【英文文学】基地系列 Foundation and Earth 基地与地球.docx

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1、【英文文学】基地系列 Foundation and Earth 基地与地球The Story Behind the FoundationOn August 1, 1941, when I was a lad of twenty-one, Iwas a graduate student in chemistry at Columbia University and had beenwriting science fiction professionally for three years. I was hasteningto see John Campbell, editor of Astoun

2、ding , to whom I had soldfive stories by then. I was anxious to tell him a new idea I had for ascience fiction story.It was to write a historical novel of the future; to tell the story ofthe fall of the Galactic Empire. My enthusiasm must have been catching,for Campbell grew as excited as I was. He

3、didnt want me to write asingle story. He wanted a series of stories, in which the full historyof the thousand years of turmoil between the fall of the First GalacticEmpire and the rise of the Second Galactic Empire was to be outlined. Itwould all be illuminated by the science of psychohistory that C

4、ampbelland I thrashed out between us.The first story appeared in the May 1942 Astounding and the secondstory appeared in the June 1942 issue. They were at once popular andCampbell saw to it that I wrote six more stories before the end of thedecade. The stories grew longer, too. The first one was onl

5、y twelvethousand words long. Two of the last three stories were fifty thousandwords apiece.By the time the decade was over, I had grown tired of the series,dropped it, and went on to other things. By then, however, variouspublishing houses were beginning to put out hardcover science fictionbooks. On

6、e such house was a small semiprofessional firm, Gnome Press. Theypublished my Foundation series in three volumes: Foundation (1951); Foundation and Empire (1952); and Second Foundation (1953). The three books together came to be known as The FoundationTrilogy .The books did not do very well, for Gno

7、me Press did not have thecapital with which to advertise and promote them. I got neither statementsnor royalties from them.In early 1961, my then-editor at Doubleday, Timothy Seldes, toldme he had received a request from a foreign publisher to reprint theFoundation books. Since they were not Doubled

8、ay books, he passed therequest on to me.I shrugged my shoulders. Not interested, Tim. I dont get royaltieson those books.Seldes was horrified, and instantly set about getting the rightsto the books from Gnome Press (which was, by that time, moribund) andin August of that year, the books (along with

9、I, Robot ) becameDoubleday property.From that moment on, the Foundation series took off and began to earnincreasing royalties. Doubleday published the Trilogy in a singlevolume and distributed them through the Science Fiction Book Club. Becauseof that the Foundation series became enormously well-kno

10、wn.In the 1966 World Science Fiction Convention, held in Cleveland, thefans were asked to vote on a category of The Best All-Time Series. Itwas the first time (and, so far, the last) the category had been includedin the nominations for the Hugo Award. The Foundation Trilogy won the award, which furt

11、her added to the popularity of the series.Increasingly, fans kept asking me to continue the series. I was politebut I kept refusing. Still, it fascinated me that people who had notyet been born when the series was begun had managed to become caught upin it.Doubleday, however, took the demands far mo

12、re seriously than Idid. They had humored me for twenty years but as the demands keptgrowing in intensity and number, they finally lost patience. In 1981,they told me that I simply had to write another Foundation novel and,in order to sugar-coat the demand, offered me a contract at ten timesmy usual

13、advance.Nervously, I agreed. It had been thirty-two years since I had writtena Foundation story and now I was instructed to write one 140,000 wordslong, twice that of any of the earlier volumes and nearly three timesas long as any previous individual story. I re-read The FoundationTrilogy and, takin

14、g a deep breath, dived into the task.The fourth book of the series, Foundations Edge , was publishedin October 1982, and then a very strange thing happened. It appeared inthe New York Times bestseller list at once. In fact, it stayed on thatlist for twenty-five weeks, much to my utter astonishment.

15、Nothing likethat had ever happened to me.Doubleday at once signed me up to do additional novels and I wrotetwo that were part of another series, The Robot Novels Andthen it was time to return to the Foundation.So I wrote Foundation and Earth, which begins at the very momentthat Foundations Edge ends

16、, and that is the book you now hold. It mighthelp if you glanced over Foundations Edge just to refresh your memory,but you dont have to. Foundation and Earth stands by itself. I hopeyou enjoy it. Isaac Asimov, New York City, 1986序言在上一部基地边缘里，第一基地的议员特维兹因为公开质疑谢东计划的可靠性，并预言银河帝国无法缩短持续的混乱状态而被逐出故乡，和一名对地球有浓厚

17、兴趣的考古学者在浩瀚的宇宙中寻找失踪了两万年之久的地球，同时追寻着人类未来的命运，经过着着波折，他们没有找到地球，却找到了一个叫盖亚的星球，这个星球上所有的生物不分种族和智能的高低，都联合在一起了，它们共同拥有一个思想和意识，成为一个巨大的超级生命体。崔维兹认为这种模式会是银河帝国和人类未来的存在方式，但他无法说服自己，他也无法忍受成为超级生命体后会失去每个个体的个性，于是他决定继续寻找地球，他认为地球上一定存在着某些秘密，这两者之间有着必然的联系。在这一部里，所有的秘密将会解开，人类未来的命运将会怎样决定？存在了两万年的银河帝国又能否复兴呢？你想知道的话，千万不要错过这部科幻史上最伟大的小说

18、！Part One - Gaia Chapter I The Search Begins1Why did I do it? asked Golan Trevize.It wasnt a new question. Since he had arrived at Gaia, he had askedit of himself frequently. He would wake up from a sound sleep in thepleasant coolness of the night and find the question sounding noiselesslyin his min

19、d, like a tiny drumbeat: Why did I do it? Why did I do it?Now, though, for the first time, he managed to ask it of Dom, theancient of Gaia.Dom was well aware of Trevizes tension for he could sense the fabricof the Councilmans mind. He did not respond to it. Gaia must in no wayever touch Trevizes min

20、d, and the best way of remaining immune to thetemptation was to painstakingly ignore what he sensed.Do what, Trev? he asked. He found it difficult to use more thanone syllable in addressing a person, and it didnt matter. Trevize wasgrowing somewhat used to that.The decision I made, said Trevize. Cho

21、osing Gaia as the future.You were right to do so, said Dom, seated, his aged deep-set eyeslooking earnestly up at the man of the Foundation, who was standing.You say I am right, said Trevize impatiently.I/we/Gaia know you are. Thats your worth to us. You have the capacityfor making the right decisio

22、n on incomplete data, and you have made thedecision. You chose Gaia! You rejected the anarchy of a Galactic Empirebuilt on the technology of the First Foundation, as well as the anarchyof a Galactic Empire built on the mentalics of the Second Foundation. Youdecided that neither could be long stable.

23、 So you chose Gaia.Yes, said Trevize. Exactly! I chose Gaia, a superorganism; a wholeplanet with a mind and personality in common, so that one has to sayI/we/ Gaia as an invented pronoun to express the inexpressible. Hepaced the floor restlessly. And it will become eventually Galaxia,a super-superor

24、ganism embracing all the swarm of the Milky Way.He stopped, turned almost savagely on Dom, and said, I feel Im right,as you feel it, but you want the coming of Galaxia, and soare satisfied with the decision. Theres something in me, however, thatdoesnt want it, and for that reason Im not satisfied to

25、accept the rightness so easily. I want to know why I madethe decision, I want to weigh and judge the rightness and be satisfiedwith it. Merely feeling right isnt enough. How can I know I am right? What is the device that makes me right?I/we/Gaia do not know how it is that you come to the rightdecisi

26、on. Is it important to know that as long as we have thedecision?You speak for the whole planet, do you? For the common consciousnessof every dewdrop, of every pebble, of even the liquid central core ofthe planet?I do, and so can any portion of the planet in which the intensityof the common conscious

27、ness is great enough.And is all this common consciousness satisfied to use me as ablack box? Since the black box works, is it unimportant to know what isinside? That doesnt suit me. I dont enjoy being a black box. Iwant to know whats inside. I want to know how and why I chose Gaia andGalaxia as the

28、future, so that I can rest and be at peace.But why do you dislike or distrust your decision so?Trevize drew a deep breath and said slowly, in a low and forcefulvoice, Because I dont want to be part of a superorganism. I dont wantto be a dispensable part to be done away with whenever the superorganis

29、mjudges that doing away would be for the good of the whole.Dom looked at Trevize thoughtfully. Do you want to change yourdecision, then, Trev? You can, you know.I long to change the decision, but I cant do that merely because Idislike it. To do something now, I have to know whether thedecision is wr

30、ong or right. Its not enough merely to feel its right.If you feel you are right, you are right. Always that slow, gentlevoice that somehow made Trevize feel wilder by its very contrast withhis own inner turmoil.Then Trevize said, in half a whisper, breaking out of the insolubleoscillation between fe

31、eling and knowing, I must find Earth.Because it has something to do with this passionate need of yoursto know?Because it is another problem that troubles me unbearably and becauseI feel there is a connection between the two. Am I not ablack box? I feel there is a connection. Isnt that enoughto make

32、you accept it as a fact?Perhaps, said Dom, with equanimity.Granted it is now thousands of years twenty thousandperhaps since the people of the Galaxy have concerned themselveswith Earth, how is it possible that we have all forgotten our planetof origin?Twenty thousand years is a longer time than you

33、 realize. Thereare many aspects of the early Empire we know little of; many legendsthat are almost surely fictitious but that we keep repeating, and evenbelieving, because of lack of anything to substitute. And Earth is olderthan the Empire.But surely there are some records. My good friend, Pelorat,

34、 collectsmyths and legends of early Earth; anything he can scrape up from anysource. It is his profession and, more important, his hobby. Thosemyths and legends are all there are. There are no actual records,no documents.Documents twenty thousand years old? Things decay, perish, aredestroyed through

35、 inefficiency or war.But there should be records of the records; copies, copies of thecopies, and copies of the copies of the copies; useful material muchyounger than twenty millennia. They have been removed. The GalacticLibrary at Trantor must have had documents concerning Earth. Thosedocuments are

36、 referred to in known historical records, but the documentsno longer exist in the Galactic Library. The references to them may exist,but any quotations from them do not exist.Remember that Trantor was sacked a few centuries ago,The Library was left untouched. It was protected by the personnel ofthe

37、Second Foundation. And it was those personnel who recently discoveredthat material related to Earth no longer exists. The material wasdeliberately removed in recent times. Why? Trevize ceased his pacingand looked intently at Dom. If I find Earth, I will find out what itis hiding Hiding?Hiding or bei

38、ng hidden. Once I find that out, I have the feeling Iwill know why I have chosen Gaia and Galaxia over our individuality. Then,I presume, I will know , not feel, that I am correct, andif I am correct he lifted his shoulders hopelessly thenso be it.If you feel that is so, said Dom, and if you feel yo

39、u must huntfor Earth, then, of course, we will help you do as much as we can. Thathelp, however, is limited. For instance, I/we/Gaia do not know whereEarth may be located among the immense wilderness of worlds that makeup the Galaxy.Even so, said Trevize, I must search. Even if the endlesspowdering

40、of stars in the Galaxy makes the quest seem hopeless, and evenif I must do it alone.2Trevize was surrounded by the tameness of Gaia. Thetemperature, as always, was comfortable, and the air moved pleasantly,refreshing but not chilling. Clouds drifted across the sky, interruptingthe sunlight now and t

41、hen, and, no doubt, if the water vapor level permeter of open land surface dropped sufficiently in this place or that,there would be enough rain to restore it.The trees grew in regular spacings, like an orchard, and did so, nodoubt, all over the world. The land and sea were stocked with plant andani

42、mal life in proper numbers and in the proper variety to provide anappropriate ecological balance, and all of them, no doubt, increased anddecreased in numbers in a slow sway about the recognized optimum. Asdid the number of human beings, too.Of all the objects within the purview of Trevizes vision,

43、the onlywild card in the deck was his ship, the Far Star .The ship had been cleaned and refurbished efficiently and well by anumber of the human components of Gaia. It had been restocked with foodand drink, its furnishings had been renewed or replaced, its mechanicalworkings rechecked. Trevize himse

44、lf had checked the ships computercarefully.Nor did the ship need refueling, for it was one of the fewgravitic ships of the Foundation, running on the energy of the generalgravitational field of the Galaxy, and that was enough to supply all thepossible fleets of humanity for all the eons of their lik

45、ely existencewithout measurable decrease of intensity.Three months ago, Trevize had been a Councilman of Terminus. He had,in other words, been a member of the Legislature of the Foundation and,ex officio , a great one of the Galaxy. Was it only three monthsago? It seemed it was half his thirty-two-y

46、ear-old lifetime since thathad been his post and his only concern had been whether the great SeldonPlan had been valid or not; whether the smooth rise of the Foundationfrom planetary village to Galactic greatness had been properly chartedin advance, or not.Yet in some ways, there was no change. He w

47、as still a Councilman. His status and his privileges remained unchanged, exceptthat he didnt expect he would ever return to Terminus to claim thatstatus and those privileges. He would no more fit into the huge chaosof the Foundation than into the small orderliness of Gaia. He was athome nowhere, an

48、orphan everywhere.His jaw tightened and he pushed his fingers angrily through his blackhair. Before he wasted time bemoaning his fate, he must find Earth. Ifhe survived the search, there would then be time enough to sit down andweep. He might have even better reason then.With determined stolidity, then, he thought back Three months before, he and Janov Pelorat, that able, na飗escholar, had left Terminus. Pelorat had been driven by his antiquarianenthusiasms to discover the site of long-lost Earth, and Trevize had gonealong, using Pelorats