TE||Great balls of fire
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导读
在短暂的时间里，我来了，
在短暂的时间里，我很重要。
哈兰·埃利森（1934-2018）
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听力|精读|翻译|词组
Great balls of fire
大火球
英文部分选自经济学人Obituary版块
Harlan Ellison
哈兰·埃里森
Great balls of fire
大火球
注：《Great balls of fire》Singer：Jerry Lee Lewis
https://music.163.com/album?id=153970&userid=132618676
Harlan Ellison, curmudgeonly science-fiction writer, died on June 27th, aged 84
坏脾气科幻大师哈兰·埃里森于6月27日逝世，享年84岁
“HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I’VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT. FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.” The great AM, the supercomputer/tormentor/god at the centre of Harlan Ellison’s story “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” (1967), outdid its creator in bile and anger. But not by all that much. Celebrated as a pyrotechnic writer of short fiction, screenplays, comic books and criticism, Mr Ellison was as prodigious a source of anecdote, vendetta and litigation. The dust jacket of one book called him “possibly the most contentious person on Earth.” The “possibly” was a bit namby pamby.
“我恨你。让我告诉你，自打我被造出来，我是多么地恨你。在晶圆片薄层中有38744万英里的印刷电路填充了我的复合体。就算“恨”这个词被刻在了数亿英里的每一纳米级上，也不及我在此时这个微秒的瞬间对人类的仇恨的十亿分之一。对你们，除了恨，还是恨。”选自《我没有嘴但我必须呐喊》（1967）中的主角独白，超级计算机艾姆。它在愤怒中进化得超越了制造者，成为施暴者和上帝。但也许并不是那么愤怒，因为它超越不了真正造它出来的作家。作为著名短篇小说、电影剧本、漫画书和批评的烟火作家，埃里森先生是轶事、仇杀和诉讼的源泉。他曾有本书的封面上称他为“可能是地球上最矫情的人”。“可能”二字本身就很矫饰。
Mr Ellison would unleash his indignant and ingenious fury on anyone who offended him, relishing every opportunity to rage at reactionaries and Republicans. But he saved his fiercest and most litigious ire for people who had snubbed, perverted, stolen or paid too little for his work. He was expelled from Ohio State University for hitting a professor who once belittled his writing ability. Over the next 20 years he sent the professor a copy of every story he published. In the midst of a dispute over a contract, he mailed 213 bricks to a publisher, postage to be paid by the recipient. He accused a studio executive of having the intellectual capacity of an artichoke. A YouTube rant about Warner Bros wanting to use an interview with him without paying has become justly famous. “I’ve only been an asshole to assholes,” he would say; he seemed to come across enough of them to remain almost permanently in their ranks.
对任何冒犯他的人，埃里森都怒火相对，锱铢必较。他抓住享受着每一个对守旧派和共和党人愤怒的机会。但他仍为那些对他的工作怠慢、侵害、窃取他的成果或付他报酬过少的人保留了他最激烈、最喜欢打官司的怒火。他因为殴打了一名曾贬低他的写作能力的教授，而被俄亥俄州立大学开除。在接下来的20年里，他每出版一个故事就给这位教授寄去一份。在一份合同纠纷中，他向出版商邮寄了213块砖，邮费由收件人支付。他怒斥一名电影公司高管的智商跟个洋蓟似的。在YouTube上，一个视频流传甚广，是埃里森关于华纳兄弟使用他的采访但没付报酬的评论。“我只有跟混蛋打交道时才会看起来像个个混蛋，”他说。他似乎跟他们打了太多交道，自己也变成了一个混蛋。
Mr Ellison was small and Jewish, both of which got him bullied a lot growing up in Cleveland in the 1930s and 1940s. On leaving home he claimed to have become a crop-picker, tuna fisherman, gun for hire, nitroglycerine truck driver, lithographer, short-order cook, door-to-door salesman both of books and brushes (not at the same time) and a customer-services representative in a department store. He wrote his first novel, “Web of the City”, while undergoing basic training for the army at Fort Benning, Georgia. Previously peripatetic, in 1962 he moved to California and stayed there. It was not exactly a settling down. By the 1980s Mr Ellison had had five wives. He credited the last, Susan Toth (pictured), whom he wed in 1986, with saving him.
埃里森身材瘦小，又是犹太裔，在20世纪30、40年代，这两点都让他在克利夫兰长大时受尽欺负。在离开家时，他说自己已经做过采摘工人、金枪鱼渔民、雇佣兵、硝化甘油卡车司机、岩石学家、快餐厨师、挨家挨户推销书籍和刷子（在不同时期）和一家百货公司的客户服务代表。在写自己的第一部小说《城市之网》时，他正在佐治亚州本宁堡接受军队的基本训练。1962年，他搬到了加利福尼亚，但没真正安顿下来。到20世纪80年代，埃里森已结过五次婚。最后一次结婚是在1986年，妻子是苏珊托斯（如图），他认为是她拯救了自己。
Novels, although he wrote three between 1958 and 1961, turned out not to be his thing. Mr Ellison’s stories, his friend, the writer Neil Gaiman, says, “sparkle and glitter and shine and wound and howl…you can see Harlan experimenting, trying new things, new techniques, new voices.” To maintain such intensity and inventiveness for hundreds of pages would have been exhausting to all concerned.
埃里森在1958至1961年之间创作了3本长篇小说，结果却发现写长篇非他所长。他的朋友，作家尼尔·盖曼称他的小说“时而生动新颖，流光溢彩，时而又伤痕累累，哀嚎声声……从中能看出哈兰的不断实验，不断尝试新的题材，表现手法及观点。”对任何作家而言，要在几百页的篇幅内一直保持着高强度和新创意是会让人精疲力竭的。
注释：
1.埃里森生平衍生阅读
http://www.sohu.com/a/238532448_100063789
2.《大师的盛宴》
https://book.douban.com/reading/21925975/
The stories repeatedly garnered him science fiction’s top prizes; he won eight of the Hugo awards voted on by fans at science fiction’s world conventions, or WorldCons. One of those Hugos was for writing “The City on the Edge of Forever”, perhaps the most popular episode of “Star Trek” (and the occasion of an epic feud with the show’s creator, Gene Roddenberry). Another was for editing “Dangerous Visions” (1967), a mammoth anthology that served as a rallying-point for the “New Wave” of science fiction—a movement bringing sex, drugs and literary experimentation to a genre often characterised by formal attributes as staid as its ideas were interstellar.
却是他的短篇小说让他屡次斩获科幻小说的最高奖项;在世界科幻小说大会（WorldCons）上，他八次赢得粉丝投票评选的“雨果奖”。其中一部便是《永恒边界之城》，这也许是《星际迷航》中最受欢迎的一集(也是埃里森与《星际迷航》编剧吉恩·罗登贝瑞（Gene Roddenberry）漫长夙怨的根源)。另一部是他编辑的篇幅宏大的小说选集《危险影像》(1967)。这本选集被誉为掀起了科幻小说 “新浪潮”运动的一声集结号——这一运动将性、毒品和文学实验引入科学幻想小说，打破了传统科学幻想小说中想法虽如星际穿越般脑洞大开，形式却刻板保守的印象。
His television work was feted, too; the Writers Guild of America honoured three more of his teleplays, as well as the one for “Star Trek”. One of his lawsuits accused the producers of “The Terminator” (1984) of ripping off his script for “Soldier” (1964), an episode of “The Outer Limits” about a remorselessly efficient soldier thrown back in time who ends up saving a family. He also sued the producers of “In Time” (2011) for its similarities to another of his Hugo winners, the much-anthologised “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” (1965), which explores repression in a world where time can be conserved, like energy, to be recycled and used later; on that occasion, though, he dropped the suit.
他的电视作品也广受欢迎;美国编剧协会(Writers Guild of America)表彰了他的另外三部电视剧本，以及《星际迷航》(Star Trek)的那一集。他众多的诉讼中有一项，就是指控《终结者》(1984)的制片人剽窃了他的《士兵》(1964)剧本，这是为《外星界限》(the Outer Limits)创作的一集，讲述了一名冷酷而高效的士兵被扔回到过去，最终却拯救了一个家庭的故事。他还起诉了《时代》(In Time)(2011)的制作人，原因是该片与他的另一部雨果奖作品小说选集《“忏悔吧，小丑！”嘀嗒人说》有相似之处。《“忏悔吧，小丑！”嘀嗒人说》探讨了在时间可以像能量一样被保存被回收利用的世界里，人们内心的压抑;不过，这一次，他撤诉了。
Page after page
一页一页地创作
Mr Ellison wrote all the time, pounding out the pages first on a Remington Rand and then from the early 1950s on Olympias, which he treated like jackhammers (he never made friends with the laptop). His desk was in the library of the strange Aztec house he built in southern California, a mostly peaceful corner except for the moment in 1994 when an earthquake hurled his 30,000 books from their shelves, knocking him out.
埃里森从未间断过写作，先是在雷明顿兰德打字机上，到50年代初改成了奥林匹亚丝打字机。他像使手提钻似的使用这些机器（从未都不习惯使用手提电脑）。他在南加州建造了一座奇异的阿兹特克房子，里面有个图书馆，他的书桌就放在那里。大多数时间里面很平静，除了在1994那一年，一场地震把他的3万本书从书架上扔了出去，把他砸得不省人事。
When he wasn’t being curmudgeonly, Ellison could be kind, even courtly. And he gave good, if shouty, advice. As Mr Gaiman recalled in 2013: “About 15 years ago, he came up to me at a convention and said, ‘GAIMAN, WHY THE FUCK DON’T YOU EVER SHAVE?’ I said, I have a really tough beard and sensitive skin, and I don’t like shaving. ‘CONDITIONER. JUST PUT CONDITIONER ON, LEAVE IT ON, WASH IT OFF, SHAVE. WORKS LIKE A FUCKING CHARM.’ And it did.”
在埃里森平静的时候，他还是挺和蔼的，有时也竟温文尔雅。虽然大喊大叫，他有时也会给出很好的建议，正如盖曼在2013年回忆的那样：大约15年前，埃里森在一个会议上向我走来，说：“盖曼，你他妈怎么就不刮胡子？”，我说“我的胡子很硬，皮肤很敏感，我不喜欢刮胡子。”埃里森急忙说道“不是有护发素吗？只要把护发素涂上，揉一揉，洗掉，再刮脸。简直他妈不要太好用。”事实证明，确实有效。
翻译组：
Li Xia, 女， HR, 经济学人发烧友
Neil, 男，外贸民工，经济学人铁粉
Samantha，女，滑冰狂人，邓伦未婚妻
校核组：
Yao，男，英专本科生，北大苗子
Lee，男，医学英译 Timberland爱好者
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观点|评论|思考
本次观点由Lucia独家奉献
Lucia ，女，翻译学硕士三年制，经济学人粉丝
美国著名的文学评论家布哈伊·哈桑曾说，“科幻小说可能在哲学上是天真的，在道德上是简单的，在美学上是有些主观的，或粗糙的，但是就它最好的方面而言，它似乎触及了人类集体梦想的神经中枢，解放出我们人类这具机器中深藏的某些幻想”。科幻小说家哈兰·埃利森（Harlan Ellison）凭借超人的想象力，为读者构建一个又一个丰富多彩的字面化世界，不断引导读者反思现实世界。如《星际迷航》倡导的平等、和平、和谐理念，其影视拍摄更是汇集了不同国籍演员，他们通力合作，亲如一家，在20世纪60年代，这种和平主题思想的表达无疑具有划时代意义。
哈兰·埃利森被美国星云奖授予“科幻大师”称号，一生创作颇丰，共获得过10次雨果奖和4次星云奖，也是唯一一位赢取3次美国作家指南最佳剧情奖的剧作家。埃利森用科幻小说的形式将其独特的内心世界展现出来，以此寻找“埃利森的读者”，极富个性，其作品值得细读。
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愿景
小组
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