China’s grand sci-fi is going global
705流利阅读:中国科幻巨制正走向世界
In the future, when the Sun runs out of fuel and begins to expand, Earthlings dig thousands of mountain-sized rockets into their planet’s surface and use them to propel their home away from certain destruction.
未来，当太阳的燃料耗尽，开始向外膨胀时，地球人挖掘了地球表面，并安装了数以千计山一样大小的火箭，并利用这些火箭推动地球，使之免受必然的毁灭。
This is the plot of “The Wandering Earth”, a Chinese film adapted from a short story of the same name by Liu Cixin, China’s leading writer of science fiction. After taking over $700m in cinemas, mostly in China, it launched on Netflix in May, making it the first Chinese sci-fi movie to go global.
这是电影《流浪地球》中的情节，这部中国电影改编自中国科幻小说领军人物刘慈欣的同名短篇小说。在收获了超过 7 亿美元的票房（绝大多数来自中国）后，这部电影 5 月在网飞上线，成为了走向世界的第一部中国科幻电影。
As China’s economy has grown over the past 30 years, its sci-fi writers’ vision has expanded, too. Their stories tend to focus on Earth itself — eschewing galaxies far far away and long ago — while being conceived on a stupendous scale. One recurring wide-angle shot in “The Wandering Earth”, for example, shows the planet gliding through space on a pincushion of blue flame, its atmosphere trailing off into a vacuum.
在过去的 30 年里，随着中国经济的增长，中国科幻作家的视野也扩大了。他们创作的故事倾向于避开那些遥远而古老的星系，聚焦地球本身，尽管如此，这些故事的架构却非常宏大。例如，在电影《流浪地球》中一个反复出现的广角镜头里，地球划过太空，尾部喷射出蓝色的火焰，像针垫上的一根根针，大气层逐渐稀薄，直至变成真空。
Chinese sci-fi took its first step towards the global stage in 2014 with the English publication of “The Three-Body Problem”, the first book in a trilogy by Mr Liu. A crop of younger writers are now emerging. The writers of Chinese science fiction anticipated their genre’s rising profile. In 2010 Fei Dao, another author, described its devotees as a “lonely hidden army”. Chinese sci-fi, he said, might “unexpectedly rush out and change heaven and Earth”. That has not quite happened yet. But in the future, anything is possible.
2014 年，刘慈欣《地球往事》三部曲中的第一部《三体》出版发行英文版，这标志着中国科幻开始登上世界舞台。一批年轻作家涌现了出来，他们预见到了科幻题材会越来越受欢迎。2010 年，另外一名科幻作家飞氘把中国的科幻小说作者比作“一支寂寞的伏兵”。他表示，中国科幻可能“异军突起，带来翻天覆地的变化”。这个情况还没有完全发生，不过在将来，一切皆有可能。
run out
用完，耗尽
搭配短语：run out of sth.
例句：We are running out of time.
例句：Time is running out.
propel/prəˈpel/
v. 推进，推动
例句：The rocket propelled the spacecraft towards Mars.
eschew/ɪsˈtʃuː/
v. 回避，避开
例句：A wise person eschews bad company.
conceive/kənˈsiːv/
v. 想象，构想；怀孕
搭配短语：to conceive a baby
stupendous/stuːˈpendəs/
adj. 巨大的，惊人的
相关词汇：stupid
近义词：extremely large
搭配短语：a stupendous achievement
搭配短语：a stupendous effort of will
recurring/rɪˈkɜːrɪŋ/
adj. 反复出现的
词性拓展：recur (v.)
recur 的例句：If the pain recurs, come and see me.
搭配短语：a recurring nightmare
例句：The nature-human relationship is a recurring theme in her novels.
pincushion/ˈpɪnkʊʃn/
n. 针垫
相关词汇：pin
相关词汇：cushion
trail off
减弱，变小
近义词：trail away
vacuum/ˈvækjuːm/
n. 真空；空白，空虚；吸尘器
例句：Her husband's death left a vacuum in her life.
例句：Moral values cannot be taught in a vacuum.
trilogy/ˈtrɪlədʒi/
n. 三部曲
词根词缀：tri-（三）
相关词汇：triangle
相关词汇：tricycle
相关词汇：Trinity College
genre/ˈʒɑːnrə/
n. 体裁，风格
profile/ˈproʊfaɪl/
n. 印象，形象
英文释义：the general impression that sb./sth. gives to the public and the amount of attention they received
搭配短语：keep a low profile
devotee/ˌdevəˈtiː/
n.（狂热的）崇拜者，爱好者
词性拓展：devote (v.)
devote 的搭配短语：devote... to...
devote 的例句：She devoted herself full-time to her business.
词根词缀：-ee
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