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影响了《星球大战》的这本书到底说了什么

2018-03-02文|田

今日重庆 2018年2期
关键词:赫伯特公爵星球大战

◇ 文|田 东

年初上映的电影中,“来势汹汹”又令我印象深刻的,非《星球大战8》莫属了,它也再次唤起了我对星战系列的困惑:电影展现的未来世界科技如此发达,为何构建的社会制度依然有“帝国”“皇帝”“奴役”等中古意味的概念。

巧的是,前不久,亚马逊中国发布了“2017新书排行榜”,其中第五位的《沙丘》为我拨开了这层迷雾。星战系列电影中,干旱的星球、邪恶的统治者、守护香料的公主和身负银河系使命的男孩等等元素,都能在《沙丘》这部创作出版于1965年的科幻小说中找到原型。

Among the movies screened early this year, the most popular and impressive one, personally, must be Star Wars: Episode VIII—The Last Jedi. It on the other hand aroused my long confusion about the Star Wars series that why with such developed technologies in future world there still remain medieval elements like empire, emperor and slaves within the social structure built up in the movie.

It so happened that recently Amazon.cn released the “Best New Books of 2017”, of which the fifth one Dune lifted the cloud of perplexity for me. From this science fiction novel published in 1965 readers can found the similar elements in the Star Wars film series including dry planet,evil emperor, princess who guards the spice and man on a mission of safeguarding the galaxy and so forth.

科幻版《王子复仇记》A Sci-fi Hamlet

作者弗兰克·赫伯特,当过美国海军、记者,华盛顿大学肄业。有人说,没有他的《沙丘》,《星球大战》或许是另外一个样子。

假如你没有听说过厄拉科斯星球、延缓衰老的香料、能看到过去的魁萨克·哈德拉克、屏蔽场带这些《沙丘》里的元素,那你一定要知道《红色警戒》《星际争霸》这些风靡全球的游戏都是《沙丘》的衍生品。

而《星球大战》系列电影中,从人物形象、故事概念、创意到背景,或多或少都带着《沙丘》的影子。赫伯特本人也知道,而且还在片子里发现了其他著名科幻作家的灵光。他半开玩笑式地成立了一个名为“我们强大到不屑于起诉卢卡斯”联盟。

《沙丘》到底有着怎样的魔力,让卢卡斯和《星球大战》要向它“致敬”呢?

《沙丘》讲述了遥远的1018X年间(书中没有明确交代,也没有用公元纪年法),一个公爵被宇宙统治者陷害,从美丽富饶的卡拉丹星球迁居沙漠星球厄拉科斯,也就是“沙丘”。沙丘气候恶劣,不适宜居住,但却生活着几百米长的杀虫,也是银河帝国唯一出产香料的地方,还有穿着顺滑长袍、臭气熏天的游牧“野蛮人”弗雷曼人。后来,公爵死了,他的儿子躲进了弗雷曼人的蛮荒之地,娶了妻,成为先知和救世主,击败了仇人,成为新的宇宙领袖。

有点科幻版“王子复仇记”的味道吧。又或者,公爵儿子与“土著人”“和亲”的桥段让你看到了《阿凡达》的影子?

The author Frank Herbert once served in the U.S.Navy as a photographer during World War II and attended University of Washington after the war. It is said that without his work Dune there might be a different Star Wars now.

If you have never heard about the planet Arrakis,spice that can slow aging, Kwisatz Haderach who can carry knowledge of the past, shield, etc., you must know that the very much popular video games such as Command& Conquer: Red Alert and Starcraft are all the derivatives of this novel Dune.

Also, the film series Star Wars carries some trace of the novel more or less no matter it is in terms of its character or the concept, idea or the background. Herbert knows this is no coincidence and even finds out that there are some other sci-fi novelists’ idea were borrowed into the movies. He joked of banding together with the other ripped-off authors to form a “We’re Too Big to Sue George Lucas” society.

So, what is the exact magic of Dune on earth to make Lucas pay his “tribute” to it with Star Wars?

In fact, set in the distant future, Dune tells the story of a duke who was framed up by the Emperor of the universe and assigned to the desert planet Arrakis, i.e. the “Dune”,from the rich and beautiful planet Caladan. Dune is the worst to live in with the cruel climate, yet it is the only source of the oracular spice mélange in the Empire. There are also giant sandworms with the length of hundreds of meters and stinky Fremen natives in aba. Later the Duke died, and his son fled into the desert of the Fremen community, and then got married there. He became the prophet and the savior, defeated the foe and took control of the Empire then.

Isn’t it like Hamlet in sci-fi style? Or maybe the part that the Duke’s son married to a native seems like what is done in the movie Avatar?

技术“落后”的软科幻 Soft Science Fiction

赫伯特创作这部作品时,正值越战、反战浪潮、披头士、女权运动、后现代主义风起潮涌,于是乎,《沙丘》关注的不全是科幻,还有社会和人文。科幻小说中常见的超级电脑和机器人,《沙丘》中都没有,甚至设定故事发生的几百年前,人类就摧毁了所有会思考的机器。

再比如,大反派哈克南男爵用来和主人公保罗的父亲雷托·厄崔迪通信的“圆柱信息筒”,搁在社交App盛行的今天都只能当老古董了。噢,不好意思,世界上最早的电子邮件是本书出版4年后才出现的。

还有令当时读者啧啧称奇的“胶片书”,估计用着手机和电子阅读器Kindle的现代人也会不屑一顾的。

不过,书中星际旅行已经是日常,格斗时保护自身的屏蔽场护盾、帮助人轻松行动的便携式浮空器、可以回收身体水分的蒸馏服等“黑科技”,还是能让现在的读者脑洞大开。

《纽约客》评论认为,《沙丘》的“软科幻”设定很高明,它将焦点从技术引回到人本身,改变了科幻小说核心是科技、人物和情节为之服务的风格。还有美国媒体说,“《沙丘》在科幻文学中的地位,堪比《魔戒》在奇幻小说中的地位”。

It was during the Vietnam War, anti-war movement,Beatles period, feminist bandwagon and the rising of post-modernism when Herbert wrote the novel, thus what Dune focuses is not only science fiction but also the society and the people. In Dune there is no super computer or robots which is familiar in sci-fi novels, and even all machines that are able to think have been destroyed before the story starts.

Also, the message cylinder by which the super villain Duke of Harkonnen corresponds with Duke Leto Atreides,father of the main character Paul, is but an antique as for today when social software prevails. Oh, wait, the first e-mail only came out four years after the publishing of the novel.

Apart from that, people nowadays with smart phones and Kindle may turn up noses at the “film book” which amazed the readers then.

However, in the novel space travel is very often,and shields which can protect oneself in a fight, portable Ornithopter capable of sustained wing-beat flight in the manner of birds, as well as Stillsuit used to retaining and reclaiming moisture from the book will definitely blow current readers’ mind.

According to the remarks on New Yorker, it is a clever authorial decision that the de-emphasis on technology throws the focus back on people in the novel, changing the staple style of sci-fi novel in which the characters and plotlines serve for the core technology. And some American media claimed that Dune in sci-fi literature is comparable to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings in fantasy literature.

往返于历史与未来的穿越 Combination of the Past and the Future

书中充斥着“皇帝”“公爵”“巫师”“奴隶”这些词汇,读来恍如回到了罗马帝国时代。不知出于什么原因,赫伯特将这些古老的社会结构“穿越”到了遥远的未来,作为庞大星际叙事的背景。

于是我们看到千奇百怪的新词:行星公民、宇航公会、行星生态学家、香料搜寻工 ……历史元素与星际元素交迭,很是迷幻。

出版商们对这些新造的古怪词汇和小说的错综复杂感到忧虑,认为这会拖慢故事的节奏。有编辑说他看了头一百页也没看出个所以然,还有个编辑口口声声说如果放弃这本书就犯了大错,可最后还是给退稿了。

好在最后奇尔顿图书公司“冒险”将这部40万字的小说以精装本形式出版了,否则赫伯特就没有机会“遇见”科幻作者梦寐以求的星云奖和雨果奖,后来的科幻小说也就少了一面致敬的旗帜。

The book is filled with such words as Emperor, Duke,wizard and slave, seemingly bringing readers back to era of imperial Rome. Herbert somehow borrowed such ancient social structure to distant future as the background of the story.

Hence we can also find many strange new words in the novel including Harvester, Arafel, Carryall, Deathstill and so on and so forth. It is pretty magical seeing the combination of historical elements and space elements.

Publishers worried that these strange words and complex plotlines would slow down the pace of the story. An editor said that he could not find a clue even after finishing the first hundred pages, and another claimed it would be a gigantic mistake if giving up publishing the book but still rejected it in the end.

Fortunately, this novel Dune with four million words was finally accepted and published by Chilton Books. Otherwise,Herbert might have no opportunity to win the inaugural Nebula Award and Hugo Award which all sci-fi novelists yearn long for, and the later sci-fi novels might have one less classic example to learn from.

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