时代保证健康的唯一有效的方法就是完全社会化。让社会的所有人群平均地分摊风险。因为除此之外就不保险了。如果我说给我一个你的细胞，之后我说你在45岁将会得心脏病，我并不能为这个保险；你在66岁得老年性痴呆症，我也不能保这个；你42岁精子活力会降低，这个也不能列入。这样也不能算保险。唯一的方法是你打自己手里的牌，而所有人平均押宝，如果说FRAMESHIFT在某种角度上来说是一部重要的小说的话，是因为它的大多数听众都在美国，书里是他们需要知道的消息。问：我们真的非常喜欢星丛Starplex里的异形，你是怎么创造一个外星种族的？答：这就是，是第一次在采访中提到，星丛里异形的秘密。说到1980年，我尝试写一本星际旅行的小说——那还是在Star Trek 5之前。那时只有Star Trek: The Motion Picture——我尝试写一篇企业号遇到上帝的小说。编辑很喜欢我的小说但却拒绝了，说小说对于Star Trek的剧情来说的太富于争议了。写那书时我要做的一件事是将Star Trek 电视剧中重要的异形种族混合起来。有一种叫Tellarites，长得很象猪，很吵的异形。我坐下来开始考虑：你都是成年人了怎么还想得出这些点子，成年人难道会花他们所有的时间来相互争吵吗？于是我终止了为这些Tellarites写back-story的想法。基于：好，干吗要结束在难以置信地竞争好斗的男人这里呢？也许是因为有7个男人才有1个女人，只有一个男人有繁殖机会，所以不得不竞争。围绕着这个主题，我从一个终点开始发展，改变了一些细节，给他们更多的手臂等等。而我从那个我本想证明的终点出发，之后尝试着向回推进，看看生理学和进化生物学（？）会通向哪里。相同的事情发生在Far-Seer, Fossil Hunter,和Foreigner里面的Quintaglios中，我写着Star Trek 时我问自己——记得星际险航“ARENA”那集里的相当领地化的爬虫生物GORNS吗？他们因为人类殖民地离他们太近而破坏他们，会具有怎样的文明而仍然具有领地化观念？于是我又从后往前写，在那种情况下如果你读了整个系列，你就会发现针对狂暴的领地化观念的分析，用心理方面的分析超过了在生理方面的分析。这是一个方法。星际险航里的表面上没道理的异形吸引了我，而我如此证实其合理性.永无结局的Star Trek的设定是，几百万年前，一个种族穿越了上一次大爆炸和塌缩，在这个宇宙中改变了生命形态。异形们，还有神，都确信它决定去死，但又无法自杀。于是其决定指导星系、星系里的生命形式进化，以产生一些非常暴力的种族，能够挑战他们并一起杀死它。我看着Star Trek里的这些不同的种族，发现他们最普遍的属性就是好斗：Klingons,Romulans,Gorns,Tellarites都是龌龊的家伙，Andorians则是骄傲的战士，他们一拨拨的涌现。在“Where No Man Has Gone Before”，星际险航的第二集里，我们知道了有能量壁垒环绕着银河。于是我想，好的，上帝选出一个星系，并为之构筑了壁垒使生命无法逃逸，又花费数百万年的时间指导他们进化直到他们最终达到真正的无耻至极，然后让他们向自己冲来以了此残生。我发现这真是个好设定，我现在还很想把它写进书里去。但我又想：这些渣滓种族对此自己会有什么解说呢？地球上的解释非常简单——版块漂移使人群分离几千年，某一天他们达到跨过大洋的水平时，突然相遇，当然会有冲突，这就是我们星球的血腥历史。如果我们是经常在一起聊天或一起散步，而不是远隔万水千山的话，那么我不认为我们还会发生那种程度的冲突。这也是一个方法。另一个，实际上更令人满意的方法，是我在Illegal Alien里做的，无须另外的材料，只须从远古的历史开始。如果你读过Burgess Shale写的关于几亿年前的British Columbia省发生的寒武纪大爆发的资料，你就会发现5亿年前的化石里有数十种不同的肌体结构，他们只出现了很短的一段时间，后来全死了。仅存的很少的肌体结构之一就有我们的结构——有中央脊柱的左右对称结构。当然也还有其他很多不同样子的。众所周知， Stephen J. Gould是当中最负盛名的一个，他的书Wonderful Light里说所有这些肌体结构看起来都是非常适应5亿年前的地球环境的。这些远古的信息确实对当今非常有启发，当然其他的信息也很有启发。我想，我们干吗不从一个相当不同的肌体结构开始呢？为了在Illegal Alien中做出异形，相对于平时轴对称的动物那种肩膀长两肢，臀部长两肢的情况，我使用中心对称结构代替了轴对称结构，让四肢很均匀地分置在臀部上。我的进展十分顺利，我在5亿年的进化时间里穿行。他们从水生演变到陆生时变成了什么样？他们是怎样开始使用脚的？他们又如何把肢体从运动的目的中解放出来，演变为操作的目的？当你沿着因果链追索，从最原始的地方开始并继续，你就以肢体结构为基础为异形发展出了一部心理学。在Illegal Alien里，这方法还挺管用。他们进化成一种四肢从肩膀悬垂的体形，两个长在左边两个在右边，右边的比较长，垂落在地可以行走，左边两个一个在前一个在后，成为可操作的肢体。但他们倾向于使用前面那支，所以前面那个叫强手，后面那个叫弱手。人类心理学中的概念全部都是来自事物的两面，来自于连续统一体中——我们总在政治中谈论这个问题，从左到右——但这些以单边状态发展起来的生物和我们完全不同，他们某方面的心理状态会迅速明显地强烈起来。充满Illegal Alien的心理学来自于后退五百万年然后进化出新生命形式这一假设。 所以有两种基本方法进行设定，一种是使用以前的产品，当然前提是他足够有趣。这样你可以引用他一些有趣的属性。Spock是相当无趣的种族，人们只关心他的耳朵是尖的还是圆的，所以那可不行。但不管怎样，那些你觉得永远不可能共存的恐怖异形，已经在Star Trek中遭到抛弃的，却在我写的三本书中成了有血有肉的东西。 问：你说过你试着写过一本Star Trek的小说。你现在还想写诸如Star Trek 或者Star Wars 甚至是改编小说吗？答：我是否写那样的小说取决于我对原始资料是否非常感兴趣。所以也许经典的Star Trek，或者Planet of the Apes之类的才是我的所爱，也许只有机会自己出现在我面前时我才会感兴趣。曾经——我跟John Ordover探讨过，他对我写一部星际旅行小说表现了当然的兴趣。但从根本上来说，特许小说和媒体广告对这一文类影响很坏，过去的十年他们严重地损害了科幻。他们书架上的东西已经离开了科幻的领地。Star Trek是60年代关于未来的想象，星球大战是70年代的想象，但90年代了我们还必须靠这些产品热销吗？我实在感到非常失望，这些东西到现在还充斥着市场。如果你写特许小说的话，我还有个感觉，那就是如果你有严肃创作的渴望，你就会很受伤。对Joe Haldeman，几乎所有人都知道：他在70年代写了两本星际旅行的书，他又是第一个写星际旅行的人。他赢得了雨果奖而且我想他们还为此花了上百万的钱买了他的书——在70年代那是很多的了，就为了这两本书。还有James Blish，他写了电视版Star Trek的所有剧本，也因A Case of Conscience获雨果奖。但这已经是这个游戏过去的故事了。你看一看今天的作家们，他们无一例外是二流作家，没有人响应他们的独舞。但他们不停地说——简直都成了他们的咒语——要混合。上百万掏钱买Star Wars书的人，百分之一的话也有上万，为买他们的书口袋被洗干。但毫无证据表明除了几十个读者之外有人在乎作者是谁，或者寻找谁谁的书。他们所关心的是Luke Han,和Leia；或Kirk, Spock和McCoy；或Picard，Data和Riker的下一次历险。谁也不会关心后面署名人的下本书。问：是什么让你拿起笔的，你是怎么开始写作的呢？答：我很小的时候就开始写东西了——我常写些故事。我开始职业生涯是因为1979年那年，我老爸到纽约离ochester很近的地方渡假，我刚好赶上参加ochester的Strasenburgh天文馆的科幻小故事比赛，小故事会在 一个dramatic star show上展出。我当时是个天文迷，到到哪个城市玩我都会去天文馆，我常到纽约的这个天文馆看展览都快5年了。他们做的东西非常富有创意，所有天文馆能做出来的东西，没有比他们更强的了。他们是个小馆，预算也少，但做了很多发明展览和有趣的特效，绝对不是McLaughlin那种对天文学不可思议的乏味的长篇大论。这次科幻小故事比赛是阿西莫夫做的评判：为一次star show写一篇5000到3500字的小故事。我非常喜欢阿西莫夫而且我也热爱天文馆，于是我就写了故事，可惜我没赢。他们写了封信来说我没有赢，但有个招待会欢迎所有的参赛者来参加。于是我想管他呢，我要为这个去，于是我就去Rochester了，谁知我到了以后他们对我说：我们找了你几个星期，你都不在。瞧，我很聪明地用了我在美国渡假的地址可是整个冬天都没人在那儿。于是我觉得他们歧视加拿大人——我一生中仅有这次几乎要真的相信了——不过最后确实还不是真的。他们说的很对，阿西莫夫拿起了我的故事，觉得这确实是个好故事但我们可以在7分钟之内读完了。不过它确实是个他很喜欢的妙语故事。为了拉长它，他们决定把我的和其他两个故事拉长。那两个家伙的，据我所知，再也没在以后的任何时间发表过什么东西。我是唯一离开了还做点什么的人。他们做的工作，我想，我不敢说那是星丛的最早版本，因为他们的主线是完全不同的，但这故事确实说的是飞船上的星丛，他的人物和基本设定被我后来引入了我写的星丛一书中。书是1996年出版的，但那个star show是1980年夏天举行的，所以可以说经历了16年，他才被写成了书。但他确实是我的开端，从此我开始把它当作我严肃的追求，创作并挣点钱，并因此入迷，一直写科幻到现在。问：你的网站对你的职业生涯有什么帮助吗？答：太多了。对任何作家而言，最难的事情是让人们了解你的作品。大多数人都是很省的。这就是为什么Star Wars和Star Trek这么好卖的原因。因为至少你知道你会得到什么东西，你知道那将会是个什么样的故事，你知道等式是什么——我花了这些钱，我得到了这些无须思考的，无害的娱乐。当你去写一本小说，人们并不知道你，他们以前从来没有读过你的书，而且现在小说又他妈的贵。精装本的Frameshift就要32.95加元，这可是一笔钱，对吧？我认为他的每一分钱都值，但那确实是一笔钱不是吗？你怎么样让人们尝试你写的小说呢？传统的方法就象出版社所做的：做一个漂亮的封面，做些具有诱惑力的广告，三到四个句子解释你的书。我觉得一个更有效的方法就是说，象我对我所有的小说做的那样：这有小说里的免费章节，空闲的时候读一读，打印出来，上厕所时也看看吧，无论怎样。给他们一个尝试，你不花一个子儿。说句老实话，效果奇佳。我接触过所有那些网上冲浪的的人，他们点点这，点点那，最后都停在我的网页上，读几章后就到书店或雅玛逊把它买走。从这点来说，这是招揽新读者十分有效的手段。其二，我并非那种写短篇而多产的作家，但我又有一些得过奖的小故事，可惜不够出合集，于是我把他们放到我的网页上。人们说你疯了那会影响你的再版市场。实际上，恰恰相反，我可以把它们的再版权卖到这儿，卖到那儿，到处卖，随时卖。我就把三个小故事卖到波兰去了，他们花掉250美圆买了我的一个含有三个小故事的文件包。对波兰人来说那可是笔大钱了。我把故事放在那儿，他们就来读了，读了以后就问，我可以把他们翻译过来用在我们的杂志上吗？如果我没有这样做，他们还不知道怎样找到我呢。我为Altair做的专栏，由澳大利亚出版的，本质上也是我为On Spec做的东西。那人在网上浏览，发现了我在On Spec做的专栏，于是他说，如果再版的话你想要什么？我就说我提供的话你想要什么？结果他们第一次就出了比On Spec高两倍的价格。但是用美圆代替加圆。于是我想，好啊，只要你想要。所以人们一直在我的网页上挑选他们喜欢的故事或小说专栏并买下再版权。网页在这方面也是有很大作用的。第三，这次我有点象中了大奖——1998年7月我是USA Today Online的每月名家，他们每个月用一名作者的传记为该作者高亮显示，并为此作者在barnesandnoble.com的作品建立连接，他们一整个月都为你的作品促销。该活动的运作方式只是举办方在网上浏览，挑选有趣的作者的网页，我的网页刚好制作得比较精美，而且也比较全面和有趣，她就说了：你有兴趣成为我们的7月作家吗？实在是海量——USA Today Online每天有3500万次点击，它是全世界最流行的网站之一。它是USA Today报的电子版。虽然不是所有的点击都会点进图书那页，但数据显示它给我带来的收益超过了迄今为止所有出版社帮我做的广告的总和。这直接来自于一个网页，但又不仅仅是一个网页——很多作者有一些小小的网页，或者一张带猫的照片啊，一个又老又短的故事啊，一个出版时刻表但三年都没有更新啊。我每周更新一次我的网页，让人们经常回来看看。代价是如此 地微小而成果是如此显著地大，我都无法想象怎么他们会没有一个好的，固定的网站呢？太奇妙了，所以把连接说给你听：URL: sfwriter.com。问：你好象当选了Science Fiction Writers of America的主席是吗？答：实际上是the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America。问：在这个组织里你想干点什么呢？答：Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America是世界上最大和最老的职业科幻作家组织。我们有1400个成员，其中有1100个投票选出的会员，300个编辑或封面画家或书评员。人们喜欢这样，把全世界23个国家的职业人员联结起来。不过尽管我们来自23个国家，我们还是叫Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America。我要做的事情是让他更国际化，正如它现在正在做着的一样。所有主要的美国出版企业基本上都掌握在外资手里，他们大多数来自德国或者日本。我们在1998年假装科幻出版业——即使办公室在纽约的企业——仍然是一件美国控制的东西，太愚蠢了，实际上并非如此，他们被欧洲和远东控制着。认识到科幻作为产业，它的外表是国际化的这非常重要。假装认为美国出版业只需要考虑美国是目光短浅的。现在，如果你卖一篇短的故事，我们实际上还有一条愚蠢的规定，它是我前辈们的遗物：我们接受美洲上用英语写的会员信（加拿大，美国，墨西哥，中美洲，南美洲）。但不包括英国。于是如果你卖了一篇小说去HarperCollins Voyager，英国最大的科幻出版商，或英国最强的科幻杂志Interzone，对不起，你不能加入 SFWA了。但你卖小说给一个小的英语出版社比如Guatamala，那么你又可以了。总之是十分荒谬。所以我现在想改变这一现状。我想保证让世界范围内的英语科幻出版业都能享受到这些专业利益。我觉得尝试使用和改变其他语种现在还太早了些，但是我们没有意识到英国、澳大利亚、新西兰的作家都在为同一家公司写作，并处于相同的法人旗下的事实，这太荒谬了。所以我要做这件事。另一件事情是，33年来SFWA存在着一个事实，坦率的说，是他的组织有太多陈枝旧节。我们有一个条文规定：一旦你成为会员，你就是终身制的。我1983年参加SFWA，在入会章程中里他们广告说：如果你在你的手稿上写下“SFWA活跃会员”的字样，你的稿件就会居于编辑们要审校的稿件堆的顶端，不管是Asimov's, Analog,或F&SF。因为那说明你是个职业作者，值得认真考虑。Speculations杂志，一家致力于科幻写作生意的美国semi-prozine，他们去年做了个调查，他们竟然真的问了业内的主要作家，还有出版商和杂志编辑，问他们到底“SFWA活跃会员”意味着什么？每个人私下里都说，那不再是个好护身符了。原因就是太多的人在SFWA里面得到了“SFWA活跃会员”待遇而谁也不知道是什么原因。还有些人只是在50，60或者70年代发表过一两个故事，或者在可以的地方出售，然后就销声匿迹了。所以那已经不是一个纯粹职业的会员标志了。 至于我，我得过星云奖，我四次获得雨果奖提名，我是否在我的手稿上标明“SFWA活跃会员”已经无所谓，我很容易获得注意，SFWA里的大佬们也一样。所以我想做的是重新介定会员资格：每五年需要会员们注册一次。这些事情以前做过，但老家伙们阻止新会员的加入，这与我们的初衷完全相背。我们要重新为新人授权。如果你卖出了三个故事但还没有人知道你的名字，你就是这块领域的新人，你才刚刚开始，你卖出了故事给Asimov's和F&SF，在TOR出版了选集，你想有一个机会让编辑们知道你的水平已经达到了一定标准，这个标准也是编辑们把来稿分类的标准。好的——“SFWA活跃会员”，我会让他们引起足够重视。我会让助手们读到他们并没有任何理由认为他们只是玩笑。我想把这些归还那些新作者。这行业最近是越来越艰难了，甚至是god's sakes这样的小说，杂志社也只按印数付钱（？）paying only in copies。这是科幻领域出现以来最艰难的时刻，也是新手们能够参与进来并以新手的名义站稳脚跟的最艰难时刻。所以我想把这些机会给回新手们，这得下狠手，估计会有很多人反对该计划，不过我的基础不错，我在竞选过程中比我的对手Norman Spinrad多出了50多个点。我赢得了竞选，但我们要重新介定会员资格，那仍是场硬仗。这是我今年在任上想做的另一件事情。问：从国际化的角度出发，我们很想知道美-加之间的不同点，另外作为一个加拿大作家，你是怎么评价你自己的呢？答：我想现在加拿大科幻作家已经泛滥天下了——过去几年出现了一大堆。七八十年代的时候常常有很多学院关于美国科幻和加拿大科幻的不同点提供potificating（？）。他们做得还算巧妙，轻巧地忽视一些作者，以提出自己的理论。现在加拿大有了那么多的作家，而我们又是那么各不相同，那种用三到四个作家来举例说明加拿大科幻和美国科幻是不同的做法，已经不是那么无懈可击的了。David Ketterer写的那本经典的非小说类书籍叫Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy的，里面说加拿大人没写过硬科幻——即使Phyllis Gotlieb在那个时代已经是一个奠基者的名字，即使McGill University的Donald Kingsbury也在写硬科幻，即使我在写硬科幻，即使Steve Stirling在写硬科幻，还有Spider Robinson也在写硬科幻，他还是那样说。他到处宣扬这一观点——就想学院们做的那样，发表一个观点然后让他们成为自己的受宠观点——可惜漏洞百出。Robert Runté有一个观点是说：美国科幻喜剧收场，加拿大科幻悲剧收场，英国科幻没收场。到真是妙人妙语，自然也是漏洞百出。他的话太抬举加拿大科幻了——我从未自己这样写过——但证据太多了。美国科幻里就有能让你恨不得割腕自杀的故事。在所有种类里，科幻是最没有民族性的。西部片自然是美国西部的故事。神秘小说里也能清晰地分辨哪是英国的神秘，哪是美国的神秘。尝试对William Gibson, Robert Sawyer, Charles de Lint, Terence M. Green, James Alan Gardner, Julie Czerneda, Michelle Sagara, Tanya Huff, Guy Gavriel Kay理论化和寻找其中一致的主题或者风格，那是荒谬的。根本没有。假如说有什么事情是真的话，那就是最近准备出版的，至少正在卖的那些加拿大科幻，是真正的好东西。我想我们正在生产有品质的东西，我不认为你能指出这个国家里的哪个作者在低端市场里是象摇色子那样一个又一个地把垃圾货摇出来的。在美国你倒是能看到无尽的名单，他们写一些填充起来的东西，毫无雄心，写作没有特点。问：你最新的一本书 Factoring Humanity，能告诉我们一些它的情况吗？答：好的，我写了些有关人工智能的东西，也写了些童年创伤的记忆恢复，还有量子计算机，外星信息等等和另外一大堆东西。你可能自己去读才行了。当你写一个神秘小说，你会简化这个世界，你会说：好的，那是60亿人，有8个可能犯下了这宗谋杀。还有个人将侦破该案，还有杀人犯必定是处于一个简单的，可定义的动机下。本质上他就变成了一幕道德剧：一个好侦探，难逃法网的罪犯，再没什么需要分析的了。当你写一本科幻小说，你最大的快乐就是你投入了古老的，永恒的宇宙的怀抱，它如此巨大，复杂，充满了不同种类的东西。写科幻最棒之处在于你有巨大的画布，如果你获得了如此大的空间，一个作家为什么愿意把自己局限在狭窄的情节中呢？那让我觉得没意思。当然也有很多作家在那样的格局下做得很好。很多作家写了大量的这种类型的小说。但那不是我想做的，作为艺术家，那不是我的出发点。我的出发点是：把一大堆不同的东西组织在一起，象抽象拼图。Science Fiction Book Club对我的Terminal Experiment做了个有漂亮封面的版本，那封面就是抽象拼图风格的：一些脑电图元素，一个手表，还有电脑组件。如果我搞视觉艺术，就象我写的东西一样，我要的就是抽象拼图相对于肖像画的感觉。问：你可以告诉我们一些针对于你的书里面的伦理观点的回应吗？答：大部分的回应都是正面的。我很期待能得到人们针对我在Terminal Experiment里的堕胎观点的支持或反对的意见，虽然大部分来自美国的负面回应都是关于Frameshift里的强公费医疗制度的，但对于堕胎观的意见也逐渐出现了。实际上，很多人对我比较中立的堕胎观表示了欣慰，看上去很多人对这点还是不置可否的。但不置可否令人很不舒服，因为在这个问题上处于“正确”的一边看起来十分重要（怎么样才算正确，很大程度上取决于你住在哪个地方）。于是我猜测我可能为公费医疗指引了一条相当保险的道路（我确实觉得这样做还挺没脑子）；很多美国佬感激我这样做让他们获得了启发。确实有个活跃的极端主义分子想鼓动民众禁止我的Terminal Experiment，因为她反对器官移植。当然那很没意思，不过面对那些明显脱离了现实的人，你能做的确实很少。我希望针对我书里面反映的伦理问题最多的评论是这样：“我不必同意你，但你确实让人陷入沉思了。”我不能再期待太多了。问：在Far-Seer，你谈到Quintaglios必须经历一个成人仪式，而在星从，Keith也通过相同的经历认识了人类。你觉得我们的文明下一次也将要经历什么仪式吗？需要经历什么仪式呢？答：好的，首先，我们已经经历了一个仪式：我觉得我们已经通过了核战的时代。可惜印度和巴基斯坦仍然朝着这条通往地狱的道路前进，我非常悲哀。于是，我猜测禁止核武器将是我们的文明下一个将要经历的仪式。在那以后，我们将面对第一台可思考的机器的诞生。那意味着，照字面意思，自杀以创造你自己的继任者。一些人正在拼命似的做着这件事情。不过还有希望的是，我们还能有这个聪明在他们成功以前阻止他们。这是我写 Factoring Humanity时发掘到的一个主题。——*——*——*——校对完毕，看到后面已经基本上处于猜测状态，完全不看原文，只是感觉中文不对的时候才扫几眼。因此最后的三分之一不能保证意思无误，不过那些一扫而过的很多都是废话，没有其实都没关系，重要的句子还是看了的。 基本上特定名称都没动，我建议保持英文的状态也可以，反正咱们假设的读者不至于对这些名字完全不熟悉——不熟悉的看中文也不知道。当然还需要统一的最后清理一遍，最后一周统一动手了。对蹦蹦的两点意见： 1、绝对要看清楚单词，查清楚单词。你在这文里出现的明显错误太多了，那些地方很多大致查一下可以理顺的。当然，一些比较复杂的句子还是翻译的很好的。 2、对于英文原名称，保留不动是最好的办法，你对star trek还有starplex有些地方翻译有些地方不翻译而且采用不同名称的做法是最麻烦的，后期很难一一照顾到，遗漏一个就很麻烦。 这篇文章之长超出我的想象，对于译者的精力和毅力表示敬佩。我要睡觉去了，还不行……我的文还没写，天哪！

105076	● －罗伯特 J. 索耶访谈（完整版）	93993字	1楼	蹦蹦兔	2005-03-31 19:38:16
118074	◆ － <P>拼音啊，我只能做得这么好了，不好意思啊。</P><P>另外，阿瞧兄帮我看看镶嵌在中文里的那几句英语啊，我	124字	2楼	蹦蹦兔	2005-03-31 19:41:04
62091	◆ －发现你嵌了好多。[em03]	22字	3楼	桃花仙	2005-03-31 21:42:36
98090	◆ －最近头脑不太清楚，刚刚看到这个，马上动手	40字	4楼	兔子等着瞧	2005-04-05 08:40:37
35094	◆ －懒做事就算了，还懒找借口，我[em32]	34字	5楼	蹦蹦兔	2005-04-06 20:14:36
22084	◆ － <P>这样……汗</P><P>我回头找借口去……</P>[em04]	48字	6楼	兔子等着瞧	2005-04-07 09:18:58
126096	◆ －别回头了拉，我们一边翻译一边找借口好不好。	42字	7楼	蹦蹦兔	2005-04-07 12:42:19
76086	◆ － <P>看了一个晚上加一个中午，看了一多半了……</P><P>你这家伙果然是不稳定型的，有时候句子挺好，有时连单	138字	8楼	兔子等着瞧	2005-04-11 12:23:56
100089	◆ － <P>这采访挺有意思，这人说了些很实在的话，大概名声大了就不怕得罪人了</P><P>翻译得虽然有不少错误，但是	122字	9楼	denial	2005-04-11 17:46:13
88082	◆ －嘿嘿嘿，不好意思，给大家添麻烦了。我写东西本来就是杂牌，英语更是杂牌中的杂牌，多多包涵哦。	90字	10楼	蹦蹦兔	2005-04-11 20:38:41
11066	◆ － <P>至人无己，还怕什么得罪人。</P><P>应该害怕的是被人得罪的人。</P>	66字	11楼	忘忧先生	2005-04-11 21:33:06
6086	◆ － <P>校对版本来了，冲刺阿</P><P>问：有哪些作者对你的写作产生了影响？</P><P>答：在SF领域，影响	34559字	12楼	兔子等着瞧	2005-04-12 08:35:23
72081	◆ － <P>异形……这个翻译……暴寒啊……</P><P>Alien是“异己”、“异族”等等意思，电影《Al	1140字	13楼	isaac-fool	2005-04-12 09:31:35
21090	◆ － <P>刚要说原来这样，不对呀。commit suicide 是一个词组：自杀。没有接受的意思了。不过确实后面的	396字	14楼	兔子等着瞧	2005-04-12 09:57:08
94069	◆ － <P>唔……再考虑了一下，这样翻是偶过度注释了……</P><P>commit 是带有贬义的，因此我	402字	15楼	isaac-fool	2005-04-12 10:12:34
59099	◆ － <P>CLACK……这个是原文错误……应该是</P><P>（Arthur） C. Clarke </P><P>	209字	16楼	isaac-fool	2005-04-12 10:17:25
15087	◆ － <P>所以很容易出问题，还是需要一点点积累经验哦</P><P>我感觉校对的还是逻辑基本通顺的，不知可有大误？<	102字	17楼	兔子等着瞧	2005-04-12 10:19:30
10077	◆ － <P>没精力仔细看……这个一定要对原文一句句看的说……</P><P>注意到了的……一个是Then好像老是翻作“	251字	18楼	isaac-fool	2005-04-12 10:40:36
23095	◆ －呵，是挺长，我也是翻完才发现有20多K的。阿瞧兄尽显英雄本色，拼音要发的话，记得把我俩的名字都写上哦。<br/	99字	19楼	蹦蹦兔	2005-04-12 23:01:15
49079	◆ －发？这个东西能发什么地方？	26字	20楼	isaac-fool	2005-04-13 08:06:25
45090	◆ －你还不知道……我们办网刊，5、1出刊	34字	21楼	兔子等着瞧	2005-04-13 08:20:50
4093	◆ － <DIV class=quote><B>以下是引用<I>兔子等着瞧</I>在2005-4-13 8:20:50	202字	22楼	isaac-fool	2005-04-13 10:03:53
104093	◆ －评论网刊，科幻评论	18字	23楼	兔子等着瞧	2005-04-13 10:09:51
44097	◆ － <P>大家的意见都很有道理哦，我又上了一堂快乐的英语课。</P><P>另外阿isaac兄赶快写一个吧，三个人才	119字	25楼	蹦蹦兔	2005-04-14 00:20:25
14081	◆ － <P>我凑热闹解释这句话是因为没有看见第二页的回复，多余了</P><P>阿宝是谁？我也正奇怪呢</P><br/	88字	27楼	wth	2005-04-15 13:32:44
43090	◆ － <P>上面那句话里的it全都是指代The alien, the god呀</P><P>commit suici	391字	24楼	wth	2005-04-13 14:58:35
64088	◆ － <DIV class=quote><B>以下是引用<I>wth</I>在2005-4-13 14:58:35的	955字	26楼	isaac-fool	2005-04-15 07:56:36