URBANOMIC MEDIA LTD. 城市原子媒体有限公司THE OLD LEMONADE FACTORY 老柠檬水厂WINDSOR QUARRY 温莎石矿场FALMOUTH TR 11 3EXUNITED KINGDOM 联合王国
(C) Simon Sellars 2018
All rights reserved. 保留所有权利。
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any other information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. 未经出版商事先书面许可,不得以任何形式或通过任何电子或机械手段,包括影印、录制或任何其他信息存储或检索系统,复制或传播本书的任何部分。
BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA 英国图书馆出版编目数据
A full catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library 这本书的完整目录记录可从大英图书馆获取
This is a work of non-fiction based on unreal events. 这是一部根据虚幻事件改编的非虚构作品。
Printed and bound in the UK by 英国印刷和装订
TJ International, Padstow TJ 国际,帕德斯托
K-Pulp: New Adventures in Theory-Fiction K-Pulp:理论小说新冒险
For Sarah, Hazel and Marlo 献给莎拉、海泽尔和马洛
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2023 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation 在 Kahle/Austin 基金会的资助下,互联网档案馆将于 2023 年数字化
There is no way to tell his story without telling my own. And if his story is really a confession, then so is mine. 如果不讲述我自己的故事,就无法讲述他的故事。如果他的故事真的是忏悔,那么我的故事也是。
-Willard, Apocalypse Now -威拉德,《现代启示录》
PSYCHIC COMBAT 心理战
I can trace my decline. That is one of the bittersweet benefits of survival. I can locate the exact moment in time when I joined the theatre of the unwell. I was a high school dropout, pinballing between dead-end jobs. 我可以追溯到我的衰落。这是生存的苦乐参半的好处之一。我可以准确地找到我加入 "不健康剧场 "的时间点。当时我高中辍学,在没前途的工作间辗转。 Once a bright student, I'd squandered my ambition, melting like a fuse under excessive voltage. No one knew why, let alone me. I turned inwards but nothing held my stare. The void was too deep. 我曾经是个聪明的学生,但我的雄心壮志被挥霍一空,就像过高电压下的保险丝一样熔化了。没有人知道为什么,更不用说我了。我转向内心,但没有任何东西能吸引我的目光。虚空太深了。
I lost sight of myself within an interminable fever dream. 我在无休止的狂热梦境中迷失了自我。
I awoke inside an anomalous world. 我在一个异常的世界里醒来。
Something was waiting, oddly familiar. 有什么东西在等待着,奇怪的是,它很熟悉。
Another version of me. 另一个我
A clone, threatening me with erasure. 一个克隆人,威胁要抹去我的记忆。
I was left with no choice but to spark an internal war. The mission: take out the clone. But the fight would expose me to interdimensional radiation. I became sick with time, unable to distinguish between the past, present and future. 我别无选择,只能引发一场内部战争。任务:干掉克隆人。但这场战斗会让我暴露在次元辐射中。我对时间产生了厌恶,无法区分过去、现在和未来。 What's more, I was unskilled in psychic combat, asking the wrong questions and opening the wrong doors. 更重要的是,我不擅长通灵战斗,问错了问题,开错了门。
The dark matter burned me from inside. 黑暗物质从内心深处灼烧着我。
SACRIFICIAL WEAPON 彝器
It was the early 90 s, the zenith of cyberculture, an incandescent moment when the embryonic internet went nova. 那是 90 年代初,网络文化的顶峰,互联网雏形初现的炽热时刻。 The net was wild and untamed, a frontier zone occupied by hackers, digital pirates and online insurgents-a cadre of undesirables romanticised in glossy cyberphile magazines. But in the land of the terminally unhip, it was a different story. 网络是狂野的、桀骜不驯的,是黑客、数字盗版者和网上叛乱者占据的前沿地带--光鲜亮丽的网络爱好者杂志浪漫地描绘了这群不受欢迎的人。但在 "无知 "的国度里,情况却截然不同。 Distinguished TV personalities made fools of themselves live on air, asking 'What is internet, anyway?' and struggling to pronounce the '(a)' symbol. The divide was clear. 电视名人在现场直播中出洋相,他们问 "互联网到底是什么?",并努力发音"(a)"符号。分歧显而易见。 You were either a fearless cybertrooper storming the gilded gates of tomorrow or a clueless rube snowblind from pixel blizzards. 你要么是一个无所畏惧的电子士兵,冲进了未来的金色大门,要么就是一个被像素暴风雪弄得懵懵懂懂的傻瓜。
The net was hyped as a step change in human evolution. One day, thundered the cyberprophets, consciousness would be uploaded to computer mainframes, ditching the body like a booster rocket. 网络被誉为人类进化史上的一个里程碑。网络预言家们如雷贯耳地说,总有一天,人们的意识会被上传到计算机主机上,像助推火箭一样脱离肉体。 The body was dead weight, so much 'meat', and cyber fads like body modification displayed contempt for physical limitations. 身体是死物,是那么多的 "肉",而身体改造等网络时尚则显示出对身体限制的蔑视。 Swept up in the fervour, I pierced my nose in three places and my tongue in two, but instead of ascension to an enlightened state, all I received was a nasty sinus infection and a speech impediment that lasted for months. 我沉浸在狂热之中,在鼻子上穿了三个洞,舌头上穿了两个洞,但我并没有升华到开悟的境界,而是得了讨厌的鼻窦炎和持续数月的语言障碍。
A gaggle of Californian cyberhippies had come to dominate cyberculture, peddling snake oil about digital utopias and the net as 'the new home of mind', but their dull rhetoric, forged from white-male privilege, left me cold. Where was the danger, the excitement, the diversity? 加利福尼亚的一群网络嬉皮士主宰了网络文化,他们兜售关于数字乌托邦和网络是 "心灵的新家园 "的蛇油,但他们沉闷的言辞,白人男性的特权,让我心寒。危险、刺激和多样性在哪里? My discontent drew me to cyberpunk, the nihilistic science fiction genre that would expunge forever the hippy communes transplanted from the desert to the net. It was a stark corrective to cyberutopianism. In cyberpunk, virtual reality is the new normal. Alienated loners onto 我的不满情绪把我引向了赛博朋克,这种虚无主义的科幻小说流派将把从沙漠移植到网络上的嬉皮士公社永远清除出去。这是对赛博乌托邦主义的严厉批判。在赛博朋克中,虚拟现实是新常态。被异化的孤独者 到
cyberspace via neural interface, their minds conjoined, their bodies lifeless and slack, but when things go bad the nervous system is destroyed and the mind is warped. Sometimes, death is the consequence. It was a worldview I could buy into. 他们通过神经接口进入网络空间,他们的思想连在一起,身体没有生命,松弛无力,但一旦情况不妙,神经系统就会遭到破坏,思想也会扭曲。有时,死亡就是后果。这是我可以接受的世界观。
Cyberpunk was a more accurate summation of the era, predicting startling research that exposed a sickness at the heart of our culture. 赛博朋克是对这个时代更准确的概括,它预测了令人震惊的研究,暴露了我们文化核心的病态。 In the wake of the cyberprophets, the global news agency Reuters had released a provocative report on information overload that was beginning to unnerve even the staunchest adherents. 在网络预言家之后,全球新闻机构路透社发布了一份关于信息超载的挑衅性报告,甚至连最坚定的拥护者也开始感到不安。 It detailed how the sum total of all available information was doubling in increasingly shorter amounts of time-a tsunami of data swamping the mind, streaming uncontrollably from the new overlapping technologies of faxes, mobile phones, modems, internet and online conferencing. 它详细介绍了所有可用信息的总和如何在越来越短的时间内翻倍--数据海啸淹没了人们的头脑,从传真、移动电话、调制解调器、互联网和在线会议等新的重叠技术中不受控制地涌出。 Meanwhile, the human cost of assimilating and processing this material was increasing exponentially. The result was 'Information Fatigue Syndrome', a peculiarly 90 s phenomenon that atrophied attention spans, shut down the mind and depleted the body. 与此同时,吸收和处理这些材料的人力成本也在成倍增加。其结果就是 "信息疲劳综合症",这是一种 90 年代特有的现象,它使人的注意力萎缩、思维停滞、体力不支。 Symptoms included 'hyper-aroused psychological condition', 'paralysis of analytical capacity', 'anxiety and self-doubt', and a capacity for 'foolish decisions and flawed conclusions'. 症状包括 "过度亢奋的心理状态"、"分析能力瘫痪"、"焦虑和自我怀疑",以及做出 "愚蠢决定和得出错误结论 "的能力。 These matched my own situation, for I was nothing if not indolent, and I made an appointment with the doctor to complain about my malaise, which now had a name. 这些都与我的情况相符,因为我如果不懒散的话,那就什么都不是了。我约见了医生,抱怨我的不适,现在我的不适有了名字。
The so-called medical practitioner regarded me with barely concealed contempt as I shrouded my condition in pseudointellectual babble, quoting the Reuters report in a pathetic attempt to make my situation appear more significant than what it was: the torpor of a degenerate slacker. 当我用伪知识分子的胡言乱语来掩饰自己的病情时,这位所谓的医生几乎毫不掩饰地用蔑视的目光看着我,他引用路透社的报道,试图让我的情况看起来比实际情况更重要:一个堕落的懒汉的倦怠。 Information Fatigue Syndrome seemed heroic, an unavoidable consequence of serving in the Info War, of sustained immersion within the new cyber dawn of virtual reality and wraparound technology. 信息疲劳综合征似乎是一种英雄主义,是在信息战争中服役的不可避免的后果,是持续沉浸在虚拟现实和包裹技术的新网络黎明中的不可避免的后果。
'I'm a cyberwarrior,' I told him. 'And my mind is going.' 我是一名网络战士,"我告诉他。'我的大脑正在运转。
The doctor rose wearily from his seat and walked to the medicine cabinet. On his desk was a set of golden blades. I supposed they were scalpels of some kind, but in any case medical scenes always made me nervous and paranoid, and the implements induced a rising panic. 医生疲惫地从座位上站起来,走到药柜前。他的桌子上放着一套金色的刀片。我想那应该是某种手术刀,但无论如何,医疗现场总是让我紧张和疑神疑鬼,而这些工具让我的恐慌不断升温。 The blades were alarming, their geometry mystifying. One of the handles resembled a human knuckle, attached to a point so sharp it seemed to disappear into thin air, and I shuddered at the thought of the atrocities that could be committed with this sacrificial weapon. 这些刀片令人震惊,其几何形状令人费解。其中一个手柄像人的指关节,连着一个锋利的尖头,仿佛消失在空气中,一想到用这种牺牲品武器可能犯下的暴行,我就不寒而栗。
He returned with an unmarked box of pills. He explained their purpose and gave me instructions for taking them, but the details failed to register, since I was distracted by an attractive middle-aged nurse who'd been observing our interaction. I felt a deep stirring of the loins. 他拿着一盒没有标记的药片回来了。他向我解释了这些药的用途,并告诉我如何服用,但我没有注意到这些细节,因为我被一位迷人的中年护士分散了注意力,她一直在观察我们的互动。我感到一阵深深的悸动。 She seemed completely present in some recondite way, as if I'd always known her. 她似乎以某种隐秘的方式完全存在,就好像我一直都认识她一样。
I left the clinic carrying the box, remembering nothing of the doctor's instructions. I opened it. A small, shiny disc fell into my hand. 我抱着盒子离开了诊所,对医生的嘱咐一点也不记得了。我打开盒子。一张闪闪发光的小光盘落在了我的手里。
It was mauve in colour, engraved with the crude outline of a dove. 它是淡紫色的,刻着一只鸽子的粗略轮廓。
STILL WORLD 静止的世界
The pills generated monstrous side effects. After ingesting them, I'd fail to remember thoughts I'd had moments before. Sometimes, I'd lose contact with critical childhood memories, even my own name and age, as if entire swathes of my brain had been wiped. 药片产生了可怕的副作用。服药后,我会记不起自己刚才的想法。有时,我会失去童年的重要记忆,甚至连自己的名字和年龄都不记得了,就好像整个大脑都被抹去了一样。 This freefall within mindspace would always be accompanied by chaotic spatial disorientation. Walls would fall away, exposing an inky blackness. Floors would vanish, plunging me into a bottomless chasm. 这种心灵空间的自由坠落总是伴随着混乱的空间迷失。墙壁会倒塌,露出一片漆黑。地板会消失,让我陷入无底的深渊。
In the precious moments between these apocalyptic hallucinations, I managed to hold down a part-time job in a warehouse on the outskirts of town. The warehouse belonged to a wholesale distributor, which supplied stationery and magazines to a chain of newsagents. 在这些世界末日般的幻觉之间的宝贵时间里,我设法在城郊的一个仓库里找到了一份兼职工作。仓库属于一家批发商,为连锁报刊亭提供文具和杂志。 My job was to heat-seal ballpoint pens into plastic blister packs. At the rear of the building was a storeroom for remaindered stock. One day, during a tea break, I scavenged it looking for something to read. 我的工作是将圆珠笔热封到塑料泡罩包装中。大楼后面有一个存放剩余存货的储藏室。一天茶歇时间,我在里面找东西看。 Tempted by a cache of softporn periodicals, my eye was drawn to one cover above all. It featured a seductive young woman, her face flushed by a lurid red filter. Sporting devil horns and a saucy grin, she extended her tongue and winked at the camera. 在一堆软色情期刊的诱惑下,我的目光被其中一个封面所吸引。封面上是一位诱人的年轻女子,她的脸被红色滤镜染得通红。她长着恶魔般的犄角,咧开嘴俏皮地笑着,伸出舌头对着镜头眨了眨眼睛。 It wasn't a porno rag but an edition of magazine, the popular fashion chronicle from the 80s, titled 'The Fear Issue'. 这不是一本色情杂志,而是一本 80 年代流行的时尚纪事 杂志,名为 "恐惧特刊"。
On the cover, arranged around the woman in the largest font, blared the headline for an interview with trash-metal musician Zodiac Mindwarp. Progressively smaller fonts advertised other attractions: an interview with legendary gonzo writer Hunter S. 封面上用最大的字体围绕着这位女士,赫然写着垃圾金属音乐家 Zodiac Mindwarp 的专访标题。逐渐变小的字体还宣传了其他景点:采访传奇怪谈作家亨特-S. Thompson and a heading that simply screamed 'UFOS!'. 汤普森和一个简单地叫着 "UFOS!"的标题。 Tantalised by this vivid mishmash of faded heroes and hypercurrent fads, I scanned the contents, only to discover an essential field guide to the future: an interview with cult author J.G. Ballard, nestled among the back pages. 我被这些生动的英雄人物和超时空潮流的混合体所吸引,扫了一眼内容,却发现了一本通往未来的重要实地指南:在书的后页中夹着对邪教作家 J.G. 巴拉德的采访。
In the 60 s , Ballard had made his name as a science fiction writer, but he was on an elliptical orbit far distant from planets Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke. As a boy, I devoured science fiction but I never read him. He was too far underground. 60 年代,巴拉德作为科幻小说家声名鹊起,但他所处的椭圆轨道与阿西莫夫、海因莱因和克拉克的星球相距甚远。我从小就爱读科幻小说,但从未读过他的作品。他太遥远了 I knew of him through blurbs for his work tucked away in the endpapers of less esoteric novels. I was a simple lad keen on Doc Smith's Lensmen series, the sappiest of 'Boy's Own' space operas. 我是在一些不太深奥的小说封底里看到他的作品简介才知道他的。我还是个单纯的孩子,热衷于史密斯博士的《Lensmen》系列,这是 "男孩自己的 "太空歌剧中最悲情的一部。 What was I to make of works described by shell-shocked copywriters as 'chill splinters of unreality' and 'the source of a bleak new evil'? 我如何看待那些被震惊的广告撰稿人描述为 "不真实的寒冷碎片 "和 "凄凉的新邪恶之源 "的作品?
Clearly, for the -D crowd, Ballard was not a drawcard like Mindwarp, for he was nowhere to be found on the cover-rejected by the devil-babe. Admittedly it was weird to find him there at all, this peripheral figure from my youthful forays into science fiction, mixing it with 's bleeding-edge cast of 'Greboes, Waifs, Wannabes, Heavy Metal Christians, Sloane Rebels and Nocturnal Vampettes'. Yet he was more punk, more post-punk, more cyberpunk than any of them. 显然,对于