"Mercury Retrograde" is the latest collection of novels by young writer Diptera. Influenced by science fiction since childhood, she has been engaged in writing in this area herself. In her view, science fiction literature needs to have both a sharp awareness of scientific research and a sense of problem, and all the artistic standards required by literature.
This article is a creative talk written by Diptera for this book. She wrote: "My understanding of science fiction, my professional interpretation of natural beauty and artistic beauty, and my 'class flavor' creation, the three rolled organically. ”
"The best science fiction can elevate the fate of mankind to the fate of the universe, and whether this "ascent" results in success or failure, another beginning, or all in vain, the reader always feels for a moment that he has transcended the finite life of "everyone dies" and glimpsed the eternity.
- I have wanted to write this kind of science fiction since I watched robot cats and Verne in elementary school, read the Golden Age Triumvirate in junior high school, read Lem's "Solaris Star" in college, read New Wave works, and then intermittently supplemented "Star Trek" and "Doctor Who", and I sadly found that there are countless outstanding predecessors who wrote cosmic propositions, and sometimes, the drama plays tricks more wonderful than the novel. In the spirit of the strategy of either surpassing the predecessors or finding a different path, I chose the latter. I need to think about how to find a different way.
Science fiction writing is a combination of artistic writing and research strategy. Art is difficult to quantify, and the masterpieces are obvious, but it is difficult to compare them horizontally and seek a more unified standard. Research often has a clear approach, and different problems and methodologies have their own context. The difficulty of science fiction lies in the fact that it has both the depth of art and the depth of scientific research, and the trick of science fiction happens to be that its development is similar to scientific research, and the "problematic" nature of science fiction works has a layer of historiographical evolution. From utopia to Mary Shelley, from Verne to Campbell, from Wells to the New Wave, the history of science fiction is the history of the evolution of "idea literature", and to put it more pretly, science fiction is "the history of the problem of novelty".
The development of science and technology has promoted mankind to re-understand the structure of the universe, the evolution of species, the development of society, and the insignificance of human beings. Sci-fi asks questions and then gives its artistic answers. At this point, the entry point of science fiction writing becomes simple: it needs to go beyond the insignificance of the individual, start from the "problem history" of science fiction literature, give newer and more advanced answers to the same problem, or raise new questions. Therefore, my understanding of science fiction writing is that it needs to have both a sharp awareness of scientific thinking and a sense of hard work, and all the artistic standards required by literature.
My major and current main profession is aesthetics. Whenever someone asks me, "What is beauty?" I replied in Plato's words, "Beauty is difficult." Most of the questioners are men, and when they hear the answers, they are always confused and a little complacent: "Is beauty a man?" "It is true that my profession offers some kind of illusion. Non-delusional things are always difficult. Rather than simplification, confidence and illusion, I rely more on humility and complexity. Aesthetics talks about the beauty of nature and the beauty of art. In general, aesthetics is a small discipline, it is humble; However, aesthetics can be talked about in fact, and it is also complicated.
After writing my doctoral dissertation, I wrote the first work in the Mercury retrograde fiction collection, "An Essay on the "Text". The assessment of the work is approaching, and my paper has not yet been sent out, so I finished writing "Four Belongs" and went to "roll" the paper. The novel collection was published, and a friend said: This way of promoting the project, the number of ways you are forced by the paper, a class flavor! I comfort myself: I have a sense of problem!
All I can say is that I am currently gaining a kind of self-consistency. My understanding of science fiction, the history of my major's interpretation of natural beauty and artistic beauty, and my "class flavor" creation, all three rolled organically. If the green pepper was less stressful, I could roll farther!
Diptera / Gaze
Translation Press
There are a total of six works in the novel collection, two of which have the word "paper" directly in their titles, and the other two works talk about the scientific research of universities and companies, and the remaining two are that I can't resist the impulse and finally try to write about the fate of the universe and mankind.
"Mao Yingtu and the Kashiwagi University Library" was my first attempt to submit a manuscript to a core journal of literary creation, and I consciously weakened the novel's awareness of scientific issues, highlighting a certain humanistic or literary problem consciousness, that is, whether "knowledge and writing" itself belongs to human beings. Han Yu's "The Biography of Mao Ying" inspired me, and I collected poems from literary history that responded to Han Yu, and the whole process was quite interesting, and I couldn't help but think: Chinese culture is deep enough, but there are only so many popular commercial themes. Admittedly, commerce relies on the labeling of types. "Mao Yingtu and the Kashiwagi University Library" strives to step on the boundary between science fiction and strange monsters, and does not take sides, which may make the novel itself more approachable.
"Remembering the Editing and Reviewing of the Five Senses Essays" is the core journal of the second time I submitted to literary creation, and I have become bolder. At the right time, my main work officially entered the stage of "volume" papers, and my state of mind had not yet reached the current level, and I began to think about the limits of academic argumentation itself. On the one hand, I try to use the form of "Five Senses Essay" to reflect on the limitations of academic textual argumentation and the subjectivity of the five senses. On the other hand, I wrote a novel that tortured the editor by reviewing the paper. I would like to thank the editors for their generosity in accepting my manuscript – I think this is also a response to the content and form of the novel at the level of "meta-editing".
"Four Don't Dragons" originated from a manuscript request, which gave me the opportunity to continue writing "Four Don't Animals". The eponymous title of my first collection of novels, The Rooster Prince, is intended to use the inductive logic of the Analects of the Analects to reflect on the progressive deductive logic of Asimov's three laws of robots: "Don't hurt others, obey humans, and protect yourself." The writing of "The Rooster Prince" was never really completed, because wisdom is not a formal logic that can be regulated. I've been planning to write a series of zodiac signs called "Four Don't Animals", and one of the pivotal animals is the dragon. Dragons are fictional, and if dragons have intelligence, it will not be limited to existing forms of intelligence. I superficially blended scientific research and engineering with art and design, and wrote a story of "science" making dragons. The dragon is a totem of man, derived from man's imagination, and it is positioned as "decorative wisdom". Decoration can have a real transcendence.
《一篇關於“文面”的論文》事實上寫得最早，屬於恢復性寫作，源自飛氘老師辦的工作坊。小說的野心頗大，故事、人物、筆力跟不上，一開始草草結尾，小說集定稿時重新改了一遍，加了一萬多字，算是把想到的都塞進去了。整個寫作體驗其實較之小說集的其它篇目，是最好的，因為不論成敗如何，我挑戰了一件超出我能力範圍的事情。我沒有中途逃跑，我堅持下來了。上次有同樣感覺是寫《空間圍棋》的時候。不過，再讀《空間圍棋》，我會心生懷念，再讀《一篇關於“文面”的論文》，我自己都腦仁疼。我開始懷疑：有些小說大概適合拿來寫，不適合拿來讀。這類小說大概還有價值（比如，掙稿費的價值），所以收入小說集。只是苦了寫推薦語的兩位友人，感謝你們懂我！
"Solar System Studio: The Teahouse at the End of the Universe" is one of the "Solar System Studio" series. There are currently only two installments in the series, the other being "Solar System Studio: The Seagull". Although both were well received and did maintain a literary character that remained faithful to the original, my personal experience was frustrating. I've written other tributes like "Miracles from Dr. Moreau's Island" as a tribute to Wells, "The Ghost of the Basin and the Suitcase" as a tribute to Bao Gong, and "My Family and Other Evolving Animals" as a tribute to Darrell's Greek Trilogy. The tribute is to stand on the shoulders of giants and try to see a little farther than giants.
They made me realize that I did not have any advantage of "taking shortcuts" by relying on the "scientific research problematic" idea of science fiction to intervene in such works with a strong artistic core. It's just that in the process of paying homage or adaptation, I really confronted the profundity and hardness of literary classics. The science fiction circle is always proud of its "hard", but the charm of science lies in its falsifiability, giving birth to the kind of scientific spirit that is bound to fail but rises to the challenge; True literature needs to reach the hard core of art that transcends the circle and is universal to all mankind, and this kind of hard core exists like that, which cannot be falsified and cannot be avoided. "Solar System Studio: The Teahouse at the End of the Universe" still borrows Lao She's hardcore, there is no way to surpass, and there is no shortcut. So the "Solar System Studios" series has been, and will remain, only large-scale fanworks based on stylistic experimentation. I've always recognized fandom writing as a reverence for originality.
《水星逆行》實際是小說集中最硬的科幻。首先，木星品質增加，或可變為恆星，與地球成為雙星系統的理論是有論證且成立的。其次，雙恆星系統的軌道變化、外太陽系行星脫離太陽系的方式及軌跡，我使用《宇宙沙盤》（ Universe Sandbox ）進行了將近十個小時的類比。這讓我體驗了邊跑數據、邊抄數據寫小說的樂趣。
Thirdly, for the theory that dark matter may not hold up and that dark energy may dominate the universe, I referred to the documentary "Chasing Einstein" and read some papers and popular science that I couldn't understand but tried to read. Finally, I conceived of the "science" of increasing the mass of planets through the conversion of dark energy into dark matter. However, the "hardness" of this novel was packaged by me as "pseudoscience". The two female protagonists of the novel are engaged in scientific research, but they can't help but talk about constellations. Astrology is a hermeneutic attempt to explain the fate of mankind through the laws of motion of the universe – it's superstitious, it's science fiction. If I had been born on Mercury, there would be no such thing as "Mercury retrograde."
However, due to the delicate relationship between Mercury's rotation and revolution, the Sun will also be retrograde when viewed from Mercury. What does the "retrograde sun" symbolize for Mercury people? Interpreting fate through astrological signs, it is not necessarily accurate, but it is a human instinct. The two female protagonists have never denied this instinct, and at the same time, they have never given up this instinct-based interpretation. The witches are oppressed, but they are always anchored in Macbeth's fate. In this sense, technology is indeed magic, and science fiction is indeed witchcraft.
Mercury is the messenger, and the "water retrograde" should pay attention to the hidden dangers of long journeys and electrical appliances. With the development of artificial intelligence, the resurgence of extraterrestrial exploration, and the unstable period when human society has entered the "Aquarius Age", it seems appropriate to use "Mercury Retrograde" as the general title of the novel collection. Perhaps behind the "retrograde" there is an impulse to re-seek the right of interpretation. I still believe that science fiction is a confluence of interpretive methodologies: the problematic consciousness and the adventurous spirit of scientific research; The core of art is the core of life and the tolerance of pathos.
New Media Editor: Yuan Huan
Picture: photo network, data map
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