Liu Cixin, China's most popular science-fiction writer, is 52 years old and has written thirteen books. He worked as a software engineer at a power plant in Shanxi. In China, he is about as famous as William Gibson in the United States; he’s often compared to Arthur C. Clarke, whom he cites as an influence. His most popular book, "The Three-Body Problem," has been translated into English by the American sci-fi writer Ken Liu, and in China it's being made into a movie, along with its sequels.
劉慈欣是中國最受歡迎的科幻作家，現年52歲的他著有13作品。劉慈欣曾擔任山西省某發(fā)電廠的軟件工程師。他在中國的知名度可以和美國科幻作家威廉·吉布森（William Gibson）相媲美。人們常將劉慈欣與亞瑟·克拉克（Arthur C. Clarke）相提并論，而劉慈欣稱自己受到了克拉克的影響。劉慈欣最受歡迎的小說《三體》（The Three-Body Problem）已經被美籍華裔科幻作家劉宇昆（Ken Liu）譯成了英文。在中國，《三體》三部曲的電影也已在拍攝中。

Liu Cixin's writing evokes the thrill of exploration and the beauty of scale. "In my imagination," he told me, in an e-mail translated by Ken Liu, "abstract concepts like the distance marked by a light-year or the diameter of the universe become concrete images that inspire awe."
劉慈欣的作品喚起了人們對探索和宏觀之美的興奮感。在一封經劉宇昆翻譯的電子郵件中，劉慈欣告訴我：“在我的想象中，以光年計量的距離和宇宙直徑這類抽象概念變成了具體的形象，令人心生敬畏。”

American science fiction draws heavily on American culture, of course—the war for independence, the Wild West, film noir, sixties psychedelia—and so humanity’s imagined future often looks a lot like America's past. For an American reader, one of the pleasures of reading Liu is that his stories draw on entirely different resources.
毋庸置疑，美國科幻小說很大程度上取材于美國文化，包括獨立戰(zhàn)爭、西部荒野、黑色電影、60年代的迷幻風潮，因此，人文科學所構想的未來世界與美國的過去存在很大程度的相似性。對美國讀者來說，閱讀劉慈欣作品的樂趣之一在于他的故事取材完全不同。

Much of "The Three-Body Problem" is set during the Cultural Revolution. In "The Wages of Humanity," visitors from space demand the redistribution of Earth's wealth, and explain that runaway capitalism almost destroyed their civilization. I doubt that any Western sci-fi writer has so thoroughly explored the theme of filial piety.
小說《三體》的故事背景大抵都是文化大革命（the Cultural Revolution）期間。在《贍養(yǎng)人類》（The Wages of Humanity）這部小說中，太空來客要求重新分配地球財富，并解釋說失控的資本主義幾乎摧毀了他們的文明。我不太確定西方科幻作家會如此全面深入地探討“孝道”這一主題。

But it's not cultural difference that makes Liu's writing extraordinary. His stories are fables about human progress—concretely imagined but abstract. Take the novella "Sun of China," which follows Ah Quan, a young man from a rural village that has been impoverished by drought. In the first three chapters, Ah Quan sets out from the village and finds work in a mine; he travels to a regional city, where he learns to shine shoes, and moves to Beijing, where he works as a skyscraper-scaling window-washer. Then the story takes a turn.
劉慈欣作品的特別之處并非在于文化差異。他的故事都是一些有關人類發(fā)展的寓言——既是具體的想象，同時又是抽象的概念。在他的短篇小說《中國太陽》（Sun of China）中，主人公是個叫做阿全的年輕小伙子，他來自一個遭受旱災的貧困鄉(xiāng)村。在小說的前三章里，阿全離開了村子，到礦上找工作；接著他又到了一個地級市，在那里學會了擦皮鞋，之后輾轉來到北京，當起了一名高樓外墻玻璃清洗工。后來，故事情節(jié)出現了一個轉折。