※ 本文由作者 Robert Charles Wilson 親撰，林翰昌（Daneel Lynn）翻譯SPIN is the first of my works to be translated into the Chinese language, and I have been asked to say a few words about it.
《時間迴旋》是我第一部翻譯成中文的作品，而出版社也請我在這裡說幾句話。
SPIN is my twelfth novel. I have been writing professionally since 1986, and my work has been generally well received -- but SPIN found a larger audience than any of my earlier books and has been far more widely translated. (It also won a number of international awards, much to my surprise, including not only the Hugo Award but Israel's Geffen Award and Germany's Kurd Lasswell Prize.)
《時間迴旋》是我的第十二本小說。自從 1986 年開始邁入職業作家之林，我的作品一直倍受好評──不過比起以往的作品，《時間迴旋》擁有更多讀者，也更廣泛地翻譯成各種語言。本書還獲得一些國際獎項，令我驚訝的是，除了雨果獎之外，還包括以色列的吉芬獎[1]和德國的科德‧拉斯維茲獎[2]。
I don't have a simple explanation for that success. Fundamentally, SPIN is the story of a man, a family, and a generation caught up in events that defy easy comprehension. I suppose a contemporary reader might find some resonance in that theme. After all, we live in a world that has survived more than half a century under the threat of nuclear warfare, only to confront newer and more insidious dangers in the shape of global warming and the exhaustion of natural resources. The planet we live on is beginning to show its frailties in the face of the human technological onslaught, and apocalypse has become a footnote to the daily headlines. And in America, at least, it has become fashionable to say that "everything changed on September 11th."
我並沒有一個足以說明本書成功的簡單解釋。基本上，《時間迴旋》的故事描述一個人、一個家庭，乃至於一整個世代被捲入一連串令人難以理解的事件。我認為當代讀者也許會對這個主題產生共鳴。畢竟我們所賴以生存的世界，已經在核子大戰的威脅下撐過了半個多世紀，如今還得面臨更新、更多，像是全球暖化、天然資源匱乏等的潛在危機。在人類科技的猛攻之下，這顆星球的脆弱已經開始顯露於外，世界末日儼然成為每日頭條新聞的註腳。至少在美國，人們時常掛在嘴邊的一句話就是：「九一一之後，一切都變了。」
Did that perception, or paranoia, contribute to the popularity of SPIN?
難道是這樣的體認、這樣的被害妄想，造就出《時間迴旋》的風行麼？
Maybe, maybe not. SPIN isn't a topical novel -- or at least it was never intended to be. It uses many of the tropes and devices of the science fiction genre (a genre I fell in love with at an early age), but one of the things I wanted to do in this novel was to find the human concerns at the heart of all that genre paraphernalia, and address those concerns simply and directly.
或許是，或許不是。《時間迴旋》並不是一部探討時事問題的小說──至少我在創作時並無意於此。它運用了許多科幻類型特有的修辭和元素（我在很小的時候就愛上這個文類），不過我在這部小說中所希望達成的其中一個目標，就是要尋找出隱藏於種種科幻類型外貌底下的人性關懷，並簡單、直接地將這些關懷呈現在讀者眼前。
Life is brief, the universe we inhabit is inconceivably ancient, and profound change is inevitable. Those are the core tenets of science fiction, as I see it. But they are also profound human truths, with complex implications for individuals and societies.
生命短暫，我們身處的宇宙卻是難以想像地古老；全然的變化亦是無可避免。就我看來，這些都是科幻小說的核心概念。然而它們也都是深奧的人性真理，盤根錯節地牽動著每一個個體與社會。
The events described in SPIN are less an "apocalypse" than a way for the writer to confront modern human beings with their place in an ancient, evolving universe. The responses of the characters to that crisis -- religious, scientific, and personal -- are what create the drama. The central conceit of the novel, the event the characters call "the Spin," is not in any sense a plausible prediction of future events, any more than the Time Machine in the H.G. Wells novel of the same name is a plausible piece of Victorian engineering. But the Time Machine carried readers into a futurity that very much reflected the scientific knowledge (and the spiritual and religious crisis) of its day. My hope is that SPIN does something similar, by reminding us of the frailty of our world, of the evanescence of the present moment, and of the inevitability of change both on the cosmic scale and in the brief ecstatic journey of a single human life.
與其說《時間迴旋》裡所描寫的事件是一場「末世天啟」，倒不如說它是一種手段，作家藉此讓當下的人類正視他們在歷史悠久卻不斷演化成長的宇宙中所身處的地位。各個人物對於危機的反應──不論是宗教的、科學的，或是私密的──交織成整個故事。整部小說的中心構想，也就是人物口中所謂的「時間迴旋」，實在不能算是對未來的可信推測，一如我們不可能相信威爾斯（H. G. Wells）筆下的「時光機」會是維多利亞時代的工藝技術所能建造出來的產品。但《時光機》帶領讀者進入某種形式的未來，這個未來幾乎完全反映了當時的科學知識（以及心靈與宗教上的危機）。《時間迴旋》提醒我們地球的脆弱，使我們驚覺當下不過僅僅一瞬，讓我們體察到無論是亙古的宇宙，抑或短暫而充滿驚奇的人生，變化總是無常。我期待藉由這些啟發，讀者能擁有類似閱讀《時光機》一般的感受。
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[1]譯按：The Geffen Award，由以色列科幻暨奇幻協會為紀念編輯兼譯者阿莫斯‧吉芬（Amos Geffen）所頒發的獎項，共分為最佳翻譯科幻書籍、最佳翻譯奇幻書籍、最佳希伯來文原創科／奇幻短篇及最佳希伯來文原創科／奇幻小說四項，《時間迴旋》是 2006 年最佳翻譯科幻書籍的得主。
[2]譯按：Kurd Lasswitz Prize 是德國的主要科幻獎項，其中頒有外國科幻小說項目，《時間迴旋》亦為 2006 年的得主。
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《時間迴旋》臺灣譯本官方部落格
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