科幻大师的爱心关照是如何差点毁了科幻新秀的前程的

美国科幻新秀保罗•巴奇噶鲁皮（Paolo Bacigalupi--什么名字啊）最近几年十分引人注目。他从2005到2007年连续三年或雨果奖短中篇科幻的提名，并在2006年获得以其（短）中篇科幻《卡路里人》（The Calorie Man）获得Theodore Sturgeon 纪念奖。他去年的雨果奖候选作品《黄卡人》（Yellow Card Man）现在还可以在网上读到：

http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0704/yellowcard.shtml

这篇非同寻常的科幻小说写得是一个在泰国的华人在生物恐怖的灾难后不择手段地寻求生存的故事。巴奇噶鲁皮写华人的故事不是偶然的。因为他是美国科幻作家里少有的能说中文的作家（好像Ted Chiang都不会说中文吧？）。他大学主修的专业是东亚研究，主攻方向就是中文。不仅如此，他还在昆明和北京留学学中文，毕业后还在北京工作过一年（帝都的朋友没听说过这人？）。

最近巴奇噶鲁皮在Wired Science网站上接受了采访，叙述了自己如何成为科幻作家的经历。其中一段很有意思。我知道有些人不想看英文。我老人家就勉为其难，大致介绍一下吧。有歪曲错误的地方文责就不负啦。

大意是这样的：话说学中文而热爱科幻的正太巴奇噶鲁皮毕业以后在北京和波士顿之类的地方胡乱找了些工作。对自己的前途很是迷茫。是科幻庞克先驱威廉•吉布森（William Gibson）给他指引了方向。那是在吉布森的一个签名售书会上，年轻而热切的科幻迷巴奇噶鲁皮抓住老吉的肩膀问：“怎么样才能成为你这样的科幻大作家啊？告诉我，告诉我！”老吉忙乱之中说：“先写短篇先写短篇！我老吉就是这样发迹的。”

巴奇噶鲁皮激动万分地回到家中，对着桌子说：“我要开始写短篇科幻啦！”他拿出笔和纸准备开写。忽然想到：“我TMD从哪里开始啊？”

于是他跑出去买了一堆科幻奇幻的杂志，开始补充营养。读完一大堆故事后，心想，好了。这事情太容易了。我只要写个比这些故事都好的故事就可以发表了。

于是他开始写。也许是学中文给了他非同寻常的才华，他的第一篇科幻小说居然就在《奇幻与科幻》杂志发表了。科幻正太小巴奇噶鲁皮拿着第一笔稿费正在得意呢，忽然间，他接到一个非同寻常的电话。

这个电话居然是科幻大师哈兰•埃里森（Harlan Ellison）打给他的。当然埃里森当时还没有获得科幻大师称号。他是在2006年获得美国科幻奇幻作家协会的科幻大师奖的。不过，写过包括《我没有嘴，但我要呐喊》（I have no Mouth, and I must Scream），《杰弗蒂五岁》（Jeffty Is Five）等无数科幻名篇的哈兰•埃里森老早就名震科幻界了。

话说小巴奇噶鲁皮拿起电话，听到电话里的人说：“我是哈兰•埃里森，你知道我是谁吗？”小巴奇噶鲁皮应到：“嗯，是啊，嗯。。。知道。” 埃里森命令到：“去把你发表的小说拿来。” 小巴奇噶鲁皮手忙脚乱屁颠屁颠地跑去拿来那还有油香味的杂志。翻到自己的故事。哈里森说：“听着，小子，你的名字不是假的吧？有谁叫你这样的破名字啊？巴奇噶鲁皮？什么名字？我开始看你的故事的时候还以为你是哪个专业作家化名的呢。可是在第5页下面你露了你业余的马脚：你用了个词‘抽筋了’（jerked），两句之后，你又用了个词‘抽筋的’(jerky)。你小子想把这个屁词的油水都榨干啊？”

小巴奇噶鲁皮听着听着，不禁感到冷汗直冒。他战战兢兢不知道说什么。科幻大师自顾自地开始一段一段地批评小巴奇噶鲁皮的故事。“你开头不错，第二段马马虎虎，第三段一塌糊涂。。。”整个电话打下来，科幻大师将小巴奇噶鲁皮的故事从头到尾批了一顿。最后大师总结到：“我看你小子还有些潜力，别写科幻浪费时间啦。别像我一样一辈子都挂死在科幻上。”然后啪地一声挂了电话。

小巴奇噶鲁皮放下电话，心里不知道是什么滋味。这TM是怎么回事呢？后来想通了：这大概是科幻老前辈对我的爱心关照吧？虽然以后大师再也没找他，小巴奇噶鲁皮还是觉得应该听从老前辈的谆谆教诲。于是，他放下手中正写的科幻，开始写中国历史长篇，写色情，写侦探，写西部小说，写了几年，搞了一些子短中长篇，没有再写一篇科幻，也没有一篇得到发表。几年过去了，厚厚的稿件换来了一大堆退稿信。终于有一天，小巴奇噶鲁皮看着这堆退稿信想：“其实。。。我还是喜欢写科幻的吧。”于是，他重新开始写科幻，于是发表了，于是获奖了。。。就这样，学中文的科幻正太在科幻大师的指引下，经过漫长的磨难，终于又回到了科幻的怀抱。

附：采访的部分原文。全文见：
http://www.pbs.org/kcet/wiredsci ... friday-paolo-b.html

PB: I think that might have been '96 or something. I graduated in '94 so it was about '96 when that was happening. I was out there for about a year. I started writing science fiction and I ended up actually quitting my job to write more science fiction and mostly, I don't know, just on sort of a whim I decided that I was going to become a writer. I started working on a novel. I just started banging away on it and began taking my writing more and more seriously and taking everything else less and less seriously. I ended up moving back to China then again to do research for a book that I was working on. After that I ended up in Denver for a while and then moved out here, but all of that time I was basically working. I was writing books that weren't selling and slowly started to write some short fiction that was selling, and that's what you see in the collection. "Pocketful of Dharma" was the first story that I sold, and that was really my first attempt at writing something short.

I'd stalked William Gibson at one point at a book signing and had asked him what his secret to success was. You know I was a very hungry, very needy sort of writer and was just looking for any kind of a clue about how the whole thing worked. I sort of hovered over his shoulder while he was signing other people's books. I hit him with all of these questions and one of the things that he said was that he'd written short stories until somebody would take him seriously and that was when he managed to actually sell a novel. So I sort of took that to heart and went home and sat down and was like: 'OK, so I need to write a short story. How the *** do I do this?'

So I bought some science fiction magazines--fantasy and science fiction magazines and stuff-- and read all of the short stories in them and went, 'OK, I just need to write something better than any these things.' I sat down and started banging away and eventually what I got was "Pocketful of Dharma."

DG: What made you make the decision to start writing science fiction specifically?

PB: I grew up reading science fiction and I think that was probably the biggest thing. I grew up on Heinlein and my father's science fiction collection. My father was a big SF reader and those were really the first books that I read. They were science fiction and fantasy. Heinlein's CITIZEN OF THE GALAXY. It was STARMAN JONES. It was things like THE HOBBIT by Tolkien. Those were the first books that I read where I actually remembered what I'd read afterwards and actually cared about the characters enough to want to run home and finish reading whatever book I was reading. So I've always had a connection to the genre because of that-- those big adventure stories that science fiction and fantasy provided.

I think when I first sat down to write a book - when I was first sort of testing out the idea of being a writer - I just naturally gravitated to the idea that I would write science fiction. I read so much of it, I was familiar with it, and I liked it, and so that was where I started out thinking that if I was definitely going to write a book, it was definitely going to be science fiction. This original book that I was going to write, it was all set in the future China world, sort of the version that you see in "Pocketful of Dharma," and it was entertainment--it was pretty fun to write. It was interesting in it's own way, but science fiction was just sort the thing that seemed like it was the natural thing.

Later on, when I sold Pocketful of Dharma, I had Harlan Ellison call me up and he was convinced... Are you familiar with Harlan Ellison?

DG: Yup.

PB: Harlan Ellison called me up out of the blue. It was soon after the short story had come out and I was in my house mopping the floor and I get this phone call and this man on the other end was like 'This is Harlan Ellison, do you know who I am?' and I was like 'Yeah, yeah, um yeah.' So he says, 'Go get your story.' So I do. He then proceeds to basically critique every single aspect of my entire story.

He starts out by saying 'At first I thought that you were some sort of professional writing under a pseudonym because, you know, nobody has a name like Bacigalupi, I know the Abbot and Costello routine blah blah blah...' He goes off about how Paolo Bacigalupi is obviously a pseudonym or a joke name of some sort. Now he's getting a bit worked up. He says, 'You know, I thought you were a professional, and then I got to page 5 and right down there at the bottom you used the word jerked... and then 2 sentences later you used the word jerky--you took all of the power out of the *** ing word!'

I'm sitting there on the line sort of terrified of this man just haranguing me. At the end of that whole conversation - a conversation in which he critiques, line by line, my entire story - he finishes up by saying, 'Well you got some potential, but don't write in genre, it's a waste of time. Don't get stuck in it like I got stuck in it.' And then he hangs up.

That was the last thing that I heard from this guy--I don't know what it was--sort of like a love tap I guess, but I actually sort of got to me. I proceeded to write a bunch of stories that weren't science fiction. I wrote historical fiction novels set in China, I went on and wrote a landscape... I don't know what you call it... sort of landscape porn I guess is the best word for it. You know, one of those love of place and the rural west sort of stories. Then I wrote a mystery/western story and none of those genres is related to sci-fi in any way, shape or form, and none of them sold.

At the end of all of that, I'm sitting there with all of the rejection letters in my hands and thinking: Well, you know, actually I kind of liked writing science fiction and then I went back into it and started doing the short stories, and that's when I started writing things like "The Fluted Girl," and "The People of Sand and Slag" and started finding my niche. It's been a long process.美国科幻新秀保罗•巴奇噶鲁皮（Paolo Bacigalupi--什么名字啊）最近几年十分引人注目。他从2005到2007年连续三年或雨果奖短中篇科幻的提名，并在2006年获得以其（短）中篇科幻《卡路里人》（The Calorie Man）获得Theodore Sturgeon 纪念奖。他去年的雨果奖候选作品《黄卡人》（Yellow Card Man）现在还可以在网上读到：

http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0704/yellowcard.shtml

这篇非同寻常的科幻小说写得是一个在泰国的华人在生物恐怖的灾难后不择手段地寻求生存的故事。巴奇噶鲁皮写华人的故事不是偶然的。因为他是美国科幻作家里少有的能说中文的作家（好像Ted Chiang都不会说中文吧？）。他大学主修的专业是东亚研究，主攻方向就是中文。不仅如此，他还在昆明和北京留学学中文，毕业后还在北京工作过一年（帝都的朋友没听说过这人？）。

最近巴奇噶鲁皮在Wired Science网站上接受了采访，叙述了自己如何成为科幻作家的经历。其中一段很有意思。我知道有些人不想看英文。我老人家就勉为其难，大致介绍一下吧。有歪曲错误的地方文责就不负啦。

大意是这样的：话说学中文而热爱科幻的正太巴奇噶鲁皮毕业以后在北京和波士顿之类的地方胡乱找了些工作。对自己的前途很是迷茫。是科幻庞克先驱威廉•吉布森（William Gibson）给他指引了方向。那是在吉布森的一个签名售书会上，年轻而热切的科幻迷巴奇噶鲁皮抓住老吉的肩膀问：“怎么样才能成为你这样的科幻大作家啊？告诉我，告诉我！”老吉忙乱之中说：“先写短篇先写短篇！我老吉就是这样发迹的。”

巴奇噶鲁皮激动万分地回到家中，对着桌子说：“我要开始写短篇科幻啦！”他拿出笔和纸准备开写。忽然想到：“我TMD从哪里开始啊？”

于是他跑出去买了一堆科幻奇幻的杂志，开始补充营养。读完一大堆故事后，心想，好了。这事情太容易了。我只要写个比这些故事都好的故事就可以发表了。

于是他开始写。也许是学中文给了他非同寻常的才华，他的第一篇科幻小说居然就在《奇幻与科幻》杂志发表了。科幻正太小巴奇噶鲁皮拿着第一笔稿费正在得意呢，忽然间，他接到一个非同寻常的电话。

这个电话居然是科幻大师哈兰•埃里森（Harlan Ellison）打给他的。当然埃里森当时还没有获得科幻大师称号。他是在2006年获得美国科幻奇幻作家协会的科幻大师奖的。不过，写过包括《我没有嘴，但我要呐喊》（I have no Mouth, and I must Scream），《杰弗蒂五岁》（Jeffty Is Five）等无数科幻名篇的哈兰•埃里森老早就名震科幻界了。

话说小巴奇噶鲁皮拿起电话，听到电话里的人说：“我是哈兰•埃里森，你知道我是谁吗？”小巴奇噶鲁皮应到：“嗯，是啊，嗯。。。知道。” 埃里森命令到：“去把你发表的小说拿来。” 小巴奇噶鲁皮手忙脚乱屁颠屁颠地跑去拿来那还有油香味的杂志。翻到自己的故事。哈里森说：“听着，小子，你的名字不是假的吧？有谁叫你这样的破名字啊？巴奇噶鲁皮？什么名字？我开始看你的故事的时候还以为你是哪个专业作家化名的呢。可是在第5页下面你露了你业余的马脚：你用了个词‘抽筋了’（jerked），两句之后，你又用了个词‘抽筋的’(jerky)。你小子想把这个屁词的油水都榨干啊？”

小巴奇噶鲁皮听着听着，不禁感到冷汗直冒。他战战兢兢不知道说什么。科幻大师自顾自地开始一段一段地批评小巴奇噶鲁皮的故事。“你开头不错，第二段马马虎虎，第三段一塌糊涂。。。”整个电话打下来，科幻大师将小巴奇噶鲁皮的故事从头到尾批了一顿。最后大师总结到：“我看你小子还有些潜力，别写科幻浪费时间啦。别像我一样一辈子都挂死在科幻上。”然后啪地一声挂了电话。

小巴奇噶鲁皮放下电话，心里不知道是什么滋味。这TM是怎么回事呢？后来想通了：这大概是科幻老前辈对我的爱心关照吧？虽然以后大师再也没找他，小巴奇噶鲁皮还是觉得应该听从老前辈的谆谆教诲。于是，他放下手中正写的科幻，开始写中国历史长篇，写色情，写侦探，写西部小说，写了几年，搞了一些子短中长篇，没有再写一篇科幻，也没有一篇得到发表。几年过去了，厚厚的稿件换来了一大堆退稿信。终于有一天，小巴奇噶鲁皮看着这堆退稿信想：“其实。。。我还是喜欢写科幻的吧。”于是，他重新开始写科幻，于是发表了，于是获奖了。。。就这样，学中文的科幻正太在科幻大师的指引下，经过漫长的磨难，终于又回到了科幻的怀抱。

附：采访的部分原文。全文见：
http://www.pbs.org/kcet/wiredsci ... friday-paolo-b.html

PB: I think that might have been '96 or something. I graduated in '94 so it was about '96 when that was happening. I was out there for about a year. I started writing science fiction and I ended up actually quitting my job to write more science fiction and mostly, I don't know, just on sort of a whim I decided that I was going to become a writer. I started working on a novel. I just started banging away on it and began taking my writing more and more seriously and taking everything else less and less seriously. I ended up moving back to China then again to do research for a book that I was working on. After that I ended up in Denver for a while and then moved out here, but all of that time I was basically working. I was writing books that weren't selling and slowly started to write some short fiction that was selling, and that's what you see in the collection. "Pocketful of Dharma" was the first story that I sold, and that was really my first attempt at writing something short.

I'd stalked William Gibson at one point at a book signing and had asked him what his secret to success was. You know I was a very hungry, very needy sort of writer and was just looking for any kind of a clue about how the whole thing worked. I sort of hovered over his shoulder while he was signing other people's books. I hit him with all of these questions and one of the things that he said was that he'd written short stories until somebody would take him seriously and that was when he managed to actually sell a novel. So I sort of took that to heart and went home and sat down and was like: 'OK, so I need to write a short story. How the *** do I do this?'

So I bought some science fiction magazines--fantasy and science fiction magazines and stuff-- and read all of the short stories in them and went, 'OK, I just need to write something better than any these things.' I sat down and started banging away and eventually what I got was "Pocketful of Dharma."

DG: What made you make the decision to start writing science fiction specifically?

PB: I grew up reading science fiction and I think that was probably the biggest thing. I grew up on Heinlein and my father's science fiction collection. My father was a big SF reader and those were really the first books that I read. They were science fiction and fantasy. Heinlein's CITIZEN OF THE GALAXY. It was STARMAN JONES. It was things like THE HOBBIT by Tolkien. Those were the first books that I read where I actually remembered what I'd read afterwards and actually cared about the characters enough to want to run home and finish reading whatever book I was reading. So I've always had a connection to the genre because of that-- those big adventure stories that science fiction and fantasy provided.

I think when I first sat down to write a book - when I was first sort of testing out the idea of being a writer - I just naturally gravitated to the idea that I would write science fiction. I read so much of it, I was familiar with it, and I liked it, and so that was where I started out thinking that if I was definitely going to write a book, it was definitely going to be science fiction. This original book that I was going to write, it was all set in the future China world, sort of the version that you see in "Pocketful of Dharma," and it was entertainment--it was pretty fun to write. It was interesting in it's own way, but science fiction was just sort the thing that seemed like it was the natural thing.

Later on, when I sold Pocketful of Dharma, I had Harlan Ellison call me up and he was convinced... Are you familiar with Harlan Ellison?

DG: Yup.

PB: Harlan Ellison called me up out of the blue. It was soon after the short story had come out and I was in my house mopping the floor and I get this phone call and this man on the other end was like 'This is Harlan Ellison, do you know who I am?' and I was like 'Yeah, yeah, um yeah.' So he says, 'Go get your story.' So I do. He then proceeds to basically critique every single aspect of my entire story.

He starts out by saying 'At first I thought that you were some sort of professional writing under a pseudonym because, you know, nobody has a name like Bacigalupi, I know the Abbot and Costello routine blah blah blah...' He goes off about how Paolo Bacigalupi is obviously a pseudonym or a joke name of some sort. Now he's getting a bit worked up. He says, 'You know, I thought you were a professional, and then I got to page 5 and right down there at the bottom you used the word jerked... and then 2 sentences later you used the word jerky--you took all of the power out of the *** ing word!'

I'm sitting there on the line sort of terrified of this man just haranguing me. At the end of that whole conversation - a conversation in which he critiques, line by line, my entire story - he finishes up by saying, 'Well you got some potential, but don't write in genre, it's a waste of time. Don't get stuck in it like I got stuck in it.' And then he hangs up.

That was the last thing that I heard from this guy--I don't know what it was--sort of like a love tap I guess, but I actually sort of got to me. I proceeded to write a bunch of stories that weren't science fiction. I wrote historical fiction novels set in China, I went on and wrote a landscape... I don't know what you call it... sort of landscape porn I guess is the best word for it. You know, one of those love of place and the rural west sort of stories. Then I wrote a mystery/western story and none of those genres is related to sci-fi in any way, shape or form, and none of them sold.

At the end of all of that, I'm sitting there with all of the rejection letters in my hands and thinking: Well, you know, actually I kind of liked writing science fiction and then I went back into it and started doing the short stories, and that's when I started writing things like "The Fluted Girl," and "The People of Sand and Slag" and started finding my niche. It's been a long process.