科幻小說之父

作為科幻小說的開山鼻祖之一，威爾斯對未來的許多奇想，在今天都已經(jīng)成為現(xiàn)實。

Any Americans who switched on their radios at eight oclock in the evening of 30th October 1938， would have heard a weather forecast followed by live music broadcast from the Meridian Room in the Hotel Park Plaza， New York. Then something happened which changed everything...

An announcer broke in to report that， “Professor Farrell of the Mount Jennings Observatory” had detected explosions on the planet Mars. Concerned listeners were told that a large meteor had crashed into a farmers field in Grovers Mills， New Jersey. A reporter was then heard at the site describing a Martian emerging from a large metallic cylinder， “Good heavens，” he declared...

The reporter continued his grizzly description until he reported that Martians were mounting walking war machines and firing “heat-ray” weapons. Listeners could hear the devastation—the sound of the heat rays， the screams and the explosions. That night， nearly one million American radio listeners actually believed that a real Martian invasion was underway. Panic broke out across the country. In New Jersey， terrified civilians jammed highways seeking to escape the alien marauders.

It was all a hoax of course， and the director， actor and producer of the radio play broadcast at 8 pm—Orson Welles—got into trouble for the brilliant but reckless way he adapted the classic H.G.Wells novel， The War Of The Worlds. Even though the story was over thirty years back then， it still had the ability to speak to the darkest fears inside the human psyche. It amazed and shocked many ordinary Americans， and sent much of the country into a blind panic.

English-born Herbert George Wells remains one of the greatest science fiction writers of the English language. His books became so successful that many were turned into successful films. In The Invisible Man a scientist turns himself invisible but struggles to turn himself back again. In The Island of Dr. Moreau a ship-wrecked man discovers the ghastly and horrific experiments done by an evil doctor， as he wanders around the island.

The First Men in the Moon tells of two men landing there who discover an alien race living there. In The Time Machine an English scientist invents a time machine travelling from the Victorian period to into the far future， discovering strange sentient races as he progresses. Many of these themes sound familiar to sci-fi fans now—not because he copied them， but because he invented them and everyone else subsequently took and developed his ideas.

Wells was an enormously confident man. He was very creative and always seemed to researching for his next new idea or dreaming up a possible future technology. Fascinatingly， he was often right， for example， he predicted the atomic power and antigravity-substances to allow machines to escape the earths gravity. Written in 1896， The Island of Dr. Moreau features now familiar ideas， such as genetic engineering， blood transfusions and advanced surgical techniques. His 1933 novel The Shape of Things to Come saw a wireless wrist intercom that had many smart phone like features.

Before that in 1923s Men Like Gods， he imagined a utopian future in which people communicated almost entirely by wireless telephones and voice mail. In the late 1930s， he proposed something he called the “World Brain”， an enormous bank of human knowledge stored on microfilm and transported free to users by aeroplane—this needed only the invention of the microchip to resemble the internet. He even thought of the automatic sliding door， which appeared in 1899s When The Sleeper Awakes， more than a half-century before it was invented.

H.G.Wells published hundreds of books and pamphlets of many different kinds—from novels and short stories to social commentary， reportage， travel writing and world history. An intellectual powerhouse with a genius for telling stories， any science fiction fan should seek out his work.

1938年10月30日晚八點，許多美國人打開收音機，準備收聽來自紐約公園廣場酒店“經(jīng)線直播間”的天氣預報，以及隨后的現(xiàn)場音樂廣播。然而，隨后的事改變了一切……

播音員緊急插播一條新聞，說“詹寧斯山天文臺的法雷爾教授”檢測到火星發(fā)生了爆炸。此時聽眾們開始有些擔心了。他們被告知，一顆巨大的流星撞到了新澤西州格魯米爾斯某農(nóng)民的田地里。隨后，聽眾能聽到記者在現(xiàn)場描述有“火星人”從一個大金屬圓筒中冒出——“天哪！”這位記者驚呼道……

這位記者繼續(xù)著他恐怖的描述，說火星人裝了步行戰(zhàn)斗器械，并開始用“熱光”武器掃射。聽眾可以聽到掃射的聲音——激光發(fā)射聲、尖叫聲，還有爆炸聲。當晚，近百萬的美國聽眾對“火星人入侵”信以為真，恐慌席卷了全國。在新澤西州，驚恐的民眾因為要逃離外星劫掠者，堵塞了高速公路。

當然，這完全是一個惡作劇，晚八點廣播劇的導演、演員兼制片人奧遜·威爾斯天才卻魯莽地改編了威爾斯的經(jīng)典小說——《星際戰(zhàn)爭》，給自己惹來了不少麻煩。盡管當時威爾斯的《星際戰(zhàn)爭》已經(jīng)出版了三十年，但此作品仍能同人類靈魂中最黑暗的擔憂產(chǎn)生共鳴。這個故事如此震驚，嚇壞了許多普普通通的美國人，還使美國大部分地區(qū)陷入了盲目恐慌。

出生于英國的赫伯特·喬治·威爾斯至今仍是英語世界中最偉大的科幻作家之一。他寫的作品受到廣泛好評，許多被拍成電影后仍大獲成功。《隱形人》講述了一個科學家將自己隱形后卻無法恢復原形。在《莫洛博士島》中，失事船只上唯一的生還者在孤島上漫步，卻意外發(fā)現(xiàn)了一名邪惡的醫(yī)生的恐怖實驗。

《月球上最早的人類》講述的是兩個登月的人在月球上發(fā)現(xiàn)了外星生物。《時間機器》則是說一位英國科學家發(fā)明了一臺時間機器，并從維多利亞時代穿越到遙遠的未來，沿途發(fā)現(xiàn)了各種奇怪的智能生物。這些主題對現(xiàn)代科幻迷來說都再熟悉不過了——但這可不是因為威爾斯無新意——正是因為威爾斯發(fā)明了這些概念，后來人才開始借用并發(fā)展了他的科幻概念！

威爾斯是一個極其自信的人。他極富創(chuàng)造力，似乎總在不斷地尋找下一個新的想法，或是夢想出一個未來可能的技術(shù)。有趣的是，他的想法經(jīng)常被事實證實。例如，他預測了原子能，以及能讓機器擺脫地球引力的反重力物質(zhì)。寫于1896年的《莫洛博士島》主要描述了現(xiàn)在大家熟悉的很多概念，如：基因工程、輸血和先進的手術(shù)技術(shù)。在他1933年的小說《未來世界》中，我們就已經(jīng)領(lǐng)略了有著智能手機功能的無線手表對講機。

在此之前，1923年的《神一樣的人》中，他想象了一個烏托邦式的未來，人們幾乎完全憑借無線電話和語音郵件溝通。在20世紀30年代末期，他提出了“世界大腦”的概念：說的是將一個巨大的人類知識的寶庫儲存在微縮膠卷中，通過飛行器免費提供給用戶使用——此概念只需微芯片的發(fā)明，便可完全描述當今的互聯(lián)網(wǎng)。他甚至早在1899年的《眠者醒來》中，就提出了自動門的概念，這比其最終發(fā)明早了半個多世紀。

威爾斯發(fā)表的圖書和小冊子多達數(shù)百本——從小說到短篇故事、從社會評論到報告文學、從游記到世界歷史，應(yīng)有盡有。他不僅是知識分子中的大咖，還是講故事的天才，所有科幻迷都應(yīng)該找他的作品拜讀。