Frank Herbert: Science Fiction Author
弗兰克·赫伯特：科幻作家
By Pat Stone 帕特·斯通（Pat Stone）
EmailPrintFacebookPinterestX
1 / 2
Frank Herbert was thoughtful and opinionated.
弗兰克·赫伯特（Frank Herbert）深思熟虑，固执己见。
MOTHER EARTH NEWS STAFF 地球母亲新闻工作人员
By profession, Frank Herbert is a science fiction author — and quite a successful one at that. Indeed, many of his novels are regarded as classics in the field. What’s more, a major film studio is well into a years-long project to convert Frank’s Dune tales into a feature-length motion picture.
从职业上讲，弗兰克·赫伯特（Frank Herbert）是一位科幻小说作家，而且在这方面相当成功。事实上，他的许多小说都被认为是该领域的经典之作。更重要的是，一家大型电影制片厂正在进行一项长达数年的项目，将弗兰克的沙丘故事改编成一部长篇电影。Of course, Herbert has written other distinguished fiction as well, but a list of his literary achievements would hardly serve to sum up this unique individual. The Washington State author staunchly maintains that any person’s life should consist of much more than his or her work role (even if that role is a prominent one). He puts a lot of energy into his “nonprofessional” time. In keeping with his beliefs, Frank’s a devoted father, spouse, and family man. He’s also an avid alternative energy experimenter who’s created his own solar collector, windplant, and methane fuel generator, all on an Olympic Peninsula homestead.
当然，赫伯特也写过其他杰出的小说，但他的文学成就很难概括这个独特的人。华盛顿州的作者坚定地认为，任何人的生活都应该比他或她的工作角色（即使这个角色很突出）要多得多。他在“非专业”时间上投入了大量精力。为了与他的信仰保持一致，弗兰克是一位忠诚的父亲、配偶和家庭男人。他也是一位狂热的替代能源实验者，他在奥林匹克半岛的宅基地上创建了自己的太阳能集热器、风力发电厂和甲烷燃料发电机。Equally important, Mr. Herbert is an outgoing social commentator who combines a strong sense of traditional values with a radical’s zest for questioning (and even parodying) the basic assumptions of our culture. Staffer Pat Stone–after being sent out to Port Townsend, Washington to talk with Frank–had this to say about his encounter with the creator of the exotic, water-poor planet, Dune:
同样重要的是，赫伯特先生是一位外向的社会评论家，他将强烈的传统价值观意识与激进分子质疑（甚至模仿）我们文化的基本假设的热情相结合。工作人员帕特·斯通（Pat Stone）在被派往华盛顿州汤森港与弗兰克交谈后，谈到了他与异国情调、缺水星球沙丘的创造者的相遇：“Interviewing Frank Herbert was both a truly enjoyable and sometimes frustrating experience. The man seems charged with energy. He has an active and impish sense of humor–we did a lot of laughing–and a warm, hospitable nature that truly touched me. At the same time, though, Mr. Herbert’s answers often bewildered me with their unexpectedness. He obviously relished escaping any attempts to `pigeonhole’ his ideas, and even mimicked my role as interviewer by taking my picture once while I was photographing him! I tell you, at times I felt like a bit character in one of his novels who attempts–usually in vain–to keep up with the words of the book’s brilliant protagonist. “
“采访弗兰克·赫伯特（Frank Herbert）是一次真正愉快的经历，有时也是令人沮丧的经历。这个男人似乎精力充沛。他有一种活跃而顽皮的幽默感——我们开了很多笑——以及真正感动我的热情好客的天性。然而，与此同时，赫伯特先生的回答常常让我感到困惑，因为他们的回答出乎意料。他显然喜欢逃避任何试图“归类”他的想法的尝试，甚至在我为他拍照时模仿了我作为面试官的角色！我告诉你，有时我觉得自己像他的一部小说中的一个小人物，试图——通常是徒劳的——跟上书中才华横溢的主人公的话。"Frank Herbert’s ideas concerning the serious problems facing our society today and how we might successfully deal with them are often challenging and present a strong counterpoint to the views of his fellow science fiction writer,Isaac Asimov. All of us here at MOTHER EARTH NEWS hope that you find the author/homesteader’s concepts and anecdotes–as presented in the edited transcript that follows–to be as thought-provoking as we have.
弗兰克·赫伯特（Frank Herbert）关于当今社会面临的严重问题以及我们如何成功处理这些问题的想法通常具有挑战性，并与他的科幻作家艾萨克·阿西莫夫（Isaac Asimov）的观点形成了强烈的对比。我们 MOTHER EARTH NEWS 的所有人都希望您能发现作者/自耕农的概念和轶事——正如下面编辑的成绩单中所呈现的那样——和我们一样发人深省。PLOWBOY: Mr. Herbert, a little voice in the back of my mind keeps telling me that many readers of MOTHER EARTH NEWS’ will probably wonder why our do-it-yourself, ecology-oriented magazine is interviewing a prominent science fiction writer.
PLOWBOY：赫伯特先生，我脑海中有一个小小的声音一直在告诉我，《地球母亲新闻》的许多读者可能会想知道为什么我们自己动手、以生态为导向的杂志要采访一位著名的科幻作家。HERBERT: Who, me? A science fiction writer? I’ve always considered myself to be a yellow journalist.
赫伯特：谁，我？科幻作家？我一直认为自己是一名黄色记者。PLOWBOY: I beg your pardon?
犁头： 对不起？HERBERT: Like the best muckraking yellow journalists of the news media, I ask questions that other people aren’t asking, and do a lot of investigating into the world around me. So even though I try to write entertaining, future-oriented stories, my books always contain messages that–I believe–are relevant to our situation today.
赫伯特：就像新闻媒体中最好的黄色记者一样，我会问别人没有问的问题，并对我周围的世界进行大量调查。因此，即使我试图写出有趣的、面向未来的故事，我的书总是包含与我们今天的处境相关的信息。PLOWBOY: So you use your futuristic fiction to comment on contemporary problems?
PLOWBOY：所以你用你的未来主义小说来评论当代问题？HERBERT: Yes, but don’t think that’s all I try to do when I write. :eople don’t buy my books because they think they’re going to learn something from them. The fact is, if you told somebody, “Listen, I’m going to teach you a lesson that’s so important it might even change your life,” that individual might say, “Oh boy, do that!” But if you then did instruct the person as you promised–and that’s all you did–he or she would resent it.
赫伯特：是的，但不要以为这就是我写作时所做的一切。：eople 不要买我的书，因为他们认为他们会从中学到一些东西。事实是，如果你告诉某人，“听着，我要教你一个非常重要的教训，甚至可能改变你的生活”，那个人可能会说，“哦，天哪，这样做吧！但是，如果你真的按照你的承诺去指导这个人——这就是你所做的一切——他或她会反感它。So I try to give my readers real entertainment as well as my point of view. They can take either one, or both!
因此，我试图为我的读者提供真正的娱乐以及我的观点。他们可以选择其中之一，也可以两者兼而有之！PLOWBOY: How did you begin your career as a “writer with a message”?
PLOWBOY：你是如何开始你作为“有信息的作家”的职业生涯的？HERBERT: Oh, I knew what I wanted to do with my life even when I was quite young. In fact, on my eighth birthday I told my family, “I’m going to be a author.”
赫伯特：噢，我甚至在很小的时候就知道我想用我的生活做什么。事实上，在我八岁生日那天，我告诉我的家人，“我要成为一名作家。PLOWBOY: They must have been tempted to take that remark as a joke.
PLOWBOY：他们一定是想把这句话当成一个笑话。HERBERT: Well, I got kidded a lot as a result of my statement, but–in truth–I’ve never really strayed far from that goal. I was employed as a newspaper writer for many years, and I took those jobs because I saw the field as a training ground that would financially support my own writing while helping me learn to use the tools of my trade. In addition, I put in some time as a radio and television commentator. And I’ve done a lot of photojournalism work. I was picture editor of the San Francisco Examiner for quite a few years.
赫伯特：嗯，由于我的声明，我经常被开玩笑，但事实上，我从来没有真正偏离过这个目标。我从事报纸撰稿人工作多年，我接受这些工作是因为我认为这个领域是一个训练场，可以在经济上支持我自己的写作，同时帮助我学会使用我的行业工具。此外，我还花了一些时间担任广播和电视评论员。我做了很多新闻摄影工作。我曾担任《旧金山考官》的图片编辑好几年了。PLOWBOY: Then did you glean the “message themes” for your fiction from exposure to contemporary news events?
PLOWBOY：那么你有没有从接触当代新闻事件中收集到你的小说的“信息主题”？HERBERT: Heck, no. I developed all of my basic ideas during my childhood years on our family’s farm.
赫伯特：哎呀，不。我童年时在我们家的农场里发展了我所有的基本想法。PLOWBOY: You were a farm boy?
犁仔：你是个农家子弟？HERBERT: I milked cows–by hand–for over half of my early childhood years on a small subsistence farm in Kitsap County, Washington. And I can still clench my hands like you wouldn’t believe.
赫伯特：在我童年早期的一半时间里，我在华盛顿州基萨普县的一个小型自给自足的农场里用手挤奶。我仍然可以握紧双手，就像你不会相信的那样。PLOWBOY: You must have had other chores, too.
犁仔：你一定也有其他的家务活。HERBERT: Oh, yes. There were pigs to feed, and I had corn and such to hoe. I once even reared and canned 500 chickens as a 4-H project. We raised all our own food, so–although I grew up during the Depression–I never had to worry about being hungry. In fact, I remember those “bad years” as marvelous times because I spent them in the company of a kind of large, extended family. My father had six brothers, so I never lived far from aunts and uncles, and I had cousins all over the landscape.
赫伯特：哦，是的。有猪要喂，我有玉米之类的东西要锄。我曾经甚至饲养和罐装了 500 只鸡作为 4-H 项目。我们自己养活了所有的食物，所以——虽然我是在大萧条时期长大的——但我从来不用担心会饿。事实上，我记得那些“糟糕的岁月”是美妙的时光，因为我在一个大家庭的陪伴下度过了它们。我父亲有六个兄弟，所以我从不远离阿姨和叔叔，而且我到处都有表兄弟。And I learned, from childhood, that the family experience can be very important to an individual. Family life teaches a person to shoulder his or her share of responsibility. It’s also quite a supportive structure … and can stage rituals in which all of the members are able to participate. A child can develop a sense of self-reliance and self-worth through involvement in such activities.
我从小就知道，家庭经历对个人来说非常重要。家庭生活教会一个人承担他或她的责任。这也是一个相当支持的结构......并可以举办所有成员都可以参加的仪式。通过参与这些活动，孩子可以培养自力更生和自我价值感。PLOWBOY: Did you work on your plans to be “an author ” during those farm days?
PLOWBOY：在那些农场的日子里，你有没有制定过成为“作家”的计划？HERBERT: Yes, I used to write awful poetry and crude childish stories. I got my best storytelling practice, though, from being the yarn-spinner for all my cousins. Whenever the whole family got together, we youngsters would go off someplace by ourselves. The other children would come up with a title–something like “The Blood and the Vow”–and I’d have to make up a tale that fit it … one that, often as not, would scare the wits out of them.
赫伯特：是的，我曾经写过糟糕的诗歌和粗俗的幼稚故事。不过，我从我所有堂兄弟的纺纱工那里得到了我最好的讲故事练习。每当全家人聚在一起时，我们年轻人就会自己去某个地方。其他孩子会想出一个标题——比如“血与誓言”——我必须编一个适合它的故事......一个，通常不是，会吓跑他们的智慧。PLOWBOY: How did you develop the concepts that have become the “hidden” messages in your stories?
PLOWBOY：你是如何发展出这些概念的，这些概念已经成为你故事中的“隐藏”信息？HERBERT: First of all, my childhood days gave me some rock-ribbed ideas about the ways people should live together. To put my beliefs simply: I think we ought to be loyal to our friends, we ought to be truthful, we ought to be supportive of family members, and we ought to provide one another with help directly instead of delegating our good deeds to institutions.
赫伯特：首先，我的童年时代给了我一些关于人们应该如何生活在一起的想法。简单地说，我的信念是：我认为我们应该忠于我们的朋友，我们应该诚实，我们应该支持家人，我们应该直接互相帮助，而不是将我们的善行委托给机构。I don’t like governmental “helping”–or any kind of public charity system–because I learned early on that our society’s institutions often weaken people’s self-reliance and damage family bonds as well. Take education, for instance. The teaching of our young ought to be about equally divided between the family, which should lay the ground-work for the child’s learning, and professionals who can pass on useful knowledge that the child’s relatives might not have in their repertoire. Today, though, the professional education establishment assumes that the family doesn’t know what its own members need or want. The result is a classic failure: an institutionalized system that does more harm than good.
我不喜欢政府的“帮助”——或任何形式的公共慈善系统——因为我很早就知道，我们社会的制度往往会削弱人们的自力更生能力，也会损害家庭纽带。以教育为例。我们年轻人的教育应该在家庭和专业人士之间平均分配，家庭应该为孩子的学习奠定基础，而专业人士可以传授孩子的亲戚可能没有的有用知识。然而，今天，专业教育机构认为家庭不知道自己的成员需要或想要什么。结果是一个典型的失败：一个弊大于利的制度化系统。Do you know that–in response to just that problem–my own family left the United States twice? On both occasions we went to live in Mexico because I was not considered “qualified” to teach my children in the U.S., but could home-school them in Mexico. Our youngsters were taught at home when they were young, and they haven’t suffered in the least from it.
你知道吗，为了解决这个问题，我自己的家人两次离开美国？在这两个场合，我们都去了墨西哥生活，因为我被认为没有“资格”在美国教我的孩子，但可以在墨西哥让他们在家上学。我们的年轻人小时候在家里接受教育，他们没有丝毫受苦。PLOWBOY: So you think our country’s methods of instruction have a lot to do with the destruction of many family values?
PLOWBOY：所以你认为我们国家的教学方法与许多家庭价值观的破坏有很大关系？HERBERT: Absolutely. By the time you have three or four generations of people who are taught not to trust their families and their families’ knowledge, individuals can really become separated from their roots. The effect is to make people feel like lost wanderers, or to cause them to think of themselves only in the role of their jobs, which is a complete misrepresentation of what it means to be alive.
赫伯特：当然。当你有三四代人被教导不要相信他们的家人和他们家人的知识时，个人真的会与他们的根源分离。其效果是让人们觉得自己像迷失的流浪者，或者让他们只在工作的角色中考虑自己，这完全是对活着的意义的歪曲。Another lesson I learned in childhood is that what people do is just as important as–and maybe more so than–what they say. I had a marvelous object lesson in the difference between words and actions when I was in fourth grade. In those days I was bored to death by school, so I tended to cause a lot of trouble.
我在童年时期学到的另一个教训是，人们的所作所为与他们所说的话一样重要，甚至可能更重要。四年级时，我上了一堂关于言语和行为之间区别的奇妙的实物课。在那些日子里，我被学校无聊得要死，所以我往往会惹很多麻烦。One day our teacher, a great big woman who wore eye-glasses that looked like the bottoms of pop bottles, caught me in the middle of a particularly heinous prank. She told me to stay after school and added, “I just don’t know what I’m going to do with you.”
有一天，我们的老师，一个戴着眼镜的大女人，看起来像汽水瓶的底部，在一个特别令人发指的恶作剧中抓住了我。她让我放学后留下来，并补充说：“我只是不知道我要对你做什么。Of course, I could imagine all kinds of horrible things she might do to me. Like the bastinado, or worse! But when school was over, she just made me sit and sit while she worked on papers. After what seemed like ages, she motioned me up to her desk, stared at me awhile–I could feel two holes being burned right through me–and then resumed her paperwork.
当然，我可以想象她会对我做各种可怕的事情。就像 bastinado，或者更糟！但是放学后，她只是让我坐着，坐着，而她正在写论文。过了好一会儿，她示意我走到她的办公桌前，盯着我看了一会儿——我能感觉到有两个洞被我烧穿了——然后继续她的文书工作。PLOWBOY: You must have been terrified.
犁仔：你一定被吓坏了。HERBERT: Oh, I was. Finally, she put her pencil down and said, “I just don’t know what I’m going to do with you.” Well, it was all too much for me. I started to cry. She put her face right in front of mine then and said again!–“I just don’t know what I’m going to do with you.” And I said through my sobs, “Why are you mad at me?”
赫伯特：哦，我是。最后，她放下铅笔，说：“我只是不知道我要对你做什么。好吧，这对我来说太过分了。我开始哭泣。然后她把脸放在我的面前，又说了一遍！“我只是不知道我要对你做什么。我抽泣着说：“你为什么生我的气？With that, she grabbed me by the shoulders, began shaking me roughly, and cried, “I’m not mad at you, I’m not mad at you!” Well, I now know that teachers get long lectures during their training on the importance of keeping their tempers with their students, so I had said exactly the wrong thing to this woman. I may not have understood that at the time, but I didn’t have a bit of trouble realizing that my teacher–who was repeatedly screaming, “I’m not mad at you!”–was nearly out of her mind with rage.
说完，她抓住我的肩膀，开始粗暴地摇晃我，哭着说：“我不生你的气，我不生你的气！好吧，我现在知道老师在培训期间会接受长时间的讲座，讲授与学生保持脾气的重要性，所以我对这位女士说了完全错误的话。我当时可能不明白这一点，但我没有意识到我的老师——他反复尖叫，“我没有生你的气！——她气得差点疯了。That incident drove home the lesson that what people say often doesn’t agree with what they actually do. And that discovery played a big part in the shaping my thinking and behavior.
这一事件让我们明白了，人们所说的话往往与他们实际所做的事情不一致。这一发现在塑造我的思想和行为方面发挥了重要作用。PLOWBOY: Do you try, in your own life, to keep a consistent thread between words and actions, then?
PLOWBOY：那么，在你自己的生活中，你是否试图在言语和行动之间保持一致？HERBERT: Absolutely. I already told you that family bonds are very important to me, and that we left the country to be able to teach our own children. There were also years–when our youngsters were quite small–that Bev, my wife, was the family’s major income earner. She went out to the office and brought in a paycheck, while I stayed home and did the cooking, laundry, and housekeeping, took care of the children, and worked on my writing.
赫伯特：当然。我已经告诉过你，家庭纽带对我来说非常重要，我们离开这个国家是为了能够教我们自己的孩子。还有几年，当我们的孩子还很小的时候，我的妻子贝芙是这个家庭的主要收入来源。她去办公室拿了薪水，而我则留在家里做饭、洗衣服、做家务，照顾孩子，写写作。Our children are grown up now, but I still participate in family rituals. In fact, my niece called me last night, and I’ve got to change a previous appointment and go down to Eugene, Oregon because she’s graduating from the university there.
我们的孩子现在已经长大了，但我仍然参加家庭仪式。事实上，我的侄女昨晚打电话给我，我必须改变之前的约会，去俄勒冈州的尤金，因为她要从那里的大学毕业。I also feel strongly–and act on my feelings–that individuals should take their own steps to be more self-reliant and to lessen their impact on our environment.
我也强烈地感觉到——并根据我的感受采取行动——个人应该采取自己的步骤，更加自力更生，减少他们对环境的影响。PLOWBOY: What have you done to live that belief?
PLOWBOY：你做了什么来践行这个信念？HERBERT: Did you see the solar collector on the side of our house? That’s what’s heating our home. Now I didn’t say to myself that I’d wait until we could get all our heat, all the time, from solar energy, or that putting up a collector would disrupt the beautiful lines on this already constructed house, or that I wouldn’t build the heater until we could come up with a way to store the warmth. I simply decided to build an inexpensive collector–the device’s sun-catching “tracking rings” are made from recycled beer cans–in order to use solar heat when I can. You see, people keep looking for an absolute final solution, often waiting to use alternative technology until they can build an energy-saving house from scratch, when there are many intermediate steps available to us.
赫伯特：你看到我们家那边的太阳能集热器了吗？这就是我们家的暖气。现在我没有对自己说，我会等到我们能一直从太阳能中获得所有的热量，或者安装一个收集器会破坏这个已经建成的房子的美丽线条，或者我不会建造加热器，直到我们想出一种方法来储存热量。我只是决定制造一个便宜的收集器——该设备的遮阳“跟踪环”是由回收的啤酒罐制成的——以便在可能的情况下使用太阳能。你看，人们一直在寻找一个绝对的最终解决方案，往往等待使用替代技术，直到他们能够从头开始建造一个节能的房子，而我们有许多中间步骤可供我们使用。Bev and I also grow all our own vegetables. We live in an area that has what the U.S. Department of Agriculture describes as “poverty soil.” So, when we moved here eight years ago, I paid $200 to have peat hauled in by truck and dumped in the stone terraces out back. Our neighbors laughed at us for spending all that money on peat … but the vegetable crops we grew in those walled beds paid us back that investment in just a year and a half.
Bev和我自己也种蔬菜。我们生活在一个被美国农业部描述为“贫困土壤”的地区。所以，当我们八年前搬到这里时，我花了200美元用卡车把泥炭运进来，然后倾倒在后面的石头梯田里。我们的邻居嘲笑我们把所有的钱都花在泥炭上......但是，我们在那些围墙床上种植的蔬菜作物在短短一年半内就收回了这笔投资。I also have an attached greenhouse … I’m slowly but surely thermopaning all the house’s windows … I intend to add a solar collector over our swimming pool building to heat its water … and–for a time–I even raised chickens to provide manure for my methane experiments.
我还有一个附属的温室......我正在缓慢但肯定地对房子的所有窗户进行热处理......我打算在我们的游泳池建筑上增加一个太阳能集热器来加热它的水......有一段时间，我甚至养鸡为我的甲烷实验提供肥料。In addition, a friend–John Ottenheimer–and I have invented a wind machine. Our device is built on a vertical axis, a feature which allows us to transmit the power quite easily to the ground and keeps the device from being “torqued down” by sudden wind shifts. Our machine can withstand a 100-knot gust, yet can be built out of plastic, wood, or any of a variety of inexpensive materials.
此外，我和朋友约翰·奥滕海默（John Ottenheimer）发明了一种风力机。我们的设备建立在垂直轴上，这一功能使我们能够非常轻松地将电力传输到地面，并防止设备因突然的风向变化而“向下扭矩”。我们的机器可以承受 100 节的阵风，但可以用塑料、木材或任何各种廉价材料制成。Related Articles 相关文章
雷暴会带来闪电，但您可以学习如何保护您的房屋并减少您的宅基地和设备受损的机会。避雷针是一项不错的投资，但保护电器只需要几分钟，而且是免费的。PLOWBOY: Are you marketing this windplant?
PLOWBOY：你在推销这个风电厂吗？HERBERT: Not yet, but we intend to. We’re still testing and refining the design. We’ve been working on it for five years.
赫伯特：还没有，但我们打算这样做。我们仍在测试和完善设计。我们已经为此努力了五年。Another way I try to do my bit for ecology and alternate lifestyles is by bringing “movers and shakers”–men and women like the officers of Weyerhaeuser Tree Company–out here to see our place. I think it’s extremely important to reach people who are making decisions that will affect the lives of us all, and to show them that you don’t have to be “a kook living in a tipi”–that image is meant to describe their way of thinking, not my own–to be interested in supplying some of your own energy and food.
我尝试为生态和替代生活方式尽自己的一份力量的另一种方式是让“推动者和震动者”——像 Weyerhaeuser Tree Company 的官员这样的男人和女人——来这里看看我们的地方。我认为接触那些正在做出影响我们所有人生活的决定的人是极其重要的，并向他们展示你不必成为“生活在 tipi 中的怪人”——这个形象旨在描述他们的思维方式，而不是我自己的思维方式——有兴趣提供一些自己的能量和食物。So I do try to express my concerns about family, social, and environmental values in my life, as well as in my writing.
因此，我确实试图在生活和写作中表达我对家庭、社会和环境价值观的担忧。PLOWBOY: I couldn’t agree more that it’s important to be consistent in one’s actions and words. But when you talk about expressing such values in your writing, you’re referring to your later work as a science fiction writer and not to your earlier, purely reportorial work, right?
PLOWBOY：我完全同意一个人的行为和言语保持一致是很重要的。但是，当你谈到在写作中表达这些价值观时，你指的是你后来作为科幻作家的作品，而不是你早期的纯粹的报告作品，对吧？HERBERT: Oh, you’d be surprised how many of my views I was able to get across in my newspaper days. I was known as a strange rebel who wrote very outspoken stuff. But people would read what I wrote, and that sold newspapers.
赫伯特：噢，你会惊讶于我在报纸上能够传达多少我的观点。我被称为一个奇怪的叛逆者，他写了非常直言不讳的东西。但人们会读我写的东西，这能卖报纸。I’ll give you an example. I was a war correspondent in Vietnam for a while. I became utterly disgusted with our military command there because it was quite obvious, to anyone in the field, that our “leaders” were lying to correspondents and to the American public.
我给你举个例子。我在越南当了一段时间的战地记者。我对我们在那里的军事指挥感到非常厌恶，因为很明显，对于该领域的任何人来说，我们的“领导人”都在对记者和美国公众撒谎。So one of my stories documented the profound corruption, in the Thieu government, that was costing the American taxpayers millions of dollars. In one instance, the military ordered enormous lots of steel to repair our river barges. The steel just happened to turn out to be the wrong gauge for our barges, but–surprise! was exactly right for use on the boats being built at the nearby Thieu family barge factory. And gosh, before long that steel just vanished without a trace. That chain of events could never have happened unless people in our military were profiting along the way.
因此，我的一个故事记录了邵氏政府的严重腐败，这让美国纳税人损失了数百万美元。有一次，军方订购了大量的钢材来修理我们的河驳船。事实证明，钢材恰好是我们的驳船的错误规格，但是——令人惊讶的是！完全适合在附近 Thieu 家族驳船厂建造的船只上使用。天哪，没过多久，那块钢铁就消失得无影无踪了。除非我们军队中的人们在此过程中获利，否则这一连串事件永远不会发生。I got my facts on this and other instances of corruption, flew off to Copenhagen–in those days, you didn’t want to be in Vietnam when you filed a story denigrating the powers that be, for fear that you might fall victim to a war zone “accident”–and sent in a complete story on this conspiracy of lies and greed. It was a “big blast” type of article and was banner headlined in every Sunday edition of the Hearst newspapers all around the country.
我得到了关于这个和其他腐败事件的事实，飞到哥本哈根——在那些日子里，当你提交一个诋毁当权者的故事时，你不想在越南，因为担心你可能会成为战区“事故”的受害者——并发送了一个关于这个谎言和贪婪阴谋的完整故事。这是一篇“大爆炸”类型的文章，在全国各地的赫斯特报纸的每个周日版上都以横幅为标题。It so happens that Bill Hearst, Jr–who does a regular column for the Sunday editions–was also writing about the Vietnam war that day, only he presented a much rosier picture of our war effort than the one I had developed while being there. Yet Bill thought it was a great idea to run our opposing views, together, on the front page, because the resulting controversy sold lots of papers.
碰巧的是，小比尔·赫斯特（Bill Hearst， Jr）——他为周日版做定期专栏——那天也在写关于越南战争的文章，只是他展示了一幅比我在那里时所描绘的更乐观的战争努力图景。然而，比尔认为，将我们的对立观点一起刊登在头版是个好主意，因为由此产生的争议卖了很多报纸。PLOWBOY: So you were often able to get away with such “brazen” journalism?
PLOWBOY：所以你经常能够摆脱这种“厚颜无耻”的新闻？HERBERT: Yes, primarily because I could write well–allowing people to understand what I was saying–and I wrote sincerely, presenting my outward bias honestly and then, reporting what I saw.
赫伯特：是的，主要是因为我能写得很好——让人们理解我在说什么——而且我真诚地写作，诚实地展示我的外在偏见，然后报告我所看到的。PLOWBOY: How did you become interested in writing science fiction?
PLOWBOY：你是怎么对写科幻小说产生兴趣的？HERBERT: I started out doing adventure stories, and actually tried my hand at quite a number of fiction types. Still, science fiction ultimately attracted me. The genre has unlimited elbowroom, which permits me to create any kind of setting I want for whatever story I want to tell. Most important, in science fiction I can work with entertaining and dramatic stories that have analogues to the present situation. That way I can get past people’s guard and really talk to the basic human beings within.
赫伯特：我开始写冒险故事，实际上尝试了很多类型的小说。尽管如此，科幻小说最终还是吸引了我。该类型具有无限的肘部空间，这使我能够为我想讲述的任何故事创建任何我想要的设置。最重要的是，在科幻小说中，我可以处理与当前情况相似的有趣和戏剧性的故事。这样一来，我就可以越过人们的戒备，真正与内在的基本人类交谈。PLOWBOY: One thing I’ve noticed in reading and thinking about your books is that every society you describe seems to have glaring faults … no matter how noble the intentions of its creators. For instance, the most positive social system I saw in any of your works was the community described in The Santaroga Barrier. [EDITOR’S NOTE: This book portrays an isolated city that does not participate in American consumerist society. Commercial corporations send an agent in to uncover Santaroga’s secrets and to attempt to subvert the community.]
PLOWBOY：在阅读和思考你的书时，我注意到的一件事是，你所描述的每个社会似乎都有明显的缺点......无论其创造者的意图多么崇高。例如，我在你的作品中看到的最积极的社会制度是《圣塔罗加屏障》中描述的社区。[编者注：这本书描绘了一个不参与美国消费主义社会的孤立城市。商业公司派出一名特工来揭开桑塔罗加的秘密，并试图颠覆社区。At first impression, Santaroga appeared to be far superior to normal American society. The people were cooperative, peaceful, and happy. But by the time I reached the end of the book, I’d become aware of flaws in the community that seriously compromised its virtues.
乍一看，桑塔罗加似乎远远优于正常的美国社会。人们是合作的，和平的，快乐的。但当我读到这本书的结尾时，我已经意识到社区中的缺陷严重损害了它的美德。HERBERT: I wrote The Santaroga Barrier with the hope that half the book’s readers would end up saying, “Oh boy, what a nifty society. I’d like to live there” and the other half saying, “You wouldn’t catch me dead in that place.” The underlying message, then, was that one person’s utopia is another person’s dystopia or worst possible world–and that any attempt to create a perfect society will fall into the trap of replenishing itself only from itself, and ignoring those differences between people that give us strength as human beings.
赫伯特：我写《圣塔罗加屏障》是希望这本书的一半读者最终会说，“哦，天哪，多么漂亮的社会。我想住在那里“，另一半说，”你不会把我死在那个地方。因此，潜在的信息是，一个人的乌托邦是另一个人的反乌托邦或最糟糕的世界——任何创造一个完美社会的尝试都会落入陷阱，即只能从自身补充自己，而忽视人与人之间的差异，这些差异赋予了我们作为人类的力量。PLOWBOY: That’s not the kind of one-sided viewpoint a reader might expect to find in the work of an author who professes to “preach” in his fiction. Soul Catcher, like The Santaroga Barrier, also seemed to be making strong negative statements about American society … only in that book the not entirely positive alternative was native American culture, a society many people think of as being–or, at least, having been–close to perfect. [EDITOR’S NOTE: In Soul Catcher, a spiritually powerful Indian kidnaps the son of a prominent politician with the intention of slaying the innocent youth as part of a ceremonial revenge. One important aspect of the ritual is that the victim must agree to the slaying.]
PLOWBOY：这不是读者可能期望在一个自称在小说中“说教”的作者的作品中找到的那种片面的观点。灵魂捕手，就像圣塔罗加屏障一样，似乎也在对美国社会发表强烈的负面言论......只有在那本书中，不完全积极的替代方案是美洲原住民文化，许多人认为这个社会是——或者至少是接近完美的。[编者注：在《灵魂捕手》中，一个精神上强大的印度人绑架了一位著名政治家的儿子，意图杀死无辜的年轻人，作为仪式复仇的一部分。仪式的一个重要方面是受害者必须同意杀戮。HERBERT:Soul Catcher described a collision between two mythologies, those of the native American world and of the European immigrant culture. And, in truth, this very real collision has not yet completed its shaking-down process. Indeed, the two societies still have some grave misunderstandings about each other. Many people, for instance, think that the Indians were the best ecologists this land has ever seen. I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Some native American cultures were actually quite hard on their environments. They were just slower–because their populations were small–at causing damage than the whites were.
赫伯特：《灵魂捕手》描述了两种神话之间的碰撞，一种是美洲原住民世界神话，另一种是欧洲移民文化。而且，事实上，这种非常真实的碰撞还没有完成它的震动过程。事实上，这两个社会对彼此仍然存在一些严重的误解。例如，许多人认为印第安人是这片土地上最好的生态学家。我认为这不一定是真的。一些美洲原住民文化实际上对他们的环境非常苛刻。他们只是比白人更慢——因为他们的人口很少——造成破坏。PLOWBOY: Really? 犁仔： 真的吗？HERBERT: Some tribes practiced several forms of massive kill–such as driving buffalo off of cliffs–which were sure to improve the lot of the people doing so at the expense of those who didn’t. But since the rate of the environmental change resulting from such acts was too slow to be encompassed by most people’s awareness of time, many men and women think that the native American societies could have lived in harmony with their environment forever if they’d just been left alone.
赫伯特：一些部落实行了几种形式的大规模杀戮——比如把水牛赶下悬崖——这肯定会以牺牲那些不这样做的人为代价来改善人们的命运。但是，由于这种行为导致的环境变化速度太慢，以至于大多数人的时间意识都无法涵盖，许多男人和女人认为，如果美洲原住民社会只是独自一人，他们本可以永远与环境和谐相处。PLOWBOY: I must admit I’ve always believed that to be true. How do you perceive humanity’s relationship with the environment today?
PLOWBOY：我必须承认，我一直相信这是真的。您如何看待当今人类与环境的关系？HERBERT: I look upon our involvement with the environment–and by the way, all of man’s intrusions into the environment are totally natural phenomena–as a continual learning process in which there are no absolutes. Whatever we do causes changes, and we can cause gross disruption to our surroundings as a result of small-order determinations.
赫伯特：我把我们对环境的参与——顺便说一句，人类对环境的所有侵入都是完全自然的现象——看作是一个不断学习的过程，在这个过程中没有绝对的东西。无论我们做什么都会引起变化，并且由于小订单决定，我们可能会对周围环境造成严重破坏。PLOWBOY: That statement would certainly seem to be supported by the events that occur in your Dune novels. [EDITOR’S NOTE: In Dune, Dune Messiah, and Children of Dune, Herbert portrays generations of life and government on a harsh desert planet. The world’s native people, the Fremen, are amazingly well adapted to living in a low-moisture environment. In an attempt to improve the lot of the citizens, Dune’s aristocratic rulers work to increase the available water an the environment.] The major change people tried to effect on Dune was to bring moisture to the desert. That clearly seemed a desirable goal.
PLOWBOY：这种说法似乎得到了你《沙丘》小说中发生的事件的支持。[编者注：在《沙丘》、《沙丘弥赛亚》和《沙丘之子》中，赫伯特描绘了一个严酷的沙漠星球上几代人的生活和政府。世界上的原住民弗雷曼人非常适应生活在低湿度环境中。为了改善市民的命运，沙丘的贵族统治者努力增加可用的水和环境。人们试图对沙丘进行的主要改变是为沙漠带来水分。这显然是一个理想的目标。HERBERT: Yes, Dune was so arid that the very idea of water coming down from the skies in rain, and of great rivers flowing over the land, conjured up visions of paradise. But when that one change was made, it had a regular “domino theory” series of consequences that hadn’t been anticipated. Indeed, by the time Dune reached the stage described in my fourth desert planet book–God Emperor of Dune–the changes had pretty well eliminated individualism!.
赫伯特：是的，沙丘是如此干旱，以至于一想到雨水从天而降，大河从陆地上流过，就让人联想到天堂的景象。但是，当这一改变发生时，它产生了一系列没有预料到的常规“多米诺骨牌理论”后果。事实上，当《沙丘》达到我的第四本沙漠星球书《沙丘之神帝》中描述的阶段时，这些变化已经很好地消除了个人主义！PLOWBOY: Why? Why did you choose to portray the effects of such a seemingly desirable change as being so disastrous?
犁仔： 为什么？你为什么选择将这样一个看似可取的变化的影响描述为灾难性的？HERBERT: I felt that the historical interrelationship between the native Fremen and their desert planet had created what amounted to a religion. They had learned not to question the way to behave in their environment, but to act in certain ways on faith. They were locked into their system. So, even when the environment changed, the people didn’t change their social mythology, their values, or their ways of relating to one another.
赫伯特：我觉得弗雷曼原住民和他们的沙漠星球之间的历史相互关系创造了一种宗教。他们学会了不质疑在环境中的行为方式，而是凭信心以某种方式行事。他们被锁定在他们的系统中。因此，即使环境发生了变化，人们也没有改变他们的社会神话、价值观或彼此相处的方式。PLOWBOY: In other words, they failed to alter their own part of the planet’s ecology.
PLOWBOY：换句话说，他们没能改变自己在地球生态中的一部分。HERBERT: That’s right. You see, I think there are such things as psychological ecology, religious ecology, economic ecology, etc. And none of them can exist in a vacuum. They’re all interrelated. So whenever we make decisions and put them into effect, we ought to review and assess all the potential results.
赫伯特：没错。你看，我认为有心理生态学、宗教生态学、经济生态学等。它们都不能存在于真空中。它们都是相互关联的。因此，每当我们做出决定并付诸实施时，我们都应该审查和评估所有潜在的结果。The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action in mind.
我最不信任的人是那些想改善我们的生活但心中只有一个行动方案的人。PLOWBOY: There must be a lot of folks–including many who call themselves environmentalists–who aren’t in agreement with your thinking about the relation between humans and ecology.
PLOWBOY：一定有很多人——包括许多自称环保主义者的人——不同意你对人类与生态之间关系的看法。HERBERT: Yes, there certainly are. Too many ecologically concerned individuals seem to think that simply getting rid of one noxious environmental pollutant–whether that “culprit” be nuclear power, commercial pesticides, or whatever–will solve all our problems.
赫伯特：是的，当然有。太多关注生态问题的人似乎认为，只要摆脱一种有害的环境污染物——无论“罪魁祸首”是核能、商业杀虫剂还是其他什么——就能解决我们所有的问题。PLOWBOY: I wouldn’t think that most science fiction writers share your concerns, either.
PLOWBOY：我也不认为大多数科幻作家和你一样担心。HERBERT: The bulk of science fiction authors–and there are some notable exceptions to this rule–are heavily into what I call the technological toy syndrome.
赫伯特：大多数科幻小说作者——这条规则也有一些值得注意的例外——都严重陷入了我所说的技术玩具综合症。Writers and scientists who believe that technology alone can solve problems have fallen into a common scientific fallacy: the belief that science can answer any question in absolute terms, that it’s possible to reduce phenomena to one explanation that will operate in a vacuum. That’s not the way the universe appears to me. And it quite clearly didn’t appear that way to Albert Einstein or Werner Heisenberg, either.
那些相信只有技术才能解决问题的作家和科学家已经陷入了一种常见的科学谬误：相信科学可以绝对地回答任何问题，认为有可能将现象简化为一种在真空中运作的解释。在我看来，宇宙不是这样。显然，在阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦（Albert Einstein）或维尔纳·海森堡（Werner Heisenberg）看来，情况并非如此。PLOWBOY: I appreciate the fact that you don’t set up one-sided simplistic solutions, but do you have any positive approaches to handling our problems? There weren’t–to my knowledge– any truly promising systems, governments, or leaders described in any of your books that I’ve read.
PLOWBOY：我很欣赏你没有建立片面的简单解决方案，但你有什么积极的方法来解决我们的问题吗？据我所知，在我读过的任何一本书中，都没有描述过任何真正有前途的制度、政府或领导人。HERBERT: There is definitely an implicit warning, in a lot of my work, against big government and especially against charismatic leaders. After all, such people–well-intentioned or not–are human beings who will make human mistakes. And what happens when someone is able to make mistakes for 200 million people? The errors get pretty damned BIG!
赫伯特：在我的很多作品中，肯定有一个隐含的警告，反对大政府，尤其是反对有魅力的领导人。毕竟，这样的人——无论是否善意——都是会犯人类错误的人。当有人能够为2亿人犯错时会发生什么？错误变得非常大！For that reason, I think that John Kennedy was one of the most dangerous presidents this country ever had. People didn’t question him. And whenever citizens are willing to give unreined power to a charismatic leader, such as Kennedy, they tend to end up creating a kind of demigod–a leader who covers up mistakes instead of admitting them–and makes matters worse instead of better. Now Richard Nixon, on the other hand, did us all a favor.
出于这个原因，我认为约翰·肯尼迪是这个国家有史以来最危险的总统之一。人们没有质疑他。每当公民愿意将不受约束的权力交给像肯尼迪这样有魅力的领导人时，他们往往最终会创造出一种半神——一个掩盖错误而不是承认错误的领导者——并使事情变得更糟而不是更好。另一方面，理查德·尼克松（Richard Nixon）帮了我们所有人一个忙。PLOWBOY: You feel that Kennedy was dangerous and Nixon was good for the country?
PLOWBOY：你觉得肯尼迪很危险，尼克松对国家有好处？HERBERT: Yes, Nixon taught us one hell of a lesson, and I thank him for it. He made us distrust government leaders. We didn’t mistrust Kennedy the way we did Nixon, although we probably had just as good reason to do so. But Nixon’s downfall was due to the fact that he wasn’t charismatic. He had to be sold just like Wheaties, and people were disappointed when they opened the box.
赫伯特：是的，尼克松给我们上了一堂地狱般的课，我为此感谢他。他让我们不信任政府领导人。我们没有像对待尼克松那样不信任肯尼迪，尽管我们可能有同样充分的理由这样做。但尼克松的垮台是因为他没有魅力。他必须像小麦一样被卖掉，当人们打开盒子时，他们很失望。I think it’s vital that men and women learn to mistrust all forms of powerful, centralized authority. Big government tends to create an enormous delay between the signals that come from the people and the response of the leaders. Put it this way: Suppose there were a delay time of five minutes between the moment you turned the steering wheel on your car and the time the front tires reacted. What would happen in such a case?
我认为至关重要的是，男人和女人要学会不信任所有形式的强大、集中的权威。大政府往往会在来自人民的信号和领导人的反应之间造成巨大的延迟。这样说吧：假设从您转动汽车方向盘的那一刻到前轮胎做出反应的时间之间有五分钟的延迟时间。在这种情况下会发生什么？PLOWBOY: I guess I’d have to drive pretty slowly.
犁仔：我想我得开得很慢。HERBERT: V-e-rrrrrrr-y slowly. Governments have the same slow-response effect. And the bigger the government, the more slowly it reacts. So to me, the best government is one that’s very responsive to the needs of its people. That is, the least, loosest, and most local government.
赫伯特：V-e-rrrrrrr-y慢慢地。政府也有同样的慢反应效应。政府越大，反应越慢。所以对我来说，最好的政府是一个对人民的需求非常敏感的政府。也就是说，最少、最松散、最地方政府。PLOWBOY: For the past few decades, though, power seems to have been getting more and more concentrated by big business and centralized authority. We’ve clearly been moving in the opposite direction from what you’d prefer.
PLOWBOY：然而，在过去的几十年里，权力似乎越来越集中在大企业和中央集权的手中。我们显然一直在朝着与您希望相反的方向发展。HERBERT: I don’t think that has to continue. I feel that as communication systems improve–and with the new computers that are continually being developed, communications are coming on like gangbusters–people won’t be so dependent on the often one-sided reporting of the conventional media for their information. Folks will see that we can take control of some social functions now handled by big government–schools, taxation, whatever–and that the “bigger and stronger is always more effective” idea is a phony bill of goods.
赫伯特：我不认为这种情况必须继续下去。我觉得，随着通信系统的改进，以及不断开发的新计算机，通信就像流氓一样出现，人们将不再那么依赖传统媒体经常片面的报道来获取信息。人们会看到，我们可以控制一些现在由大政府处理的社会职能——学校、税收等等——而“更大更强总是更有效”的想法是虚假的商品清单。So I see an evolutionary movement toward a certain kind of fragmentation, and not just because of improvements in communications.
因此，我看到了一种走向某种碎片化的进化运动，而不仅仅是因为通信的改善。PLOWBOY: What other factors do you think will influence this decentralization?
PLOWBOY：你认为还有哪些因素会影响这种去中心化？HERBERT: We’ve opened up the Pandora’s box of violent technology. We’re fast approaching a time when one person can make and employ instruments of violence equal to the ones formerly reserved only to massive governments.
赫伯特：我们已经打开了暴力技术的潘多拉魔盒。我们正在迅速接近这样一个时代，一个人可以制造和使用暴力工具，与以前只保留给大型政府的工具相同。Let’s face it, our society has a tiger by the tail in technology. We can’t let go. We can’t all go back to the farm and be self-sufficient. There isn’t enough land to do so, for one thing. Furthermore, people’s expectations for their lifestyles have been raised, and you don’t monkey around with human expectations. So what we need is a new way of relating to our society and its tools. And it was in an attempt to envision just such a change that, some 15 years ago, I coined the phrase “technopeasantry.”
让我们面对现实吧，我们的社会在技术上有一只老虎。我们不能放手。我们不能都回到农场自给自足。一方面，没有足够的土地来这样做。此外，人们对自己生活方式的期望已经提高，你不会被人类的期望所困扰。因此，我们需要的是一种与我们的社会及其工具建立联系的新方式。正是为了设想这样的变化，大约15年前，我创造了“技术农民”这个词。PLOWBOY: How would you define technopeasantry?
PLOWBOY：你如何定义技术农民？HERBERT: It involves drawing support from technology, but doing so imaginatively. We have to ask the question, “What elements of technology should I use and how should I use them?” A peasant knows, you see, when and why to grab a shovel or a hoe. In the same way, we have to think out our own relationship to the complete environment, our own values and technological options, and make decisions consciously.
赫伯特：这涉及到从技术中汲取支持，但要富有想象力。我们必须问一个问题，“我应该使用哪些技术元素，我应该如何使用它们？你看，农民知道何时以及为什么要拿起铁锹或锄头。同样，我们必须思考我们自己与整个环境的关系，我们自己的价值观和技术选择，并有意识地做出决定。Too often today people don’t examine or question their basic assumptions. Let me give you an example. I once taught a course at the University of Washington that was called Utopia/Dystopia. It was billed as an examination of the current state of our country and our myths of the “better life,” only I had trouble getting my students to really investigate their own premises about technology and lifestyle.
今天，人们往往不会检查或质疑他们的基本假设。让我举个例子。我曾经在华盛顿大学教过一门名为“乌托邦/反乌托邦”的课程。它被标榜为对我们国家的现状和我们对“美好生活”的神话的考察，只是我很难让我的学生真正研究他们自己关于技术和生活方式的前提。So I hit on the idea of taking them out for along weekend hike in the Olympic mountains in the early spring when I knew the weather was going to be cold and rainy. All I told my class was, “We’ll be out in the Olympics for two nights. It’s going to rain. Bring your gear, food, and paper and pencils for taking notes. I’ll meet you at the trail’s head.”
因此，当我知道天气会寒冷多雨时，我萌生了带他们去奥林匹克山周末徒步旅行的想法。我只告诉我的班级，“我们将在奥运会上呆两个晚上。要下雨了。带上你的装备、食物、纸和铅笔做笔记。我会在小径的尽头见到你。Now, I’m a hedonist in the wilderness. I own a good down sleeping bag and a fine one-man tent with a fly, and carry a very light pack stocked with trail food and the like. Naturally, my gear is pretty much a product of high technology.
现在，我是旷野中的享乐主义者。我有一个很好的羽绒睡袋和一个带苍蝇的精美单人帐篷，并携带一个非常轻便的背包，里面装满了小道食品等。当然，我的装备几乎是高科技的产物。Once we all got up to our campsite–at a place called the Flats–I set up my tent, dug a drain trench, stashed some firewood under the canopy for the morning, and helped organize the evening meal. We ate and hit the sack … and then the rain came. Well, I was quite dry and comfortable in my tent, but a lot of my students weren’t so well prepared: During the night, I heard voices crying, “My sleeping bag’s all wet! ” or “God, it’s cold! ” I simply rolled over and went back to sleep.
当我们都到达我们的营地时——在一个叫平地的地方——我搭起了帐篷，挖了一条排水沟，在树冠下藏了一些柴火，以备早上使用，并帮助组织晚餐。我们吃了，打了麻袋......然后下雨了。嗯，我在帐篷里很干燥，很舒服，但我的很多学生都没有做好充分的准备：晚上，我听到有人哭，“我的睡袋都湿了！”或“天哪，好冷！我只是翻了个身，继续睡觉。The next morning, I got up early and built a big fire. The shivering students soon gathered round, we scrounged together something to eat, and afterward I told them to get their note pads. Then I said, “OK, the bomb just dropped and we’re all that’s left. How much of our former technology do we try to reconstitute?” Well let me tell you, those cold, wet people who had eaten an inadequate breakfast looked at society’s technology a good bit more closely than they had when sitting in a comfortable university classroom. Students who’d been saying things like “Oh sure, I could do without all this stuff” began to ask some basic questions, and to comprehend that technology isn’t bad in and of itself. Everything depends on how we use it.
第二天早上，我早早起床，生起了大火。瑟瑟发抖的学生很快就围了过来，我们一起找了点吃的，然后我告诉他们去拿记事本。然后我说，“好吧，炸弹刚刚落下，我们只剩下这些了。我们试图重组多少我们以前的技术？好吧，让我告诉你，那些吃了不充分早餐的又冷又湿的人，比坐在舒适的大学教室里更仔细地观察社会技术。那些一直在说“哦，当然，我可以不用这些东西”之类的话的学生开始问一些基本问题，并理解技术本身并不坏。一切都取决于我们如何使用它。PLOWBOY: You’re saying, then, that technopeasantry involves people’s questioning their basic assumptions so they can make intelligent decisions about how to use technology?
PLOWBOY：那么，你是说技术农民涉及人们质疑他们的基本假设，以便他们能够就如何使用技术做出明智的决定？HERBERT: Well, that’s not all there is to it. There’re other aspects to questioning how we use technology. For instance, most people today live in a “light switch” society where they have no actual connection to the tools they use. If the light goes off, they have to call the building superintendent to come repair it. Knowledge has become institutionalized into specialties, and individuals have continually less and less power over their lives.
赫伯特：嗯，这还不是全部。质疑我们如何使用技术还有其他方面。例如，今天大多数人生活在一个“电灯开关”社会中，他们与他们使用的工具没有实际的联系。如果灯熄灭了，他们必须打电话给建筑主管来修理它。知识已经制度化为专业，个人对自己的生活的权力越来越小。We need to use technology differently so that people can understand their tools … and so they can be put back in touch with the natural world. In fact, one of the things our society needs desperately is a way for people to touch the earth personally and gain the restorative strength that comes with weeding or shoveling, from really getting their hands dirty. We need ways that men and women can see the direct results of their efforts.
我们需要以不同的方式使用技术，以便人们能够理解他们的工具......因此，它们可以重新与自然世界保持联系。事实上，我们的社会迫切需要的一件事是让人们亲自触摸地球，并从真正弄脏他们的手中获得除草或铲土带来的恢复力量。我们需要让男人和女人看到他们努力的直接结果。PLOWBOY: Would it be correct to say that technopeasantry can help develop a sense of self-worth in the individual?
PLOWBOY：说技术农民可以帮助培养个人的自我价值感，这是对的吗？HERBERT: Yes, but there’s more to it, yet. We have to learn to recognize that we’re always going to make some mistakes, and–knowing that–we shouldn’t tie our careers and self-esteem to decisions that could later prove to be the wrong ones. People must be able to say freely, “Hey, that turned out not to be such a good idea. I’d better not do that anymore.”
赫伯特：是的，但还有更多。我们必须学会认识到我们总是会犯一些错误，并且——知道这一点——我们不应该将我们的职业和自尊与后来可能被证明是错误的决定联系起来。人们必须能够自由地说，“嘿，事实证明这不是一个好主意。我最好不要再这样做了。PLOWBOY: The more you describe this concept, the more it encompasses! You’re proposing that people learn to consciously judge what tools they use … to employ technologies that they control and not those that control there … and to evaluate and reevaluate all the ramifications of using each specific technology. Frankly, the thought that humans may someday be able to make so many carefully thought–out value decisions has the ring of an idealistic dream.
PLOWBOY：你对这个概念描述得越多，它所包含的内容就越多！你建议人们学会有意识地判断他们使用什么工具......采用他们控制的技术，而不是控制那里的技术......并评估和重新评估使用每种特定技术的所有后果。坦率地说，人类有朝一日可能能够做出如此多经过深思熟虑的价值决策的想法，就带有理想主义梦想的光环。HERBERT: Well, it’s not going to happen overnight … unless we have a cataclysmic disaster-like some very traumatic natural phenomenon or an enormously destructive atomic war–which requires that we take such new directions in order to survive.
赫伯特：嗯，这不会在一夜之间发生......除非我们遇到灾难性的灾难——比如一些非常痛苦的自然现象或极具破坏性的原子战争——这需要我们采取这样的新方向才能生存。PLOWBOY: Assuming that we won’t be forced into new behavior patterns by a catastrophe, how do you envision the change taking place?
PLOWBOY：假设我们不会因为一场灾难而被迫进入新的行为模式，你如何设想正在发生的变化？HERBERT: As a result of social evolution. When individuals start making technopeasant choices–such as converting an inner city attic into a greenhouse–and demonstrating that doing so can be both personally rewarding and quite effective, more and more people will be drawn to such actions.
赫伯特：这是社会进化的结果。当个人开始做出技术农民的选择时——比如将市中心的阁楼改造成温室——并证明这样做既能给个人带来回报，又能非常有效，就会有越来越多的人被吸引到这样的行动中来。PLOWBOY: So you see the individual drive to achieve self-sufficiency as a catalyst of the movement toward what you call technopeasantry?
PLOWBOY：所以你认为个人实现自给自足的动力是你所谓的技术农民运动的催化剂？HERBERT: Hold on there! Yes, individuals will lead the way to a technopeasant society, but I’ve never said that people should strive for absolute self-reliance. I think relative freedom from dependency ought to be our goal. We all, of course, must be wary of systems–such as the whole ripcord welfare state–that systematize increasing dependence, but we must also remember a basic truth about human beings: We are interdependent. I myself am not attempting to live on a completely self-sufficient farm. I never have. Isolation is not part of my basic philosophy. The point is that we don’t necessarily have to be dependent in some of the ways that we’ve chosen to be. I do, though, believe that a person’s ties should be strongest to his or her local community, with looser bonds connecting him or her to larger communities.
赫伯特：等一下！是的，个人将引领通往技术农民社会的道路，但我从来没有说过人们应该争取绝对的自力更生。我认为相对摆脱依赖应该是我们的目标。当然，我们所有人都必须警惕那些将日益增加的依赖系统化的制度——比如整个撕裂的福利国家——但我们也必须记住关于人类的一个基本事实：我们是相互依存的。我自己并没有试图生活在一个完全自给自足的农场里。我从来没有。孤立不是我基本哲学的一部分。关键是，我们不一定必须以我们选择的某些方式依赖。不过，我确实认为，一个人与当地社区的联系应该最牢固，而更松散的纽带将他或她与更大的社区联系起来。In fact, there isn’t a doubt in my mind that the average North American’s life would improve if our society became more community based. If, say, cities like Seattle or little Port Townsend here developed symbiotic relationships with the surrounding farmland, so that–for example–the effluent of an urban community could become a tool for keeping the land around the city fertile. Such an interlocked region would be able to establish a self-sustaining cycle and not have to waste energy trucking fertilizers and food over long distances.
事实上，在我看来，毫无疑问，如果我们的社会变得更加以社区为基础，北美普通人的生活会有所改善。比如说，如果像西雅图这样的城市或小汤森港在这里与周围的农田建立共生关系，那么——例如——城市社区的污水可以成为保持城市周围土地肥沃的工具。这样一个互锁的区域将能够建立一个自我维持的循环，而不必浪费能源长途运输化肥和食物。PLOWBOY: And do you see increased local autonomy as an inevitable part of our future?
PLOWBOY：你认为增加地方自治是我们未来不可避免的一部分吗？HERBERT: Small areas are definitely going to have to become more independent. Look at energy, for instance. There’s a growing shift to alternative fuels, and there’s no way in the world the OPEC nations can stop it. Now the most attractive of the new power sources that I see on the horizon is hydrogen. Hydrogen burns cleanly–the by-product of its combustion is water–and has about a six-to-one energy-to-weight advantage compared to the best conventional jet fuel. In addition, we already have the technology to make hydrogen, in a hydride form, safer to handle than gasoline.
赫伯特：小区域肯定要变得更加独立。例如，看看能源。越来越多的人转向替代燃料，而欧佩克国家在世界上没有办法阻止它。现在，我在地平线上看到的最具吸引力的新能源是氢气。氢气燃烧干净——其燃烧的副产品是水——与最好的传统喷气燃料相比，氢气的能量重量比优势约为六比一。此外，我们已经拥有制造氢化物形式的氢气的技术，比汽油更安全。PLOWBOY: Where would we get the energy to produce hydrogen fuel?
PLOWBOY：我们从哪里获得生产氢燃料的能量？HERBERT: We have wind, the tides, the temperature differential in the ocean … there’s an enormous amount of untapped energy. And the real importance of such diversified power resources will be the fact that communities will be able to make their own fuel.
赫伯特：我们有风、潮汐、海洋中的温差......有大量未开发的能量。这种多样化的电力资源的真正重要性在于社区将能够自己制造燃料。Now you must recognize that any change which makes small areas more independent will have both good and bad aspects. After all, there is something to be said for the glue that holds us together as a society.
现在你必须认识到，任何使小区域更加独立的改变都会有好的方面和坏的方面。毕竟，对于将我们作为一个社会凝聚在一起的粘合剂，有话要说。PLOWBOY: Wait a minute! You’ve spent a good bit of our time here damning big government and praising independence. Just what value do you see in large, centralized societies?
犁仔： 等一下！你花了我们很多时间在这里诅咒大政府并赞扬独立。你认为大型的、集中的社会有什么价值？HERBERT: Remember that we are interdependent. So if you change the situation that has provided the glue of social interdependence, you must institute alternate adhesive forces to hold us together. Look at it this way: It’s very possible that, within the next 15 years, a little community like Port Townsend could be in a position to threaten the federal government.
赫伯特：请记住，我们是相互依存的。因此，如果你改变了提供社会相互依存粘合剂的状况，你必须建立替代的粘合力来将我们团结在一起。这样看：在未来15年内，像汤森港这样的小社区很有可能威胁到联邦政府。PLOWBOY: How could a small group back up such a threat? With atomics?
PLOWBOY：一小群人怎么能支持这样的威胁？用原子？HERBERT: Pshaw! There are weapons much more dangerous than nuclear devices. Things like contagious diseases that can’t be cured, or substances that can be slipped into food and water supply chains in order to sterilize large populations.
赫伯特：噗！有些武器比核装置危险得多。诸如无法治愈的传染病，或者可以进入食品和水供应链以对大量人口进行绝育的物质。And the often-touted concept of world government could in no way handle such terrorism, because that particular dream suffers from what must be one of the few immovable laws of the universe: the basic truth that the more you try to control, the more there is that needs to be controlled.
经常被吹捧的世界政府概念根本无法应对这种恐怖主义，因为这个特殊的梦想受到宇宙中为数不多的不可动摇的法则之一的影响：基本事实是，你越是试图控制，就越需要控制。PLOWBOY: So how can humanity deal with threats posed by small but powerful groups?
PLOWBOY：那么，人类如何应对小而强大的团体构成的威胁呢？HERBERT: We’re going to have to make very tough evaluations of how we instill morality into our young, and how we help people come to believe that all humans are similar creatures and that the world will be better off if everyone does try to live by something like the Golden Rule. And we’ll probably discover–possibly only after suffering a certain amount of pain–that the only way to spread such values is, naturally, on the community and individual levels.
赫伯特：我们将不得不对我们如何向年轻人灌输道德，以及我们如何帮助人们相信所有人类都是相似的生物，如果每个人都试图按照黄金法则生活，世界会变得更好。我们可能会发现——可能只有在遭受了一定程度的痛苦之后——传播这些价值观的唯一途径自然是在社区和个人层面上。Ultimately, I think the individual will become increasingly important in this world. I think the collective society is on its way out. But, in relation to all my statements, you must remember that I’m talking about the kind of individual who has been raised to weigh the consequences of his or her actions, not simply for him- or herself, but for others as well. If we don’t manage to produce such thinking moral citizens, we’re likely going to go down the tube.
最终，我认为个人在这个世界上将变得越来越重要。我认为集体社会正在走向终结。但是，关于我的所有陈述，你必须记住，我说的是那种从小就要权衡他或她的行为后果的人，不仅仅是为了他或她自己，也是为了其他人。如果我们不能培养出这样有思想的道德公民，我们很可能会走下坡路。PLOWBOY: But you feel pretty sure humankind will be able to make the necessary changes?
PLOWBOY：但你觉得很确定人类能够做出必要的改变？HERBERT: I think they’ll be forced on us. Oh, we’ll make some mistakes. We’ll probably have a number of fanatic leaders and such to deal with in the years to come. I don’t see the future as being all sweetness and light, by any means. Learning from mistakes is a very slow process. It may take us 20,000 or 25,000 years to get to where, I feel, we have to go.
赫伯特：我认为他们会被迫给我们。哦，我们会犯一些错误。在未来的几年里，我们可能会遇到一些狂热的领导人。无论如何，我不认为未来是甜蜜和光明的。从错误中吸取教训是一个非常缓慢的过程。我们可能需要20,000年或25,000年才能到达，我觉得我们必须去的地方。PLOWBOY: Still, you think humanity will survive … and improve itself in the process.
犁仔：不过，你认为人类会生存下来......并在此过程中改进自己。HERBERT: Yes, and I also think that, in the far future, human beings will have scattered–in separate societies–to numerous faraway planets. Don’t forget, though, when you hear me say these things, that prediction is a form of false mythology.
赫伯特：是的，我也认为，在遥远的未来，人类将分散到许多遥远的星球上，在不同的社会中。不过，别忘了，当你听到我说这些话时，这种预言是一种虚假的神话。Why, even the idea that there’s such a thing as the future is a bunch of semantic nonsense because there’ll always be changes and new events that no one can foresee.
为什么，即使是未来这样的想法也是一堆语义上的废话，因为总会有没有人能预见的变化和新事件。PLOWBOY: So I should take all your projections of what will happen to humanity with a few grains of salt.
PLOWBOY：所以我应该用几粒盐来接受你对人类将要发生的事情的所有预测。HERBERT: Of course. 赫伯特：当然。PLOWBOY: You know, Mr. Herbert, it figures that you’d give me a prediction and then tell me not to believe it. Throughout this interview it’s been all but impossible to pin you down to “neatly packaged” ideas. In fact, your concept of technopeasantry seems, in essence, to call for people to adopt a questioning state of mind that deliberately avoids set solutions. I can imagine that many men and women who read your books or hear your ideas would prefer to be given a clear and uncomplicated plan they could respond to.
PLOWBOY：你知道的，赫伯特先生，你猜想你会给我一个预测，然后告诉我不要相信。在这次采访中，几乎不可能将你归结为“整齐包装”的想法。事实上，从本质上讲，你的技术农民概念似乎在呼吁人们采取一种质疑的心态，刻意避免既定的解决方案。我可以想象，许多读过你的书或听到你的想法的男人和女人都希望得到一个清晰而简单的计划，他们可以做出回应。HERBERT: Very likely, Monsieur Stone . But I don’t believe in simple answers.
赫伯特：很有可能，斯通先生。但我不相信简单的答案。A Few Frank Herbertisms 一些弗兰克·赫伯特主义
The highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences.
生态学的最高功能是对后果的理解。
Dune 沙丘If
you say, “I don’t want that to happen,” and all the while you are
你说，“我不希望这种情况发生”，而你一直都在
making it happen, which thing are we to believe? Do we believe the words
让它发生，我们应该相信哪一件事？我们相信这些话吗
or do we believe the body?
还是我们相信身体？
Soul Catcher 灵魂捕手The
one-eyed view of our universe says you must not look far afield for
我们宇宙的独眼观点说，你不能把目光投向遥远的地方
problems. Such problems may never arrive. Instead, tend to the wolf
问题。这样的问题可能永远不会到来。相反，倾向于狼
within your fences. The packs ranging outside may not even exist.
在你的篱笆内。外面的包甚至可能不存在。
Children of Dune 沙丘之子…
you know the story of Eve and the apple. Here’s an interesting fact
你知道夏娃和苹果的故事。这里有一个有趣的事实
about that story: Eve was not the first to pluck and sample the apple.
关于这个故事：夏娃并不是第一个采摘和品尝苹果的人。
Adam was first and he learned by this to put the blame on Eve. My story
亚当是第一个，他借此学会了把责任归咎于夏娃。我的故事
tells you something about how our societies find a structural necessity
告诉你一些关于我们的社会如何找到结构性必要性的东西
for sub-groups. 对于子组。
God Emperor of Dune 沙丘神帝“For what do you hunger, Lord?” Moneo ventured.
“主啊，你饿什么？”莫尼奥冒险了。
“For a humankind which can make truly long-term decisions. Do you know the key to that ability, Moneo?”
“对于一个能够做出真正长期决定的人类来说。你知道这种能力的关键吗，莫尼奥？
“You have said it many times, Lord. It is the ability to change your mind.”
“主啊，你已经说过很多次了。这是改变主意的能力。
“Change, yes. And do you know what 1 mean by longterm?”
“改变，是的。你知道 1 是什么意思吗？
“For you, it must be measured in millennia, Lord:”
“主啊，对你来说，它必须以千年来衡量：”
“Moneo, even my thousands of years are but a puny blip against Infinity
“莫尼奥，就算是我的几千年，在对抗无限时也不过是微不足道的昙花一现
…. In the view of Infinity, any defined longterm is short-term.”
....在Infinity看来，任何定义的长期都是短期的。
“Then are there no rules at all, Lord?” Moneo’s voice conveyed a faint hint of hysteria.
“那么，主啊，难道就没有规矩吗？”莫尼奥的声音传达出一丝淡淡的歇斯底里。
Leto smiled to ease the man’s tensions. “Perhaps one.
莱托微笑着缓解了男人的紧张情绪。“也许是一个。
Short-term decisions tend to fail in the long-term.”
短期决策往往会在长期内失败。
God Emperor of Dune 沙丘神帝- Published on May 1, 1981
发布日期： 1981年5月1日
科学、技术和空间：艾萨克·阿西莫夫访谈
By Pat Stone 帕特·斯通（Pat Stone）
EmailPrintFacebookPinterestX
PHOTOS: STEVE KEULL 摄影：史蒂夫·基尔
Science, technology and space colonization were leading areas of focus and interest for author Isaac Asimov. Dr. Asimov was thoughtful and animated during his interview.
科学、技术和太空殖民是作家艾萨克·阿西莫夫（Isaac Asimov）关注和关注的主要领域。阿西莫夫博士在接受采访时深思熟虑，充满活力。
Isaac Asimov is one of the world’s most famous science fiction authors. His I, Robot and Foundation books are regarded as classics in the field, and his short story “Nightfall” was once proclaimed–by its creator’s colleagues–the greatest science fiction story of all time!
艾萨克·阿西莫夫是世界上最著名的科幻作家之一。他的《我、机器人》和《基金会》两本书被认为是该领域的经典之作，他的短篇小说《夜幕降临》曾被其创作者的同事宣布为有史以来最伟大的科幻小说！Dr. Asimov is also respected for his ability to write about science, technology, and space for the general public. He’s composed over 100 such books, on every topic from photosynthesis to the collapsing-universe theory. And, in addition, the incredibly prolific author has penned mysteries, annotated guides to literature and the Bible, a two-volume autobiography (In Memory Yet Green and In Joy Still Felt), collections of limericks, and dozens of books about history. In fact, on the day that MOTHER EARTH NEWS visited Dr. Asimov in his New York City apartment, the writer received an advance copy of his217thpublished book!
阿西莫夫博士还因其为公众撰写有关科学、技术和太空的文章的能力而受到尊重。他撰写了 100 多本这样的书，涉及从光合作用到坍缩宇宙理论的每个主题。此外，这位令人难以置信的多产作家还撰写了神秘小说、带注释的文学和圣经指南、两卷本自传（《在记忆中仍绿》和《在喜悦中》）、打油诗集和数十本关于历史的书籍。事实上，在《地球母亲新闻》拜访阿西莫夫博士在纽约市公寓的那天，这位作家收到了他出版的第 217 本书的预印本！Still, Asimov’s name is not generally associated with alternative technology, self-sufficiency, ecology, or most other “MOTHER EARTH NEWS-type” topics … so some of you may be wondering why we sought to run an Isaac Asimov interview. (Actually, the famed author seemed a bit puzzled by the idea himself. He responded to our initial invitation by gruffly suggesting that our magazine “berates technology” and would try to cure the miseries of the world “by lynching the nearest engineer!”)
尽管如此，阿西莫夫的名字通常不会与替代技术、自给自足、生态学或大多数其他“地球母亲新闻类型”的话题联系在一起......所以你们中的一些人可能想知道为什么我们要进行艾萨克·阿西莫夫的采访。（实际上，这位著名作家本人似乎对这个想法感到有些困惑。他粗鲁地回应了我们最初的邀请，粗鲁地建议我们的杂志“谴责技术”，并试图“通过私刑处死最近的工程师”来治愈世界的苦难！The truth is that the folks here at MOTHER EARTH NEWS realize it isn’t necessary to agree with everything a person says in order to learn from that individual. On the contrary, it’s often possible to profit more by listening to the opinions of a differently oriented thinker than by paying attention only to those of someone whose ideas exactly mirror our own! Furthermore, humanity’s future will be inexorably linked with the problems and potentials of science and technology … and we were sure that Asimov–whom astronomer Carl Sagan once called “the great explainer of our [technological] age”–would be bound to have some instructive and original thoughts about the role of science in this rapidly changing world.
事实是，MOTHER EARTH NEWS 的人们意识到，为了向这个人学习，没有必要同意一个人所说的一切。相反，通过倾听不同取向的思想家的意见，往往比只关注那些想法与我们完全一致的人的意见更能获利！此外，人类的未来将与科学技术的问题和潜力不可避免地联系在一起......我们确信，阿西莫夫——天文学家卡尔·萨根（Carl Sagan）曾称其为“我们（技术）时代的伟大解释者”——一定会对科学在这个瞬息万变的世界中的作用有一些有启发性和原创性的想法。Well, let us tell you right now that Dr. Asimov didn’t disappoint us. Oh, it took a while to persuade him to agree to an interview–and he did seem less than enthusiastic when staff writer Pat Stone and photographer Steve Keull first arrived at his door last June–but, once everyone sat down to talk, the renowned writer treated MOTHER EARTH NEWS‘ emissaries to a very stimulating two-hour discussion.
好吧，现在让我们告诉你，阿西莫夫博士没有让我们失望。噢，我花了一段时间才说服他同意接受采访——去年六月，当特约撰稿人帕特·斯通（Pat Stone）和摄影师史蒂夫·凯尔（Steve Keull）第一次来到他家门口时，他似乎并不那么热情——但是，一旦每个人都坐下来交谈，这位著名作家就与《地球母亲新闻》的使者进行了两个小时的非常激动人心的讨论。What follows is 接下来是the edited transcript of that conversation.
该对话的编辑记录。PLOWBOY: Dr. Asimov, in your science books and articles–be they concerned with black holes or biology–you always begin by tracing the development of humankind’s knowledge in the subject area. Could you start this interview by giving us a bit of information about your own “historical development?”
PLOWBOY：阿西莫夫博士，在你的科学书籍和文章中，无论是关于黑洞还是生物学，你总是从追溯人类知识在该学科领域的发展开始。在这次采访的开始，您能给我们介绍一下您自己的“历史发展”吗？ASIMOV: Gee, I don’t know that there’s anything particularly fascinating about my background. My family migrated from a small village in Russia to New York City when I was three years old. We lived in Brooklyn, my parents ran a candy store, and I worked in the store–whenever I could–during my childhood years.
阿西莫夫：哎呀，我不知道我的背景有什么特别吸引人的地方。我三岁时，全家从俄罗斯的一个小村庄搬到了纽约市。我们住在布鲁克林，我的父母经营着一家糖果店，在我的童年时代，只要有可能，我就在这家店工作。Now my father thought that most of the publications he carried in his shop’s newsstand were “junk”, so he wouldn’t let me read them. He did let me read science fiction, though. He couldn’t speak English very well, you see … and I think he felt that science fiction must have had something to do with science, and that it therefore would be good for me.
现在我父亲认为他在店里的报摊上摆放的大多数出版物都是“垃圾”，所以他不让我看。不过，他确实让我读科幻小说。他的英语说得不太好，你看......我认为他觉得科幻小说一定与科学有关，因此对我有好处。So at age nine I began reading science fiction. And, over the years, I became so interested in such stories that–by the time I reached 17 years of age–I started trying to write some of my own. My first few attempts were rejected by the magazines, but–after several months of trying–I did manage to sell some of my work.
所以在九岁时，我开始阅读科幻小说。而且，多年来，我对这些故事非常感兴趣，以至于在我17岁的时候，我开始尝试写一些自己的故事。我的前几次尝试都被杂志拒绝了，但是，经过几个月的尝试，我确实设法卖掉了我的一些作品。I didn’t think I could ever earn a living as a science fiction writer, however, so I continued my career. I went on to enter graduate school and began studying biochemistry–and eventually became an honest-to-God scientist. I also got married, served a stint in the Army, had two children, and all the while continued writing science fiction on the side.
然而，我不认为我能以科幻作家的身份谋生，所以我继续我的职业生涯。我继续进入研究生院，开始学习生物化学，并最终成为一名对上帝诚实的科学家。我也结了婚，在军队服役了一段时间，生了两个孩子，同时继续写科幻小说。PLOWBOY: When did you make the switch from writing mostly science fiction to producing science texts?
PLOWBOY：你是什么时候从主要写科幻小说转向写科幻小说的？ASIMOV: That phase of my career started when I was teaching at Boston University’s Medical School and was asked to help two of my co-workers write a biochemistry textbook. I agreed to give them a hand, and soon discovered that writing nonfiction was even more fun than writing fiction. I also found, however, that working with other people put limits on me, so I decided to go it on my own … and learned that I greatly enjoyed writing about science when I could do it myself and in my own way.
阿西莫夫：我职业生涯的那个阶段始于我在波士顿大学医学院任教时，我被要求帮助我的两个同事编写一本生物化学教科书。我同意帮他们一把，很快发现写非小说比写小说更有趣。然而，我也发现，与其他人一起工作会限制我，所以我决定自己去做......并了解到，当我可以自己以自己的方式写科学时，我非常喜欢写科学。Then, in 1957, Sputnik One was put into orbit, and many people felt that the United States educational system had been neglecting science. So, being reasonably patriotic, I felt I ought to write more books about science, and–roughly from that moment on–my literary output became largely nonfiction.
然后，在1957年，人造卫星一号被送入轨道，许多人认为美国的教育系统忽视了科学。所以，出于合理的爱国主义，我觉得我应该写更多关于科学的书，而且——大约从那一刻起——我的文学作品基本上变成了非小说类作品。PLOWBOY: Do you still write science fiction?
PLOWBOY：你还在写科幻小说吗？ASIMOV: Some. Actually, I now write more mysteries. Still, to the end of my days I’ll probably be known as a science fiction writer. And I have no objection to that. That’s the field in which I made my reputation.
阿西莫夫：一些。实际上，我现在写的是更多的谜团。尽管如此，在我生命的尽头，我可能会被称为科幻作家。我对此没有异议。这就是我成名的领域。PLOWBOY: Can you give me a good definition of science fiction?
PLOWBOY：你能给我一个很好的科幻定义吗？ASIMOV: Every science fiction writer defines it differently. For instance, John Campbell–the great, late editor–said that science fiction stories are those that science fiction editors buy.
阿西莫夫：每个科幻作家对它的定义都不同。例如，伟大的已故编辑约翰·坎贝尔（John Campbell）说，科幻小说是科幻小说编辑购买的。PLOWBOY: But what is your own definition?
PLOWBOY：但你自己的定义是什么？ASIMOV: I think science fiction is the very relevant branch of literature that deals with human response to changes in the level of science and technology. And such writing goes to the heart of matters that trouble us now, because the world is changing at whirlwind speed. Moreover, any person who is, let us say, between 15 and 30 years of age today is likely to live well into the twenty-first century. The world is going to be completely different then!
阿西莫夫：我认为科幻小说是文学中一个非常相关的分支，它涉及人类对科学技术水平变化的反应。这样的写作触及了现在困扰我们的问题的核心，因为世界正在以旋风般的速度变化。此外，今天任何一个年龄在15岁到30岁之间的人，都有可能活到二十一世纪。到那时，世界将完全不同！Now you may think that’s a pretty obvious truth, but it isn’t at all! Very few people realize that change is inevitable and that it will occur more and more rapidly as time goes on. So it’s absolutely essential to consider the future in making our decisions … and to face that future with daring and guts.
现在你可能认为这是一个非常明显的事实，但事实并非如此！很少有人意识到变化是不可避免的，并且随着时间的推移，它会越来越快地发生。因此，在做出决定时考虑未来是绝对必要的......并以大胆和勇气面对未来。I believe no amount of reading in any field but science fiction is going to convince anyone of the inevitability of change. When a person reads science fiction, though, he or she starts out assuming–in the story at least–that the future will be different.
我相信，除了科幻小说之外，任何领域的阅读都无法让任何人相信变化的必然性。然而，当一个人阅读科幻小说时，他或她开始假设——至少在故事中——未来会有所不同。PLOWBOY: So science fiction helps one adjust to the fact that the world is going to be continually changing. But such writing doesn’t usually try to give an accurate picture of what that world will be like, does it?
PLOWBOY：所以科幻小说可以帮助人们适应世界将不断变化的事实。但这样的写作通常不会试图准确地描绘出那个世界会是什么样子，不是吗？ASIMOV: I don’t know of any science fiction writer who really attempts to be a prophet. Such authors accomplish their tasks not by being correct in their predictions, necessarily, but merely by hammering home–in story after story–the notion that life is going to be different.
阿西莫夫：我不知道有哪个科幻作家真的想成为先知。这些作者完成他们的任务，不一定是通过他们的预测是正确的，而只是通过一个又一个故事地敲打生活将会有所不同的观念。PLOWBOY: And, as you see it, the keys to such world changes will be advances in science and technology.
PLOWBOY：而且，正如你所看到的，这种世界变化的关键将是科学和技术的进步。ASIMOV: Science fiction always bases its future visions on changes in the levels of science and technology. And the reason for that consistency is simply that–in reality–all other changes throughout history have been irrelevant and trivial. For example, what difference did it make to the people of the ancient world that Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire? Obviously, that event made some difference to a lot of individuals. But if you look at humanity in general, you’ll see that life went on pretty much as it had before the conquest.
阿西莫夫：科幻小说总是基于科学技术水平的变化来展望未来。这种一致性的原因很简单，在现实中，历史上所有其他的变化都是无关紧要和微不足道的。例如，亚历山大大帝征服波斯帝国对古代世界的人民有什么影响？显然，这一事件对很多人产生了一些影响。但如果你从整体上看人类，你会发现生活几乎和征服前一样。On the other hand, consider the changes that were made in people’s daily lives by the development of agriculture or the mariner’s compass … and by the invention of gunpowder or printing. Better yet, look at recent history and ask yourself, “What difference would it have made if Hitler had won World War II?” Of course, such a victory would have made a great difference to many people. It would have resulted in much horror, anguish, and pain. I myself would probably not have survived.
另一方面，考虑农业的发展或水手指南针给人们日常生活带来的变化......以及火药或印刷术的发明。更好的是，看看最近的历史，问问自己，“如果希特勒赢得了第二次世界大战，会有什么不同？当然，这样的胜利会对很多人产生很大的影响。这会导致很多恐怖、痛苦和痛苦。我自己可能活不下来。But Hitler would have died eventually, and the effects of his victory would gradually have washed out and become insignificant–in terms of real change–when compared to such advances as the actual working out of nuclear power, the advent of television, or the invention of the jet plane.
但希特勒最终会死去，他的胜利的影响将逐渐消失，与核能的实际发展、电视的出现或喷气式飞机的发明等进步相比，在真正的变化方面变得微不足道。PLOWBOY: You truly feel that all the major changes in history have been caused by science and technology?
PLOWBOY：你真的觉得历史上所有的重大变化都是由科学技术引起的吗？ASIMOV: Those that have proved permanent–the ones that affected every facet of life and made certain that mankind could never go back again–were always brought about by science and technology. In fact, the same twin “movers” were even behind the other “solely” historical changes. Why, for instance, did Martin Luther succeed, whereas other important rebels against the medieval church–like John Huss–fail? Well, Luther was successful because printing had been developed by the time he advanced his cause. So his good earthy writings were put into pamphlets and spread so far and wide that the church officials couldn’t have stopped the Protestant Reformation even if they had burned Luther at the stake.
阿西莫夫：那些被证明是永久的——那些影响生活方方面面并确保人类再也无法回头的那些——总是由科学和技术带来的。事实上，同样的双胞胎“推动者”甚至落后于其他“唯一”的历史变化。例如，为什么马丁·路德成功了，而其他反对中世纪教会的重要反叛者——如约翰·胡斯——却失败了？好吧，路德之所以成功，是因为在他推进他的事业时，印刷术已经发展起来了。因此，他朴实的好著作被写成小册子，传播得如此之远，以至于教会官员即使将路德烧死在火刑柱上，也无法阻止新教改革。PLOWBOY: Today the world is changing faster than it has at any other time in history. Do you then feel that science–and scientists–are especially important now?ASIMOV: I do think so, and as a result it’s my opinion that anyone who can possibly introduce science to the nonscientist should do so. After all, we don’t want scientists to become a priesthood. We don’t want society’s technological thinkers to know something that nobody else knows–to “bring down the law from Mt. Sinai”–because such a situation would lead to public fear of science and scientists. And fear, as you know, can be dangerous.PLOWBOY: But scientific knowledge is becoming so incredibly vast and specialized these days that it’s difficult for any individual to keep up with it all.ASIMOV: Well, I don’t expect everybody to be a scientist or to understand every new development. After all, there are very few Americans who know enough about football to be a referee or to call the plays … but many, many people understand the sport well enough to follow the game. It’s not important that the average citizen understand science so completely that he or she could actually become involved in research, but it is very important that people be able to “follow the game” well enough to have some intelligent opinions on policy.
阿西莫夫：嗯，我不指望每个人都是科学家，也不指望每个人都能理解每一个新的发展。毕竟，很少有美国人对足球有足够的了解来担任裁判或指挥比赛......但是很多人都非常了解这项运动，可以关注这项运动。普通公民对科学的理解如此透彻，以至于他或她实际上可以参与研究并不重要，但人们能够很好地“跟随游戏”，对政策有一些明智的意见，这一点非常重要。Every subject of worldwide importance–each question upon which the life and death of humanity depends–involves science, and people are not going to be able to exercise their democratic right to direct government policy in such areas if they don’t understand what the decisions are all about.
每一个具有世界重要性的主题——人类生死攸关的每一个问题——都涉及科学，如果人们不了解这些决定的全部内容，他们将无法行使他们的民主权利来指导这些领域的政府政策。PLOWBOY: Are you implying that science and technology can solve all our problems?
PLOWBOY：你是在暗示科学技术可以解决我们所有的问题吗？ASIMOV: I think technology can save us, if it’s used properly. I don’t know for sure … some of our problems may prove insoluble even for science and technology. But if those two tools fail us, nothing else will succeed.
阿西莫夫：我认为技术可以拯救我们，如果使用得当。我不确定......我们的一些问题甚至可能被证明是科学和技术无法解决的。但是，如果这两个工具都失败了，那么其他任何工具都不会成功。Of course, the decisions that have to be made concerning the uses of science and technology are not easy ones. We must consider the dangers that go along with using specific technologies, and the dangers that could result from failure to use them. To give a specific example, let’s suppose that nuclear fission power plants proliferate. If accidents worse than Three Mile Island occur, there could be many deaths. On the other hand, if we were to close down the nuclear power plants and then not succeed in finding adequate replacements for our energy needs, there could also be many deaths. And when a person dies, it makes little difference to that individual whether he or she dies at the hands of nuclear fission or of a nuclear fission power shortage.
当然，必须就科学技术的使用做出决定并不容易。我们必须考虑使用特定技术带来的危险，以及不使用这些技术可能导致的危险。举一个具体的例子，让我们假设核裂变发电厂激增。如果发生比三哩岛更严重的事故，可能会有很多人死亡。另一方面，如果我们要关闭核电站，然后不能成功地找到足够的替代品来满足我们的能源需求，也可能有很多人死亡。当一个人死亡时，对这个人来说，他或她死于核裂变还是死于核裂变能力短缺几乎没有区别。We don’t have to decide which course of action will destroy us all or save us all, because the questions that await us aren’t that simple. Instead, we have to decide which course of action has the best chance of allowing us to progress from this year to next year–and from this century to the next–with a maximum of safety. Nowhere is there a black and white dichotomy. Nowhere are the choices simple and clear.Indeed, we’re not likely to survive without some damage, no matter what direction we take.PLOWBOY: In your opinion, what are mankind’s prospects for the near future?ASIMOV: To tell the truth, I don’t think the odds are very good that we can solve our immediate problems. I think the chances that civilization will survive more than another 30 years–that it will still be flourishing in 2010–are less than 50 percent.Related ArticlesFresh Banana Leaves and Indigenous Knowledge
新鲜香蕉叶和土著知识Interview with Dr. Jessica Hernandez
杰西卡·埃尔南德斯博士访谈Make Emergency Preparations or Prepare for Adventure with These Homesteader-Tested Products
使用这些经过 Homesteader 测试的产品进行应急准备或准备冒险These products make the difference in an emergency situation, whether because of a crisis or for adventure outdoors.
这些产品在紧急情况下发挥着重要作用，无论是因为危机还是户外冒险。PLOWBOY: What sort of disaster do you foresee?ASIMOV: I imagine that as population continues to increase–and as the available resources decrease–there will be less energy and food, so we’ll all enter a stage of scrounging. The average person’s only concerns will be where he or she can get the next meal, the next cigarette, the next means of transportation. In such a universal scramble, the Earth will be just plain desolated, because everyone will be striving merely to survive regardless of the cost to the environment. Put it this way: If I have to choose between saving myself and saving a tree, I’m going to choose me.
阿西莫夫：我想，随着人口的持续增长，以及可用资源的减少，能源和食物将会减少，所以我们都会进入一个寻找的阶段。普通人唯一关心的是他或她可以在哪里吃下一顿饭，下一支烟，下一种交通工具。在这种普遍的争夺中，地球将变得荒凉，因为每个人都将只为生存而奋斗，而不考虑环境的代价。这样说吧：如果我必须在拯救自己和拯救一棵树之间做出选择，我会选择我自己。Terrorism will also become a way of life in a world marked by severe shortages. Finally, some government will be bound to decide that the only way to get what its people need is to destroy another nation and take its goods … by pushing the nuclear button.
恐怖主义也将成为严重短缺世界的一种生活方式。最后，一些政府将不得不决定，获得其人民需要的东西的唯一途径是摧毁另一个国家并拿走它的货物......通过按下核按钮。And this absolute chaos is going to develop–even if nobody wants nuclear war and even if everybody sincerely wants peace and social justice–if the number of mouths to feed continues to grow. Nothing will be able to stand up against the pressure of the whole of humankind simply trying to stay alive!
这种绝对的混乱将会发展——即使没有人想要核战争，即使每个人都真诚地想要和平与社会正义——如果要养活的嘴巴数量继续增加。没有什么能够抵挡住全人类的压力，只是为了活下去！PLOWBOY: How can we cope with this massive problem?
PLOWBOY：我们该如何应对这个巨大的问题？ASIMOV: I think we’ll need some sort of world government. Yet we’re not even beginning to move toward such unity today. On the contrary, as I look around the world, it seems to me that even our individual nations are becoming less powerful than before.
阿西莫夫：我认为我们需要某种世界政府。然而，我们今天甚至还没有开始走向这样的团结。相反，当我环顾世界时，在我看来，即使是我们个别国家也变得不如以前强大。PLOWBOY: How can that be? The atomic bomb gives many such countries enough power to devastate the world.
PLOWBOY：怎么可能？原子弹赋予了许多这样的国家足够的力量来摧毁世界。ASIMOV: Yes, nations with nuclear bombs can destroy the world … but they can’t win any wars. We didn’t use such explosives in Vietnam, and the Soviet Union isn’t using them in Afghanistan, because the bombs are simply too powerful.It may well be that–by creating a world in which terrorists can have almost all the advantages of advanced technology–science has now made any person capable of defying any government, and is thus helping to make governments feeble.And, far from welcoming this weakening of government, I think we should realize that it’s helping to destroy us. I would much rather see international cooperation become widespread enough to give us at least the equivalent of a world government.A global ruling system could result in tyranny, of course. But a world dictatorship, no matter how distasteful, may be necessary if we’re to face our problems and solve them. Conversely, the lack of a world government may mean global disorder and confusion … and I don’t think chaos can solve anything.PLOWBOY: What events could possibly motivate the peoples of our divided world to pull together?ASIMOV: Several human characteristics could become catalysts in establishing a world government. Perhaps the most basic is fear … fear that the alternative to banding together could be total destruction. For example, it was such a fear that caused Great Britain and the United States to form an alliance with the Soviet Union, against Germany, during World War II.
阿西莫夫：人类的几个特征可以成为建立世界政府的催化剂。也许最基本的是恐惧......担心联合起来的替代方案可能是彻底毁灭。例如，正是这种恐惧导致英国和美国在第二次世界大战期间与苏联结盟，对抗德国。Now I’m not asking that all nations love one another. All I hope for is that the different countries will cooperate. Of course, if nations work together long enough, people may eventually forget their hatred.
现在我不是要求所有国家都彼此相爱。我只希望不同的国家能够合作。当然，如果各国合作的时间足够长，人们最终可能会忘记他们的仇恨。PLOWBOY: What else could lead separate countries to unite?
PLOWBOY：还有什么可以导致不同的国家团结起来？ASIMOV: We can always count on greed. It may well become necessary to build enormous structures–either on the surface of the Earth or in space–to supply the world with energy … solar collectors, perhaps, so huge that no single country could manage to construct them on its own. And if it were to come about that feuding nations could get adequate energy supplies only by joining forces, they’d be likely to put aside their differences and cooperate out of greed.
阿西莫夫：我们总是可以指望贪婪。很可能有必要在地球表面或太空中建造巨大的结构来为世界提供能源......太阳能集热器也许是如此之大，以至于没有一个国家能够独自建造它们。如果世仇国家只有通过联合才能获得足够的能源供应，那么他们很可能会出于贪婪而搁置分歧并合作。Believe me, the obstacles that keep us from working together today are just going to melt away when energy sources are at stake! Look, for instance, at the Palestinian Liberation Organization. When Israel became a nation in 1948, nobody worried about the Palestinians. But in 1948 it had not yet been established that the Middle East is swimming on an ocean of oil. Now that fact is known … and the PLO can get the support of almost every country in the world. This turnaround occurred, of course, despite the fact that Europe is Christian, while the Middle East is Muslim, and–for centuries–there has been a traditional conflict between adherents of the two religions.
相信我，当能源受到威胁时，阻碍我们今天合作的障碍将会消失！例如，看看巴勒斯坦解放组织。当以色列在1948年成为一个国家时，没有人担心巴勒斯坦人。但在 1948 年，尚未确定中东正在石油海洋中游泳。现在这个事实是众所周知的......巴解组织可以得到世界上几乎每个国家的支持。当然，尽管欧洲是基督教，而中东是穆斯林，而且几个世纪以来，两种宗教的信徒之间一直存在着传统的冲突，但这种转变还是发生了。There’s also a third factor that may help bring the world together: pride. If we are faced with the need to build huge structures in space to collect energy, it could prove to be a sufficiently large and global challenge–since I honestly don’t think that the United States or the Soviet Union could accomplish such a goal alone or even in combination–that all people would want to be involved with it. Nations would insist on not being cut out of the project.
还有第三个因素可能有助于将世界团结在一起：自豪感。如果我们面临在太空中建造巨大结构来收集能量的需要，这可能被证明是一个足够大的全球性挑战——因为老实说，我不认为美国或苏联可以单独甚至联合完成这样的目标——所有人都想参与其中。各国将坚持不被排除在项目之外。And it’s just possible that there might be sufficient pride in the undertaking to allow people to think of themselves as citizens of Earth rather than as members of this or that subsection. We live in an era when there is a great deal to be ashamed of and a great deal to be angry about, but not much to be proud of. It strikes me that the effort to truly develop space could give all people–and all nations–an opportunity to earn a little self-pride.PLOWBOY: Trying to industrialize space would be a massive undertaking. What possible gains–other than pride and unity–could justify such an effort?ASIMOV: Well, if people become sufficiently afraid of nuclear fission, and if coal turns out to be just as dangerous in a different way, and if oil begins to disappear, and if we don’t manage to develop nuclear fusion or it doesn’t turn out to be a cure-all, and if other forms of energy are just insufficient for our needs … then people may turn to solar energy. But in order to run our industrial world, we’d have to produce solar electricity on a huge scale, and my feeling is that this cannot be accomplished on the surface of the Earth. For one thing, the development of terrestrial solar power would associate energy with geography, because certain areas get more sunshine than do others.However, we could collect solar energy in nearby space. A wide bank of solar cells placed in synchronous orbit above Earth’s equator could collect much more energy–and do so much more efficiently–than could collectors located on the planetary surface. The electricity formed in such space stations would then be converted to microwave radiation, beamed down to receiving stations, and reconverted to electricity. Such energy would ideally belong to the entire population of Earth instead of becoming the territorial possession of any one nation.
然而，我们可以在附近的空间收集太阳能。与位于行星表面的收集器相比，放置在地球赤道上方同步轨道上的一大排太阳能电池可以收集更多的能量，并且效率更高。然后，在这种空间站中形成的电将被转换为微波辐射，向下发射到接收站，然后重新转换为电能。理想情况下，这种能量将属于地球上的全体人口，而不是成为任何一个国家的领土财产。We could also set up orbiting industrial plants to make use of the vacuum, zero gravity, and high- and low-temperature characteristics of space. Risky work with hard radiation and genetics could be carried out “off planet,” and we could spill pollution–such pollution as we can’t avoid producing–into space, where the solar wind would sweep it beyond the asteroids.
我们还可以建立轨道工业工厂，以利用太空的真空、零重力和高温和低温特性。与硬辐射和遗传学相关的冒险工作可以在“行星外”进行，我们可以将污染——我们无法避免的污染——泄漏到太空中，在那里太阳风会将其扫过小行星。There’s yet another advantage to developing space. In order to get the job done–and to achieve global stability–we’d have to tax the richer nations more than they would get back and the poorer nations less than they would get back. Such an arrangement would correct a historical injustice, because the wealthy nations have–for along time now–been running international corporations in such a way that the richer lands benefit at the expense of the poorer ones.
开发空间还有另一个优势。为了完成这项工作，并实现全球稳定，我们必须向富裕国家征税，使其比他们得到的要多，而向较贫穷的国家征税，使其比他们得到的要少。这样的安排将纠正历史上的不公正，因为富裕国家长期以来一直以这样一种方式经营国际公司，即富裕的土地以牺牲贫穷的土地为代价而受益。PLOWBOY: So your solution to our present problems is based on humankind’s continuing to expand its territories?
PLOWBOY：所以你对我们目前问题的解决方案是基于人类继续扩大其领土？ASIMOV: Always, always. All through history, humanity has stretched its range, and it’s still doing so today. One of our problems now, however, is that the rate of population increase has–at least temporarily–outpaced our possible range expansion. In fact, it’s very easy to calculate that in a few thousand years–at our present rate of procreation–the weight of human flesh and blood would be equal to that of the entire universe!
阿西莫夫：总是，总是。纵观历史，人类一直在扩大其范围，今天仍然如此。然而，我们现在面临的一个问题是，人口增长的速度已经——至少是暂时的——超过了我们可能的范围扩张。事实上，很容易计算出，在几千年后——按照我们目前的生育速度——人类血肉之躯的重量将等于整个宇宙的重量！PLOWBOY: Then wouldn’t you say that we’re at a bottleneck right now? Isn’t it true that there’s no possible way to expand into space quickly enough to alleviate the problems of Earth’s population growth?ASIMOV: That’s right. In the next half-century we can put, at most, tens of thousands of people into space. But if we continue to multiply as we’re doing now, we’ll add billions of individuals to the planet’s population. So we have to solve that problem right here on Earth.PLOWBOY: Do you have any ideas as to how we might best deal with overpopulation?ASIMOV: There are only two methods: We can either increase the death rate or decrease the birth rate. Unless we use our ingenuity to lower the world’s birth rate, we’ll face the fate of every species that outgrows its food supply and die off as a result of famine, disease, predation, and so on.We must, therefore, lower the birth rate … and I think the best means of doing so is through universal voluntary contraception. To me, the logical way to achieve that goal is to give women something to do besides having a lot of children. Most societies have never allowed women to do anything important other than bear offspring. After all, during most of history, death rates were high, infant mortality rates were tremendous, and life expectancy was low. So people had to produce a lot of children or the race would have died out.
因此，我们必须降低出生率......我认为最好的办法是普遍自愿避孕。对我来说，实现这一目标的合乎逻辑的方法是让女性除了生很多孩子之外还有事可做。大多数社会从不允许女性做任何重要的事情，除了生育后代。毕竟，在历史的大部分时间里，死亡率很高，婴儿死亡率很高，预期寿命很低。所以人们必须生很多孩子，否则这个种族就会消亡。Now, however, we’ve reversed the situation. The death rate is low, infant mortality is low, life expectancy is high, and we’re going to destroy the Earth if we continue to reproduce at the present rate. So we should make it respectable for women not to have a lot of children.
然而，现在我们已经扭转了局面。死亡率低，婴儿死亡率低，预期寿命高，如果我们继续以目前的速度繁殖，我们将摧毁地球。因此，我们应该让女性不要生很多孩子是受人尊敬的。Of course, my proposal is essentially the same as one of the key goals of the women’s liberation movement. I’ve even been pronounced a radical feminist: not because I love women, although I do … and not because I think women’s liberation is just and fair and decent, although I do … but because I believe we have to liberate women if the race is to survive.
当然，我的建议与妇女解放运动的主要目标之一基本相同。我甚至被宣布为激进的女权主义者：不是因为我，尽管我确实......并不是因为我认为妇女解放是公正、公平和体面的，尽管我确实......但因为我相信，如果种族要生存，我们必须解放女性。PLOWBOY: But finding rewarding work for women would be easier in a prospering country like ours than in a poor land which isn’t even able to keep many of its present work force employed.
PLOWBOY：但是，在像我们这样繁荣的国家，为女性找到有价值的工作要比在一个贫穷的土地上更容易，因为贫穷的土地甚至无法保持现有劳动力的就业。ASIMOV: That is a problem. So what we have to do is go through a very difficult transition period in which we gradually distribute the food supply and goods of the world as evenly as possible. The prosperous nations will likely have to go through some hard times for the sake of the impoverished countries, an eventuality which will surely strike the people in the wealthy lands as unfair.
阿西莫夫：这是一个问题。因此，我们要做的就是经历一个非常艰难的过渡时期，在这个时期，我们逐渐尽可能平均地分配世界的粮食供应和商品。为了贫穷的国家，繁荣的国家可能不得不经历一些艰难的时期，这种可能性肯定会让富裕国家的人民感到不公平。But then, every year when income tax comes due, I realize that I pay a lot of money to the government and get back very little in actual cash benefits … whereas poor people pay virtually nothing to the government and get unemployment compensation and all sorts of welfare services. So I think, “My God, they take from me and give to them. It’s so unfair.” But no, it’s not unfair! Because, you see, I’m getting the advantages of a stable society as a result of the exchange!
但是，每年所得税到期时，我意识到我向政府支付了很多钱，而实际的现金福利却很少......而穷人几乎不向政府支付任何费用，并获得失业补偿和各种福利服务。所以我想，“我的上帝，他们从我这里拿走并给他们。这太不公平了。但是不，这并不不公平！因为，你看，由于交换，我得到了一个稳定社会的好处！And if the poorer people of the world don’t start getting some benefits from the more prosperous ones, I’m afraid we’re going to lose the limited global stability that we have. They aren’t going to starve quietly … they’re going to come and try to take our goods from us.But the need to build up space–we’ve come back to space colonization again–could motivate us to begin such necessary sharing.PLOWBOY: It seems evident that we must cut back on our population growth. Do you also feel we need to cut back on our use of energy?ASIMOV: A lot of people think that the United States should reduce its energy consumption. “We used only half as much energy in the early sixties as we do now,” they say, “and life wasn’t so bad then.” There’s only one catch to that argument: Since the early sixties, the population of the Earth has gone up by over one billion, and much of our additional energy usage has allowed our nation–with five percent of the Earth’s people–to export a great deal of food to the rest of the world. So anyone who wants us to cut our energy use in half should first make some of those one billion mouths disappear!
阿西莫夫：很多人认为美国应该减少能源消耗。“我们在六十年代初只用了一半的能源，”他们说，“那时的生活并没有那么糟糕。这个论点只有一个问题：自六十年代初以来，地球人口增加了十多亿，我们大部分的额外能源使用使我们的国家——占地球人口的百分之五——能够向世界其他地区出口大量食物。因此，任何希望我们将能源使用量减少一半的人都应该首先让这十亿张嘴中的一些消失！Now there are those who say that we can avoid the whole dilemma if we develop a more labor-intensive agriculture … that is, have more people–and fewer machines–working on our farms. Well, I want to hear folks who say we need more agricultural laborers volunteer to become such workers. The truth of the matter, though, is that most people who move from the cities to the country these days are not likely to become agricultural workers. They’re suburban and exurban middle class families who live in very comfortable houses.
现在有人说，如果我们发展劳动密集型农业，我们可以避免整个困境......也就是说，在我们的农场里有更多的人和更少的机器。好吧，我想听到有人说我们需要更多的农业工人自愿成为这样的工人。然而，事情的真相是，如今大多数从城市搬到农村的人都不太可能成为农业工人。他们是郊区和郊区的中产阶级家庭，住在非常舒适的房子里。And the individuals who say they are moving out to raise their own food and consume less of the world’s resources are often the very ones who also, so to speak, bring their electric guitars with them … and want to be sure there’s a nice modern hospital located in a convenient nearby city.
而那些说他们搬出去养活自己食物并减少世界资源消耗的人，往往是那些可以说也随身携带电吉他的人......并希望确保在附近一个方便的城市有一家不错的现代化医院。Such people don’t realize that technology is not something you can break up into little fragments. It’s all of a piece.
这些人没有意识到技术不是你可以分解成小碎片的东西。这都是一个整体。PLOWBOY: Don’t you feel that men and women can make use of modern technology and still try to live more self-reliant, less energy-wasteful, and more environmentally sound lifestyles?
PLOWBOY：难道你不觉得男人和女人可以利用现代技术，仍然努力过上更自力更生、更少能源浪费和更环保的生活方式吗？ASIMOV: Yes, certainly we can all eliminate waste. As far as I know, there isn’t anyone in the world who advocates using more energy than is absolutely necessary.
阿西莫夫：是的，当然，我们都可以消除浪费。据我所知，世界上没有人主张使用超过绝对必要的能源。PLOWBOY: In other words, you feel it’s overwhelmingly important that we control population growth … and yet you almost casually take it for granted that we should reduce our wasteful energy and resource consumption. I could just as well counter your position by saying that nobody in his or her right mind could argue with limiting population, and–since it’s been estimated that our country could cut its energy consumption almost in half simply by properly insulating buildings and establishing co-generation facilities in industrial plants–that we urgently need to address the issue of energy efficiency.
PLOWBOY：换句话说，你觉得我们控制人口增长是压倒性的......然而，你几乎不经意地认为我们应该减少浪费的能源和资源消耗是理所当然的。我也可以反驳你的立场，说没有人会反对限制人口，而且——据估计，我们的国家可以通过适当地隔热建筑物和在工业厂房中建立热电联产设施来减少几乎一半的能源消耗——我们迫切需要解决能源效率问题。ASIMOV: Well, there’s a difference between the two issues. There are, you see, no religious, moral, or social teachings that say using a lot of energy is a wonderful thing to do. Instead, when the price of energy goes up–or its availability goes down–almost everyone automatically makes a push for energy conservation. On the other hand, there is still much propaganda that advocates having children.
阿西莫夫：嗯，这两个问题之间是有区别的。你看，没有任何宗教、道德或社会教义说使用大量能量是一件美妙的事情。相反，当能源价格上涨或能源供应下降时，几乎每个人都会自动推动节能。另一方面，仍然有很多宣传主张生孩子。PLOWBOY: Would you also claim that it should be relatively easy to conserve our material resources … since there’s no religion preaching “Thou shalt not recycle”?
PLOWBOY：你是否也声称保护我们的物质资源应该相对容易......因为没有宗教宣扬“你不可回收”？ASIMOV: That’s exactly right. Now I admit that we’ve moved in the wrong direction by cultivating planned obsolescence and conspicuous consumption. And it’s going to be difficult to control waste as long as people see the ability to squander as a sign of status, and businesses feel that it’s economically beneficial to make things that break down quickly.
阿西莫夫：没错。现在我承认，我们通过培养有计划的过时和炫耀性消费而朝着错误的方向前进。只要人们将挥霍的能力视为地位的标志，并且企业认为制造快速分解的东西在经济上是有益的，那么控制浪费就很困难。PLOWBOY: How do we combat such practices?
PLOWBOY：我们如何打击这种做法？ASIMOV: Well, you might argue that it’s difficult to eliminate waste in a capitalist economy which is based on continually making unimportant product improvements in order to convince customers that one item is better than another. On the other hand, if we were to regulate such competition out of society, we could end up with the wastefulness of institutionalized inefficiency. So I’m not sure how best to deal with that problem.
阿西莫夫：嗯，你可能会争辩说，在资本主义经济中，消除浪费是很困难的，因为资本主义经济的基础是不断进行不重要的产品改进，以说服客户一种产品比另一种更好。另一方面，如果我们要把这种竞争排除在社会之外，我们最终可能会造成制度化低效率的浪费。所以我不确定如何最好地处理这个问题。PLOWBOY: Do you want to take a stab at suggesting a solution?
PLOWBOY：你想尝试一下解决方案吗？ASIMOV: I suppose we’re going to have to indulge in peer group persuasion. How, for instance, can people be prevented from wearing eaglet feathers on their hats? The answer, of course, is to put so much concern for conservation into the public mind that anyone who does wear an eaglet feather becomes persona nongrata in respectable society. Perhaps the socially conscious minority can, in a similar manner, create a kind of spearhead movement for resource and energy conservation.
阿西莫夫：我想我们将不得不沉迷于同龄人群体的说服。例如，如何防止人们在帽子上戴鹰羽毛？答案当然是将对保护的关注放在公众的脑海中，以至于任何戴着鹰羽毛的人都会成为受人尊敬的社会中不受欢迎的人。也许具有社会意识的少数群体可以以类似的方式，为资源和能源节约创造一种先锋运动。PLOWBOY: Dr. Asimov, your hope for the future is based on expansion into outer space. But do you feel that humankind could, instead, learn to be so truly efficient in, and conscious of, our use of energy and resources that we could stabilize our consumption–just as we need to stabilize our population–and survive perfectly well on Earth without having to expand into space? A lot of thinkers believe that we can do so.
PLOWBOY：阿西莫夫博士，你对未来的希望是基于向外太空扩张。但是，你是否觉得人类可以学会在能源和资源的使用方面如此真正高效，并意识到我们的能源和资源使用，以至于我们可以稳定我们的消费——就像我们需要稳定我们的人口一样——并在地球上完美地生存，而不必扩展到太空？许多思想家相信我们可以做到这一点。ASIMOV: I suppose you could argue that if we develop nuclear fusion–or if we somehow stabilize our population and energy demands–we might be able to survive indefinitely without leaving the surface of the Earth. But my own feeling is that, even if we could manage it technologically and economically, human psychology would defeat the attempt. Earth would become a prison. There would be no unifying purpose to help us transcend the nation states … people would forever feel themselves to be ethnic groups, language groups, and racial groups … and we would be defeated eventually by our incessant quarreling.
阿西莫夫：我想你可以争辩说，如果我们发展核聚变，或者如果我们以某种方式稳定我们的人口和能源需求，我们也许能够在不离开地球表面的情况下无限期地生存。但我自己的感觉是，即使我们可以在技术和经济上管理它，人类心理学也会挫败这种尝试。地球将变成一座监狱。没有统一的目标来帮助我们超越民族国家......人们会永远觉得自己是族群、语言族群和种族族群......我们最终会被我们无休止的争吵打败。I think that even if we didn’t need space exploration to keep civilization alive for material reasons, we would need that expansion for–I almost hate to say the word–spiritual reasons!
我认为，即使我们出于物质原因不需要太空探索来保持文明的活力，我们也需要这种扩张——我几乎讨厌说这个词——精神原因！PLOWBOY: So you consider expansion into nearby space to be essential.
PLOWBOY：所以你认为向附近空间扩张是必不可少的。ASIMOV: Yes. We’ve reached the stage where, if we don’t transcend the Earth, we’re going to destroy it. And I think that–over the next couple of centuries–it will be necessary for us to expand into the solar system generally. I don’t see that goal as the end, either. Eventually we are going to make all of space our own!
阿西莫夫：是的。我们已经到了这样一个阶段，如果我们不超越地球，我们就会摧毁它。我认为，在接下来的几个世纪里，我们有必要向太阳系扩张。我也不认为这个目标就是终点。最终，我们将把所有的空间都变成我们自己的！PLOWBOY: How do you foresee the accomplishment of such a monumental goal?
PLOWBOY：你如何预见到这样一个不朽目标的实现？ASIMOV: Well, the first steps have been easy … it took only three days to reach the moon. By comparison, Columbus had to travel–out of contact with “civilization”–for weeks to reach the New World.
阿西莫夫：嗯，第一步很容易......只用了三天时间就到达了月球。相比之下，哥伦布不得不旅行数周才能到达新大陆，与“文明”脱节。But going to Mars, our next logical objective, will mean a round trip of months or even years. And that may be more of a psychological problem than it is a technological challenge. After all, we on Earth are used to a huge world and–if you view the planet as a spaceship–we’re used to living on the outside of the hull. All our life support systems are on the surface and held in place by gravity.
但是，前往火星，我们的下一个合乎逻辑的目标，将意味着数月甚至数年的往返旅行。这可能更像是一个心理问题，而不是一个技术挑战。毕竟，我们在地球上已经习惯了一个巨大的世界，如果你把这个星球看作一艘宇宙飞船，我们已经习惯了生活在船体的外面。我们所有的生命支持系统都在地表，并通过重力固定在适当的位置。The people who run any space settlements that we establish, however, will soon become accustomed to living in an inside world. Superficially, their environments may be very earthlike … because the settlements can be adjusted to have the appropriate gravitational effects, day and night lighting, and so on. Essentially, though, the space workers will be living “inside,” be more aware of space, and be much more intimately concerned with the cycling of their resources–food, air, water, etc.–than we Earthlings are.
然而，管理我们建立的任何太空定居点的人很快就会习惯于生活在内部世界中。从表面上看，他们的环境可能非常像地球......因为可以调整沉降以具有适当的重力效应，白天和黑夜照明等等。然而，从本质上讲，太空工作者将生活在“内部”，对太空的了解程度更高，并且比我们地球人更密切地关注他们的资源——食物、空气、水等——的循环。And the hundreds of thousands, or maybe even millions, of people manning such settlements will–over the years–become as used to space travel as we are to going about in a plane or an automobile. Such men and women will be psychologically comfortable in an exploratory spaceship … the vessel will be much more like the home they’ve lived in all their lives than Earth would be!
多年来，数十万甚至数百万人居住在这些定居点，将习惯于太空旅行，就像我们乘坐飞机或汽车一样。这样的男人和女人在探索性宇宙飞船中会感到心理舒适......这艘船将更像他们一生居住的家，而不是地球！So I anticipate that our space settlers will be able to undertake long voyages which would be psychologically impossible for Earth dwellers. They will be able to establish settlements within asteroids. They’ll be the footloose Vikings of the future. The rest of us will, indeed, be prisoners of Earth.
因此，我预计我们的太空定居者将能够进行长途航行，这对地球居民来说在心理上是不可能的。他们将能够在小行星内建立定居点。他们将成为未来的无足轻重的维京人。事实上，我们其他人将成为地球的囚徒。PLOWBOY: You envision settlements inside of asteroids?
PLOWBOY：你设想过在小行星内部建立定居点？ASIMOV: Yes, those pioneers could hollow out the mini-planets. The asteroids would–by the way–make for much better settlements than would the moon, because that satellite doesn’t have certain lightweight elements … including carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen. Lunar residents would therefore have to depend on the Earth for such basic substances, but settlers of the asteroids could have their own supplies and be truly independent of Earth.
阿西莫夫：是的，那些先驱者可以掏空迷你行星。顺便说一句，小行星将比月球更好地建立定居点，因为该卫星没有某些轻质元素......包括碳、氢和氮。因此，月球居民将不得不依赖地球来获取这些基本物质，但小行星的定居者可以拥有自己的供应，并真正独立于地球。Moreover, if such explorers developed nuclear fusion, they might even eventually become completely independent of the sun … and be able to pilot their asteroids into outer space.
此外，如果这些探险家发展出核聚变，他们甚至可能最终完全独立于太阳......并能够将他们的小行星驾驶到外太空。PLOWBOY: Why send an asteroid off into space?
PLOWBOY：为什么要把一颗小行星送上太空？ASIMOV: Ah, because then the travelers could explore the stars without ever leaving home. They wouldn’t have to abandon the world they’ve lived in … or have to say goodbye to their friends and relatives and all the old familiar places. Instead, the whole asteroid could just stop going around the sun and take off. Eventually–after a long, long time–the explorers’ descendants might reach another planetary system.
阿西莫夫：啊，因为这样旅行者就可以足不出户探索星星。他们不必放弃他们所生活的世界......或者不得不告别他们的朋友和亲戚以及所有熟悉的旧地方。相反，整颗小行星可以停止绕太阳运行并起飞。最终，经过很长很长一段时间，探险家的后代可能会到达另一个行星系统。PLOWBOY: But the nearest solar system is light years away.
PLOWBOY：但最近的太阳系在光年之外。ASIMOV: Granted, a huge time factor is involved in all this, so it’s difficult for you and me to see how people could possibly undertake such a trip. But I can imagine speaking to an amoeba–if you’ll allow me to imagine an amoeba capable of discussing the matter–and asking how it would like to be one of 50 trillion cells making up a multicellular organism such as a man … a creation in which the individual amoeba didn’t count at all. The tiny cell might be horrified at the suggestion. “What?!” it would say. “Give up my consciousness and individuality just to be part of a large group? Never, never, never!”
阿西莫夫：当然，所有这一切都涉及一个巨大的时间因素，所以你和我都很难看出人们怎么可能进行这样的旅行。但我可以想象与变形虫交谈——如果你允许我想象一个能够讨论这个问题的变形虫——并询问它如何成为构成多细胞生物体的 50 万亿个细胞之一，比如一个人......一个个体变形虫根本不算数的创造。这个小小的细胞可能会被这个建议吓坏了。“什么？！”它会说。“放弃我的意识和个性，只是为了成为大群体的一员？绝不，绝不，绝不！Yet as each of us–as the consciousness of our combined 50 trillion cells–knows, there are things we can do and pleasures we can experience that an individual cell can’t even imagine. You or I can’t help feeling that it’s worthwhile for our cells to give up their independence and individuality for the sake of what we have.
然而，正如我们每个人——作为我们总共 50 万亿个细胞的意识——所知道的那样，我们可以做一些事情，我们可以体验到单个细胞甚至无法想象的快乐。你或我不禁觉得，为了我们所拥有的，我们的细胞放弃它们的独立性和个性是值得的。Well, I feel a reverse development may someday occur on a grander scale. An individual asteroid settlement will decide not to be part of a large community of settlements, will prefer to go off by itself and become an “amoeba” again … for the sake of eventually establishing a new planetary “individual” under completely new circumstances.
嗯，我觉得有一天可能会发生更大规模的逆向发展。一个单独的小行星定居点将决定不成为大型定居点社区的一部分，宁愿自己离开并再次成为“变形虫”......为了最终在全新的环境下建立一个新的行星“个体”。Of course, it’s hard to see into the future with accuracy. It may be–in fact, it’s almost inevitable–that once we start moving out into space, events will take a completely unexpected turn. Some new development will occur which will afterward appear so obvious that future generations will wonder why we didn’t foresee it.
当然，很难准确地看到未来。事实上，这几乎是不可避免的，一旦我们开始进入太空，事件将发生完全意想不到的转变。一些新的发展将会发生，这些发展随后会显得如此明显，以至于后代会想知道为什么我们没有预见到它。PLOWBOY: Dr. Asimov, I’d like for us to come back to Earth now, so I can ask you about one more issue. What do you think of man’s relationship with nature? Do you see it as, say, a human using a tool, observing something pretty, or interacting with a symbiotic equal?
PLOWBOY：阿西莫夫博士，我想让我们现在回到地球，所以我可以再问你一个问题。您如何看待人与自然的关系？你认为，比如说，一个人使用工具，观察一些漂亮的东西，或者与共生的平等互动吗？ASIMOV: Well, you’re personifying nature, while I see nature as encompassing man. We’ve had an ecological balance on Earth, and we don’t want our race to upset that balance. But it may be that–as a result of man’s movement in space–we will eventually create an altered ecology that is even more to our liking!
阿西莫夫：嗯，你是在把自然拟人化，而我把自然看作是人。我们在地球上有一个生态平衡，我们不希望我们的种族破坏这种平衡。但是，由于人类在太空中的运动，我们最终将创造一个更符合我们喜好的改变的生态！Space settlements won’t be made entirely of metal and glass and concrete. There will be areas given over to agriculture, to the raising of plants and small animals … both those species that are useful and some others that aren’t necessary but please us aesthetically. But we’ll want to exclude disease germs, or plants and animals that we would consider harmful. So we’ll try to form a kind of simplified ecology that includes only those “companions” that we find beneficial in some way.
太空定居点不会完全由金属、玻璃和混凝土制成。将有一些地区用于农业，植物和小动物的饲养......既有有用的物种，也有其他一些不必要的物种，但在美学上取悦我们。但是我们要排除我们认为有害的病菌或植物和动物。因此，我们将尝试形成一种简化的生态，只包括那些我们认为在某种程度上有益的“同伴”。PLOWBOY: I was really wondering what role you see for the natural world on Earth. Do you see that world as intrinsically important?
PLOWBOY：我真的很想知道你认为地球上的自然世界扮演着什么角色。你认为这个世界内在重要吗？ASIMOV: It is important in that it’s loaded with variety. Anything that’s done to decrease that variety is likely to lessen the natural world’s value and usefulness. On the other hand, ecological balances have shifted constantly through the history of life and have sometimes done so drastically. We can’t suppose that there is some cosmic rule which says the ecology must exist forever as it exists now.
阿西莫夫：这很重要，因为它充满了多样性。任何减少这种多样性的做法都可能降低自然界的价值和有用性。另一方面，生态平衡在生命史上不断变化，有时甚至急剧变化。我们不能假设有某种宇宙规则说生态必须永远存在，就像它现在存在一样。And, in fact, I look forward to a multiplicity of human habitats and a multiplicity of ecologies! Not only will we have the enormous lifework and interdependence of Earth’s natural system–one that I would be reluctant to see us interfere with–but we would have other habitats, each with its own ecological lacework. The sum total may represent a new level of complication beyond that which we have now.
而且，事实上，我期待着人类栖息地的多样性和生态的多样性！我们不仅将拥有地球自然系统的巨大生命工作和相互依存关系——我不愿意看到我们干涉——而且我们将拥有其他栖息地，每个栖息地都有自己的生态花边。总和可能代表了超越我们现在所拥有的新的复杂程度。Space settlers may someday feel sorry for Earth residents, who have only one limited ecology and are so much at the mercy of their natural environment.
太空定居者有一天可能会为地球居民感到难过，他们只有一个有限的生态环境，并且受到自然环境的摆布。PLOWBOY: Those are interesting points. Still, it seems as if every time I ask you about Earth’s environment, you end up talking about space again.
PLOWBOY：这些都是有趣的观点。不过，似乎每次我问你关于地球环境的问题时，你最终都会再次谈论太空。ASIMOV: I guess for me everything does come back to space. Maybe that’s because I’ve been writing science fiction all these years … but I definitely believe that humanity’s destiny will be found in expansion beyond our planet’s surface.
阿西莫夫：我想对我来说，一切都会回到太空。也许那是因为我这些年一直在写科幻小说......但我绝对相信，人类的命运将在地球表面之外的扩张中找到。I told you before that I’m pessimistic about our short term future, and I am. But if we do manage to solve the immediate problems, to control population, to achieve some sort of international cooperation, and to move out into space, then after that I’m very optimistic. It may be shortsightedness on my part that I fail to see the obstacles behind those that now exist, or that I dismiss those future predicaments by saying, “Well, we’ll be able to solve them.”
我之前告诉过你，我对我们的短期未来持悲观态度，我确实如此。但是，如果我们设法解决眼前的问题，控制人口，实现某种国际合作，并进入太空，那么在那之后，我非常乐观。这可能是我的短视，我没有看到现在存在的障碍背后的障碍，或者我通过说“好吧，我们将能够解决它们”来驳斥这些未来的困境。And maybe I’m wrong. But it seems to me that if we can solve our immediate problems–those that will come up in the next three decades or so–and get out into space, we’ll have relatively clear sailing from there on!
也许我错了。但在我看来，如果我们能够解决眼前的问题——那些将在未来三十年左右出现的问题——并进入太空，我们将从那时起相对清晰地航行！- Published on Sep 1, 1980
发表于 1980 年 9 月 1 日
