我們為什么讀科幻？

申申然

Just as Obi-Wan Kenobi1） presented a lightsaber2） to Luke Skywalker with the words， "Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough，" my father gave me two books when I turned 11： Pebble in the Sky by Isaac Asimov3） and The Puppet Masters by Robert Heinlein4）. I don&apos；t remember which book I read first， only that I finished both in one day. I never stopped.

Kevin J. Maroney， managing editor of the New York Review of Science Fiction， says， "I started reading Science Fiction （SF） because of peer pressure： My older brother was a heavy SF reader， so the stuff was all around the house when I was growing up. The earliest books I can remember reading were fantasies （Oz， Narnia， Lewis Carroll5）， The Phantom Tollbooth） and SF （The Spaceship Under the Apple Tree， the Tom Swift Jr.6） novels， The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet）."

Diana Tixier Herald， author of Fluent in Fantasy： The Next Generation， says she has always been a SF reader. "I changed schools 13 times before I graduated high school， and every time I moved I would go into the library and all of my friends were there. I established relationships with the characters in these books." Herald&apos；s literary companions？ Besides Nancy Drew， she read， A Wrinkle in Time， The Once and Future King， and The Mushroom Planet books by Eleanor Cameron7）.

The science fiction and fantasy genre is an oeuvre8） of weird and wondrous. People come to science fiction and fantasy for the familiarity—most children&apos；s fairy tales are deeply fantastical—but they stay for reasons as varied as why people read at all.

Tor9） editor Teresa Nielsen-Hayden wisely says， "If you ask 20 different readers why they read， they will all be right." People read non-genre fiction10） to enjoy a world that is not their own， to live someone&apos；s life tangentially11） and vicariously12）. People read fiction to be informed， to be entertained， to escape， etc.

Reading is an escapist13） hobby， but science fiction and fantasy reading even more so—people can escape out of their own worlds into places and times that do not exist nor ever will.

就像歐比旺·肯諾比將一把光劍交給天行者盧克并對他說“你父親希望你年齡夠大后可以擁有它”一樣，在我滿11歲的時候，父親送給我兩本書：艾薩克·阿西莫夫的《蒼穹微石》和羅伯特·海因萊因的《傀儡主人》。我不記得我先讀的是哪一本，只記得我在一天里就看完了這兩本書。我是一口氣讀完的。

《紐約科幻小說評論》雜志的總編輯凱文·馬羅尼說：“我開始讀科幻小說是礙于同齡人的壓力：我哥哥是個科幻小說迷，所以從小到大家里滿屋子都是科幻小說。我能記得我最早讀的書是奇幻小說（《綠野仙蹤》《納尼亞傳奇》、劉易斯·卡羅爾的小說、《神奇的收費亭》）和科幻小說（《蘋果樹下的太空船》、小湯姆·斯威夫特系列小說、《飛往蘑菇星球的奇幻之旅》）。”

《暢讀奇幻：新生代作品指南》一書的作者戴安娜·蒂克西爾·赫勒爾德則表示，她一直是科幻小說的忠實讀者。“到中學畢業為止，我總共換過13次學校，每次轉到新學校，我就會去學校的圖書館——我所有的朋友都在那兒呢。我跟那些科幻小說中的人物都建立了感情。”赫勒爾德都有哪些文學伴侶呢？除了《少女妙探》之外，她還讀過《時間的皺紋》《永恒之王》以及埃莉諾·卡梅倫的《蘑菇星球》系列。

科幻與奇幻類小說是關于怪異與奇妙的文學。人們讀科幻與奇幻類小說是想找到一種熟悉感——兒時讀的童話故事大多都帶著濃厚的奇幻色彩，不過讓他們一直讀下去的原因卻一如人們為何讀書一樣多種多樣。

托爾出版社的編輯特雷莎·尼爾森-海登說過一句妙語：“如果你問20個不同的讀者他們為何讀書，他們給的理由全都是對的。”人們閱讀非通俗小說是想體驗別樣的世界，是想既置身事外又能間接體驗別人的生活。人們讀小說則是為了長見識，為了休閑消遣，為了逃避等等。

閱讀是一種可以逃避現實的嗜好，而讀科幻與奇幻類小說更是如此——人們可以逃離自己的世界，走進現在不存在、將來也不會存在的時空。endprint