他人即地狱：刘慈欣的《黑暗森林》

.忽忽`~`*

wenzhang
译文简介
《黑暗森林》这个主题的意义毋庸置疑，在极度超现实的序章里，相关对话通过一只路过的褐蚁呈现给了读者。然而罗辑如何令人信服地利用宇宙社会学拯救了末日，或者至少推迟了末日的悬疑，留到了这部长篇小说的同样足够外星足够让人满足的结尾。
译文来源
原文地址：http://www.tor.com
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Hell is Other People: The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu

他人即地狱：刘慈欣的《黑暗森林》



{译者注：标题"他人即地狱"语出萨特，刘慈欣在《黑暗森林》里也有引用}

Niall Alexander



The thing is, theyre going to take four hundred years to get here. But when they do? Were toast, folks.

问题是，他们还要400年才会到达。但他们到了的时候，怎么办？父老乡亲们，我们死定了。

The assembly fell into a prolonged silence. Ahead of them stretched the leaden road of time, terminating somewhere in the?
mists of the future, where all they could see were flickering flames and the lustre of blood. The brevity of a human?
lifespan tormented them as never before, and their hearts soared above the vault of time to join with their descendants and?
plunge into blood and fire in the icy cold of space, the eventual meeting place for the souls of all soldiers.

"军人们陷入了长久的沉默，铅色的时光之路在他们面前徐徐展开，在漫长的延伸中隐入未来的茫茫迷雾中。他们看不清这长路的尽头，但能看到火焰和血光在那里闪耀。人生苦短这一现实从来没有像现在这样折磨他们，他们的心已飞越时间之穹，与他们的十几代子孙一起投入到冷酷太空中的血与火里，那是所有军人的灵魂相聚的地方。"

In this way, a great wave of defeatism sweeps the people, not least because they know that nothing they do now will have the slightest impact on the Trisolarans. The present-day generations only potential legacy is laying out the groundwork for humanity to develop in centuries ahead. Today, the knowledge base just isnt there, nor indeed will it ever equal the quantum technology bolstering the Trisolarans far superior force. Thats because of the sophons: a mass of microscopic particles which interfere in certain experiments, establishing an energy-based barrier beyond which scientists simply cannot cross. We havent hit it yet, but we will, one day. And then? Well, itll be The End, my friends.

如此这般，一大波失败主义横扫人间，很重要的原因是人们知道无论做什么都不会动摇三体人分毫。现今这代人所能留下的只有为数世纪后人类的发展所铺垫下的基础。今天的认知范畴远远不够，更何谈能与三体人超强武力背后的量子科技相媲美。原因在于智子,一种微小粒子，能干扰实验结果，给科学家造成无法逾越的障碍。我们尚未触及这障碍，但有朝一日一定会。之后呢？那就是剧终了，朋友。

And thats not all the sophons are good for—or bad for, depending upon your perspective. They cant quite read minds, but everything else is an open book to them, and in turn to the extraterrestrials who seeded these beings here. "The sophons can understand human language, and they can read printed texts and information on every kind of computer storage media at ultra-high speeds." So we cant count on keeping any secrets, either.

这还不只是智子全部的好处——或坏处，取决于你的立场。智子虽然不能读心，但别的东西却是一目了然，外星人也相应地洞悉一切。"智子可以听懂人类语言，可以超高速阅读印刷文字和各种计算机介质存贮的信息。"所以我们也别指望保密了。

To make matters worse, even in the face of imminent extinction, "the unity of the human race is still a distant dream." In our frustration and our desperation, we turn on one another. Precious time is wasted. Wars are fought. Lives are spent like so many cents. Humanity becomes lost in a dark forest, in short—until a distant light is lit.

更糟的是，即使灭种在即，"人类大同仍是一个遥远的梦想"。悲观绝望中，我们互相攻讦，虚耗光阴，挑起战端，弃生命如敝履。人性迷失在黑暗森林，幸好为时不久，远处曙光初露。

So long as we do not communicate with the outside world, every individual keeps things secret forever from the sophons. This?
is the basis of the Wallfacer Project.

"只要不与外界交流，每个人对智子都是永恒的秘密，这就是面壁计划的基础。"



As the last, best hope for humanitys survival, hes a markedly more active and interesting main man than Wang Miao was in The Three-Body Problem. Additionally, Luo Ji is a figure mired in mystery, in that he doesnt have a clue what he has to offer the Wallfacer Project—nor indeed do we. All we have to work with is what we see: a woebegone wastrel and womaniser who once upon a time had a conversation about cosmic sociology.

作为人类能否幸存的最后也是最大的希望，罗辑这个主人公比《三体》的汪淼明显更活跃更有意思。此外，罗辑这个人物被谜团包裹其中，他不清楚自己能对面壁计划有何贡献，我们也毫不知晓。我们所能倚重的就是眼前这位：曾几何时语出"宇宙社会学"的愁眉苦脸的浪荡登徒子。

The significance of this subject is certain, since said conversation is related to readers—albeit by way of a passing ant—in The Dark Forest‘s sublimely surreal prologue, yet the ways in which Luo Ji could conceivably use cosmic sociology to save the day, or at least delay it, remain a mystery until the novels equally alien and similarly satisfying finale.

《黑暗森林》这个主题的意义毋庸置疑，在极度超现实的序章里，相关对话通过一只路过的褐蚁呈现给了读者。然而罗辑如何令人信服地利用宇宙社会学拯救了末日，或者至少推迟了末日的悬疑，留到了这部长篇小说的同样足够外星足够让人满足的结尾。

In the interim, the plot is powerfully punctuated by the systematic unravelling of the plans the other Wallfacers make at the hands of their Wallbreakers: the dedicated members of a cell of terrorists sympathetic to the extinction event ahead. The threat they represent—to Tyler, Diaz and Hines, to be sure, but also to the whole of humanity—generates a relentless tension that keeps The Dark Forest on target even when its author dives deep for the fifteenth time into the psychology of a people without secrets.

在此之间，剧情发展被有力地穿插，通过破壁人（支持人类灭绝的恐怖分子的特别成员）之手系统性地揭开面壁者的计划。破壁人对泰勒、迪亚兹和希恩斯，以致整个人类造成的威胁，产生让《黑暗森林》始终保持不间断的紧张效果，即便作者三番五次深入研究一个没有秘密的种族的心理活动。

Phenomenal as it was, The Three-Body Problem got a couple of things wrong—mistakes Im over the moon to state The Dark Forest does not make. That said, the elegance and otherness of its setting struck me as simply exceptional then, and it continues to impress in book two, which doubles down on that striking sensawunda by taking place in two discrete periods. The first is fine, if fairly familiar, but the second—which I refuse to ruin—is as astonishing as the interstellar ark of Neal Stephensons Seveneves and the intelligent generation ship of Kim Stanley Robinsons Aurora—evidence of the embarrassment of riches science fiction has seen recently, which The Dark Forest definitely numbers among.

《三体》非常精彩，但仍有三两个错误（我很高兴《黑暗森林》没有再犯类似的错误）。即便如此，《三体》背景设定的简洁性和相异性非常轻易地就打动了我，第二部也继续给我留下深刻印象，醍醐灌顶般的双重冲击感发生在两个完全割裂的时间段。前一时段还不错，大家也不陌生；后一时段（我不会剧透的）如同尼尔·斯蒂芬森的新作《七チ》里的星际方舟以及金?斯坦利?罗宾逊的新作《极光》里的智能世代飞船一样令人震惊。近期科幻小说佳作太多，好比富人愁钱多，而《黑暗森林》绝对名列其中。{《七チ》《极光》非正式译名，此处暂译}

It has its faults, for sure: the poetry of Lius prose sometimes verges on the verbose; a great deal of the dialogue he describes is simply insipid; the narratives secondary characters are at best forgettable; and the first quarter of the novel is nearly impenetrable. But this is a big picture to behold: bolstered as it is by a complex protagonist, an engrossing, high-stakes story and a truly transcendent setting, The Dark Forest is by every measure a better book than The Three-Body Problem—and The Three-Body Problem was awesome.

毫无疑问存在缺点：大刘的行文风格有时近乎啰嗦，很大部分的对话描写寡淡无味，文中次要人物充其量算是过目即忘，小说的前四分之一几乎难以理解。但请着眼于全局：复杂的主人公、引人入胜刺激的故事线和真正超然的背景设定所支撑的《黑暗森林》全面超越了已经很牛的《三体》。