走进“它们”的世界:《自然》杂志科幻小说中的非人类叙事

Delving into Their Worlds:Nonhuman Narrative in Nature's Science Fictions

1999年,《自然》杂志在创刊130周年之际,新辟“未来”(“Futures”)栏目,以刊登“完全原创”“长度在850~950个单词之间的优秀科幻作品”。由此,这家全球知名的科学杂志成为发表科幻文学的一个重要平台。本文通过考察《自然》杂志刊载的若干科幻小说,审视此类作品对作为他者的非人类的关注。文章循着“由非人类实体参与的事件被组织进一个文本中”的非人类叙事之定义,重点考察作品的植物叙事、外星人叙事、器物叙事和机器人叙事等四种非人类叙事样式。在科技命题的外衣下,作品不仅描绘了一幅幅科技改变人类生活的未来图景,同时也揭示了人类何以借助科技走进非人类的世界,探究未知的秘密。借此,《自然》杂志的科幻作品在凸显文学想象与科技命题之间内在关联的同时,加深了我们对人类与非人类之间关系的理解,进而使得人类具有更好地介入生物圈和建构更大有机体的可能。

Upon its 130^(th)anniversary,Nature launched a special column“Futures”,which aims to publish“entirely fictional”,self-contained science fiction“around 850~950 words in length”.It has thereafter become one of the most important platforms for publishing science fiction.This paper attempts to explore the nonhuman concerns of science fictions in Nature.Along the line of defining nonhuman narrative as the representation of events with participants of nonhuman entities,it examines plant narrative,alien narrative,thing narrative,and machine narrative.Under the disguise of science issues,the works under discussion not only portray the future worlds of how human lives are changed by science and technology,but also reveal how humans approach the nonhuman world and investigate the unknown.In this regard,apart from highlighting the interconnection between literary imagination and science issues,science fictions in Nature enhance our understanding of human-nonhuman relations so as to engage a larger organic sphere.