《愛x死x機器人》：齊瑪的作品（Zima Blue）：原著中的後記

翻譯：

有時，你腦海只有一個模糊的概念，很多年之後才會想明白故事應該從何著手。通常，你必須等這個半成形的概念與別的點子融合，然後靈感才會迸發。

這就是「Zima Blue」的創作過程，也是本書中第二篇Carrie Clay的故事。我一直想寫關於機器人的故事，故事中的機器人經過許多世紀的代代相傳成了傳家寶，隨著時間的流逝，它變得越來越聰明，越來越精細，我知道艾薩克·阿西莫夫（Isaac Asimov）已經在他的長篇小說《雙百人》(《The Bicentennial Man》) 中‘用過’了這個概念，但科幻小說真正令人愉悅的是，它所涉及的遠不止是新概念，更在於尋找新的角度去理解已有的概念，你要做的就是找到自己的理解角度，用新的敘述方式，闡明新的道理，不用說，這部分是最困難的。

'Zima Blue'被我擱置了很多年，直至我找到另一半——全新的闡述角度。期間我試圖通過游泳來理清思緒，不經意間想通了其中關鍵。

游泳池真是個好地方。

由於'Zima Blue'講的是記憶的易錯性，因此唯有記錄下我自己對文中一件軼事的不確定性，才算合情合理。我提到了這樣一個故事，一個男人拼命尋找童年時見過的某種藍色，後來在自然歷史博物館的一隻甲蟲身上找到了這個顏色。這件事發生在神經學家奧利弗·薩克斯（Oliver Sacks）身上：至少我記得他在電視節目中談論過類似的事情，如果我記錯了細節，我很抱歉…但我只想重申我對薩克斯作品的熱愛，以及我在閱讀他的個人履歷時，經歷的驚嘆以及敬畏之情。如果科幻小說不存在於這個宇宙，那麼薩克斯的著作將非常有效地填補這一空白。

註：

1. 《Zima Blue》收錄於Alastair Reynolds的小說集《Zima Blue and other stories》

2. 《雙百人》是美國作家艾薩克·阿西莫夫的小說，獲得了1976年雨果獎和星雲獎的最佳科幻小說。

3. 奧利弗·薩克斯（Oliver Sacks），英國倫敦著名腦神經學家，擅長以紀實文學的形式，充滿人文關懷的筆觸，將腦神經病人的臨床案例寫成深刻感人的故事，他在醫學和文學領域均享有盛譽，被《紐約時報》譽為「醫學桂冠詩人」。

原文：

Sometimes you have half an idea for a story that you hold in your head for years before you know what to do with it. Typically, you have to wait for the moment when that half-formed idea intersects with another one and the mental fireworks go off.

That's how it was with 'Zima Blue', the second Carrie Clay story that appears in this book. I'd long wanted to write a story about a robot that had become a kind of family heirloom, passed from owner to owner across many generations and centuries, with the robot becoming cleverer and more sophisticated as time goes by. I was well aware that the idea had been 'done' by Isaac Asimov in his long story 'The Bicentennial Man'. But one of the truly delightful things about science fiction is that it is far less about new ideas than it is about finding new ways to think about old ones. All you have to do is find a new spin, a new way of telling, a new truth to illuminate. Which, needless to say, is the difficult part. 'Zima Blue' sat on the back burner for years until I got the other half of the story, the new angle of attack. And I got it while taking a swim to clear my mind of the problems I was having coming up with story ideas.

Good things, swimming pools.

Since 'Zima Blue' is about the fallibility of memory, it's only fitting that I should record my own uncertainty about an anecdote in the story. Mention is made of a man who searched despairingly for a particular shade of the colour blue glimpsed in childhood, and who later finds it in the colour of a beetle in a museum of natural history. I think something like this happened to the neurologist Oliver Sacks: at least, I remember him talking about something very like it in a television programme. If I've misremembered the details, I apologise . . . but I can only restate my enthusiasm for Sacks' writings, and the many moments of jaw-dropping awe I've experienced in reading his . If science fiction did not exist in this universe, the writings of Sacks would fill the gap pretty effectively.

———Alastair Reynolds