50年了，我們離《2001：太空漫游》還有多遠？

In the spring of 1964 the filmmaker Stanley Kubrick was very worried. NASA was about to fly the Mariner 4 space probe past Mars.

1964年春，美國航天局(NASA)的“水手4號”(Mariner 4)航天探測器即將飛過火星，電影人斯坦利·庫布里克(Stanley Kubrick)不禁憂心忡忡。

At the time he was deep in development of a blockbuster film about the discovery of alien intelligence. Word was that MGM had bet their studio on the film. What if Mariner discovered life on Mars and scooped them?

當時他正在潛心構思一部關于尋找外星智慧生物的賣座影片。有消息稱米高梅(MGM)已經把片廠的未來壓在這部影片上。如果“水手”在火星上發(fā)現(xiàn)了生命，搶了他的先機怎么辦?

Kubrick looked into whether he could buy insurance against that event. He could, but the price was astronomical. Kubrick decided to take his chances, according to a new book about the making of the movie, “Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece,” by Michael Benson. (Simon & Schuster 2018)

庫布里克研究了是否可以針對此事購買保險?？梢裕珒r格是天文數(shù)字。邁克爾·本森(Michael Benson)關于這部電影拍攝過程的新書《太空漫游，斯坦利·庫布里克，阿瑟·克拉克以及一部杰作的誕生》(Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece)中說，當時庫布里克決定冒這個險。

That was 54 years ago. We still haven’t discovered intelligence or even believable evidence of pond scum anywhere else in the universe — not for lack of effort. A new spacecraft, TESS, designed to look for habitable nearby planets just vaulted into space, and an interstellar asteroid recently spotted streaking through the solar system was inspected for radio signals. Another robot is on its way to listen in on the heart of Mars. We still don’t know if we are alone.

那是在54年前。迄今我們依然沒有發(fā)現(xiàn)宇宙中其他任何地方存在智慧生物，也找不到可靠證據(jù)證明哪怕最微不足道的生物存在——這不是因為不夠努力。剛剛發(fā)射的航天器凌日系外行星巡天衛(wèi)星(TESS)旨在尋找附近的宜居行星，最近有一顆闖入太陽系的星際小行星受到了無線電信號探查。還有一個機器人正在前往聆聽火星心臟的途中。但我們仍然不知道，宇宙中是否只有我們。

Mr. Kubrick’s movie, “2001, A Space Odyssey,” finally debuted, late and over budget in April 1968, to baffled film critics and long lines of young people. John Lennon said he went to see it every week. It was the top-grossing movie of the year and is now a perennial on critics’ lists of the most important movies of all time, often the first movie scientists mention if you ask them about sci-fi they have enjoyed.

庫布里克的電影《2001太空漫游》終于在1968年4月首映，上映時間延遲了，而且超出了預算，當時的影評人和一隊隊的年輕人都對它感到困惑。約翰·列儂(John Lennon)說自己每周都會去看它。它成了年度票房收入最高的電影，現(xiàn)在已成為影評人列舉的“史上最重要電影名單”中的?？?，如果你問科學家們最喜歡什么科幻電影，第一個被提到的往往是它。

In honor of its 50th anniversary it is being rereleased at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday and then in various cities around the world in a shiny new version overseen by Christopher Nolan, the director of “Dunkirk” and “Inception,” among other films. He told The Los Angeles Times the original film had been a “touchstone” from his childhood.

為紀念該片上映50周年，它的全新修復版本于周六在嘎納電影節(jié)上重新發(fā)行，然后將在全球各個城市發(fā)行，該版本由《敦刻爾克》(Dunkirk)和《星際穿越》(Inception)導演克里斯托弗·諾蘭(Christopher Nolan)監(jiān)制。他告訴《洛杉磯時報》，他從小就將這部電影的原始版本當做“試金石”。

The movie, written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke (whose books and stories the movie was based on), and directed by Kubrick, is a multisensory ode to cosmic mystery, fate and the future. Long stretches happen with no explication or action except the zero-gravity ballets of spaceships immaculately imagined.

影片由庫布里克和阿瑟·C·克拉克(Arthur C.Clarke)擔任編劇(根據(jù)克拉克的小說改編)，由庫布里克執(zhí)導，是對宇宙的神秘、命運與未來的一曲多感官的頌歌。除了在太空船內構想完美的零重力芭蕾外，在一段段漫長的場景中，沒有任何解說，也沒有發(fā)生什么事情。

The movie broke with many of the conventions of the time, like mood music to tell you what to feel and think. “2001” left you alone in space with your thoughts.

這部電影突破了當時的許多慣例，比如它沒有那種告訴你應當有什么的感受和想法的情緒音樂?！?001》讓你獨自一人置身太空，只與自己的思想為伴。

The story begins four million years ago in Africa, where a bunch of bedraggled primates are losing the battle of the survival of the fittest until a strange black monolith appears. To the thunder of “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” one of those apemen is inspired to pick up a bone and use it as a club to kill the animals that have been pushing him around.

故事從400萬年前的非洲開始，在適者生存的戰(zhàn)斗中，一群臟兮兮的靈長類動物就要落敗，直到一塊奇異的黑色獨石突然出現(xiàn)。伴隨著《查拉圖斯特拉如是說》(Also Sprach Zarathustra)的轟鳴，一個猿人受到啟發(fā)，撿起一根骨頭當棍子，殺死了身邊推搡他的動物。

Suddenly, the apemen are eating meat and chasing their rivals away from the water hole. In a moment of exultation the ape throws the bone into the sky where, in what has been called the longest fast forward in film history, it turns into a spaceship.

突然間，猿人們吃上了肉，并將他們的對手從水坑邊趕走。在歡欣雀躍的時刻，猿人將骨頭扔向天空，這個地方被稱為電影史上最漫長的快進，骨頭變成了飛船。

Around that toss Kubrick pivots his movie and all of human evolution. Another monolith appears on the moon, and yet another in orbit around Jupiter, where an astronaut named Dave Bowman connects with it after subduing a neurotic computer, the HAL 9000, which has murdered his shipmates. In the finale, Bowman is sent through a “star gate” on a trip through space and time, death and rebirth, returning as a glowing Star Child to float like a fetus over the Earth.

庫布里克以這一扔作為他的電影乃至整個人類進化的核心。另一塊獨石出現(xiàn)在月球上，又一塊獨石出現(xiàn)在環(huán)繞木星的軌道上，在那里，宇航員戴夫·鮑曼(Dave Bowman)制服了飛船上殺死船員的神經質電腦HAL 9000之后，與獨石取得了聯(lián)系。影片最后一幕，鮑曼在穿越時空、死亡與重生之旅中被送過一道“星門”，成了一個閃閃發(fā)光的“星童”，像胎兒一樣漂浮在地球上空。

I first saw “2001” in the spring of 1968 in the same pharmaceutically compromised condition that all my friends did. I didn’t need that kind of help, anyway, having grown up reading Clarke’s stories, in particular the novel “Childhood’s End” and the short story, “The Sentinel.”

1968年春第一次看《2001》的時候，我和我所有的朋友一樣，處于藥物影響的狀態(tài)之下。我不需要那種幫助，畢竟我從小就看克拉克的故事，特別是小說《童年的終結》(Childhood’s End)和短篇小說《哨兵》(The Sentinel)。

The last time I watched the movie (on VHS of all things on my tiny home television), was in 2000, on the eve of its eponymous year.

我上一次看這部電影(竟然是在我家的小電視上看的家用錄像帶)是在2000年，“2001”到來的前夜。

I never realized how much I had missed until I read Mr. Benson’s book, a deep, informative and entertaining dive into the making of the movie.

在讀本森的書之前，我從未意識到自己忽略了多少東西，它深入、豐富而充滿趣味地挖掘了這部電影的制作過程。

One revelation is how haphazardly the movie was made. Nevermind the special effects and the model spaceships, Kubrick and Clarke were making up much of the story as they went along. Up until the very end, Mr. Benson tells us, they were struggling with how to portray the alien being responsible for the monoliths, until they realized it couldn’t be done. We don’t know what is out there. It would be hubris to even try to imagine.

書中展示了電影的拍攝有多么隨意。別說什么特效和模型太空船了，相當一部分的故事都是庫布里克和克拉克一邊拍一邊寫出來的。本森告訴我們，直到最后，他們還在苦苦思考，如何呈現(xiàn)那些送來獨石的外星人，終于明白這個任務無法完成。我們不知道太空里有什么。哪怕試圖去想象它都是自大的。

This is not a review of the book; Mr. Benson is a friend of mine, and I’m unabashedly ignorant of the history of cinema anyway. But it is a review of my own shifting attitudes and encounters with the movie itself over the years.

本文不是這本書的書評;本森是我的朋友，而且我對電影史一無所知。然而這篇文章是在回顧我自己多年來對該片看法的改變，以及同它一再相逢的經歷。

One mark of the movie’s status as a masterpiece is that it has something different to say to us every time we encounter it anew.

有一點可以說明這部電影是杰作，我們每次看它，它都能給我們講述新的東西。

Like the monolith it appears to give us what we need.

就像那塊獨石，它似乎能提供我們需要的東西。

Fifty years ago it was a harbinger of the future. We were about to win the race with the Russians to the moon. A whole generation was pumped and primed to tune in, turn on and transcend the whole dreary space-time continuum as we knew it.

五十年前，它是未來的預言。我們即將贏得與俄羅斯的登月競賽。整整一代人被鼓舞起來，準備打開收音機或電視機，穿越我們當時所知的整個沉悶的時空連續(xù)體。

Thoroughly researched by Kubrick and Clarke, large swaths of the film were like a documentary of the future: the space station, the moon base, the grand-stepping outward just as Clarke and people like Werner von Braun had prophesied.

庫布里克和克拉克的功課做得很足，影片的大部分內容就像是關于未來的紀錄片：太空站、月球基地、向外太空邁出的一大步，就像克拉克以及維爾納·馮·布勞恩(Werner von Braun)等人預言的那樣。

“2001” comes back at another poignant time in history, especially as it relates to space and the cosmos. Once we got to the moon, the script of future history was abandoned by the Nixon White House.

在《2001太空漫游》歸來之際，歷史正處在又一個悲哀的時期，尤其因為它與太空和宇宙有關。我們一登上月球，未來歷史的劇本就被尼克松的白宮拋棄了。

It’s now been 46 years since there was anyone on the moon. It’s possible to imagine a time in which there will be no humans alive who have been there.

從上次有人踏上月球到現(xiàn)在已經過去46年。可以想見，會有那么一天，到過月球的人都已離世。

But now the traditional sci-fi script has flipped. A generation of swashbuckling billionaires has taken center stage in the space business, as well as a new class of wealthy customers who can afford to indulge their services. Instead of Star Child these days we have the “Star Man,” launched into orbit past Mars in a Tesla convertible by Elon Musk.

但現(xiàn)在，傳統(tǒng)的科幻電影劇情已經反轉了。新一代有著傳奇經歷的億萬富翁以及一大群享受得起他們的服務的新富客戶登上了太空行業(yè)的中心舞臺。如今，我們看到的不是星童，而是“星男”，他坐在埃隆·馬斯克(Elon Musk)的特斯拉敞篷車里被發(fā)射到太空中，飛向火星的軌道。

I once wrote that I no longer expected bootprints on Mars in my lifetime. Now I’m not so sure. It’s not crazy to think that private outfits like SpaceX, which seem to be running rings around NASA and Congress, could beat NASA into deeper space. I’d happily come out of retirement sometime in the 2030s to write the words that humans have landed and walked on Mars.

我曾經寫過，在我的有生之年，我不再期待火星上出現(xiàn)人類的腳印。但現(xiàn)在，我不那么確定了。SpaceX等私人公司似乎已把NASA和國會遠遠甩在了后面，它們可能會超過NASA，進入更遠的太空，這樣的想法并不瘋狂。在本世紀30年代的某個時刻，我可能會高興地暫時脫離自己的退休生活，書寫關于人類在火星上登陸和行走的文章。

Not that NASA has credible plans or the prospect of enough money to go anywhere exciting anytime soon. Under its new administrator Jim Bridenstine, a former congressman, NASA is taking steps to move forward on a long-range program of exploration and survey of resources that would lead to the establishment of a permanent base there.

短時間內，NASA并沒有去往任何令人興奮的地方的可靠計劃，預計也沒有足夠的資金。NASA在新任署長——前國會議員——吉姆·布里登斯廷(Jim Bridenstine)的領導下正在逐步推進一項資源勘探和調查的長期計劃，該計劃致力于在那里建立一個永久性基地。

But Mars is having a moment in the popular imagination — from the Matt Damon film “The Martian,” which got high marks for scientific realism a couple years ago, to an upcoming television series “The First,” about settlers on Mars being planned by Beau Willimon, the producer and showrunner of the Netflix series “House of Cards.”

但是，火星現(xiàn)在正活躍在大眾的想象力中，從馬特·達蒙(Matt Damon)主演的影片《火星救援》(The Martian)——幾年前，該片憑借其科幻現(xiàn)實主義獲得了很高的評價——到即將播出的電視連續(xù)劇《第一》(The First)，這部關于火星移民的電視劇正在由鮑爾·威利蒙(Beau Willimon)籌劃。威利蒙曾是Netflix電視劇《紙牌屋》(House of Cards)的制作和運作人。

This week space leaders and enthusiasts gathered in Washington, D.C. for The Humans to Mars Summit, sponsored by the aerospace industry. The meeting featured the release of a report outlining how humans could be on Mars as early as 2033.

本周，太空領袖和熱心人士聚集在華盛頓特區(qū)，參加由太空行業(yè)贊助的人類登陸火星峰會(Humans to Mars Summit)。這次會議發(fā)布了一份報告，概述了人類最早在2033年登上火星的可能性。

Where the script has really flipped is in the future history of evolution.

在未來的進化歷史中，劇情真的反轉了。

Robots have taken over the sacred task of exploring for us. Increasingly sophisticated and smaller machines have spread out to every world of the solar system, buzzing the rings of Saturn, daring the dark voids beyond Pluto and landing on comets, scanning the heavens for new planets, new places to dream about. There have been enough robots, landers and orbiters violating the skies and surface of Mars to spark legends and myths and paranoia among whatever life-forms might be there.

機器人已經接過了為我們進行探索的神圣任務。越來越多的小型精密機器已經散布到太陽系的每一個世界，在土星的光環(huán)上空嗡嗡作響，在冥王星之外的黑暗空間里遨游，在彗星上著陸，在太空中尋找新的行星，新的夢想之地。已經有足夠多的機器人、著陸器和人造衛(wèi)星在入侵火星的天空和地表，激發(fā)那里可能存在的任何生命去講述各種傳奇、神話和恐慌。

The next generation extending our telepresence across the universe will be even smaller and cleverer. Plans are afoot to send fleets of spaceships the size of iPhone chips toward Alpha Centauri, like clouds of butterflies across interstellar space. Even if our bodies don’t ever cross the voids between the stars, our DNA surely will, in a microscopic cascade of space invaders that could still colonize the galaxy.

擴展我們在宇宙中的遠程存在的下一代工具將會更小、更智能。正在進行中的計劃是向南門二發(fā)射iPhone芯片大小的宇宙飛船艦隊，就像一群在星際空間里穿梭的蝴蝶。即便我們的身體永遠也無法穿越恒星之間的空間，我們的DNA也一定會通過這一大群微小的太空入侵者將整個銀河系變成我們的殖民地。

We all carry HAL in our pockets now, and in a few years he, it, will be in our bloodstreams. The future, to the extent that humans are part of it, is bionic.

現(xiàn)在，我們都把HAL裝在自己的口袋里，幾年后，他……它會出現(xiàn)在我們的血液里。有人類存在的未來，是仿生的。

Computers, to the delight of surveillance states and the despair of civil libertarians, can now recognize faces. For all we know neural networks like Deep Mind can dream.

令監(jiān)視公民的政府高興、同時令民間自由意志主義者失望的是，電腦現(xiàn)在可以識別人臉了。就我們所知，Deep Mind等神經網絡可以做夢。

Worse, we may all be part of the dream. The news from some physicists like the late Stephen Hawking is that the universe might be a hologram, an illusion like the three-dimensional images on a bank card. Some cosmologists have argued that it is not inconsistent — at least mathematically — to imagine that the entire universe as we know it could just be a computer simulation, as in “The Matrix” — another movie with long shadows. In effect, we are all made of bits, so the argument goes, removable, deformable at the click of an interstellar mouse.

更糟糕的是，我們可能都是這個夢的一部分。已故的斯蒂芬·霍金(Stephen Hawking)等物理學家認為，整個宇宙可能是一張全息圖，是一種假象，就像銀行卡上的三維圖像。一些宇宙學家認為，我們所知的宇宙可能只是計算機模擬空間，就像《黑客帝國》(The Matrix)中描述的那樣——它是另一部具有長遠影響力的影片——這種想像至少從數(shù)學角度是說得通的。這種觀點認為，我們實際上都是由比特組成的，只要點擊星際鼠標，就可以拆裝或變形。

In that case, I have a bone or two to pick with the director.

如果是那樣的話，我就得跟導演挑一兩根骨頭了。