Interview with He

Special Guest: He tang style

Yao Dunhe: Like many sci-fi writers at home and abroad, you started your sci-fi creation when you were in college. Are there any special factors that make you embark on the road of science fiction?

Hu: Now that I think about it, it should be the result of many factors. For example, curiosity about learning phenomena, childlike innocence, and desire to tell stories. If a person lives in the era before Galileo, he need not be ashamed of his ignorance of science, but it is unforgivable if we stand in front of the science gate opened by the giant of science today and still feel at a loss. We may not be explorers, but accepting new knowledge is the bounden duty of intelligent life. One of the oldest missions of science fiction is to popularize scientific knowledge, and I am willing to do my bit for it.

Yao Dunhe: The early 1990s can be said to be a period of replacement of old and new science fiction writers. After that, the old one-man writer basically withdrew from the central stage of science fiction creation, and a new generation of science fiction writers quickly became the backbone of science fiction creation. How to evaluate the overall situation of science fiction creation in the early 1990s?

Ho: The early 1990s were a difficult period for China's science fiction. The situation of Science Fiction World magazine itself in that period is enough to explain the problem. I don't know who first put forward the word "Cenozoic". It may refer to the author in the 1990s. Now it seems that there is not much left (even if you add those who ran away and were caught back like today). However, I think the authors in the early 1990s and the late 1990s have similar thoughts and blood ties, which should be regarded as one crop. The difference is that the former has experienced the trough of science fiction, and it is an extra layer of tempering. In the early 1990s, sci-fi creation was far from prosperous, with few excellent works. At that time, Wang Jinkang's works should be the best, but I don't know if he is in favor of classifying his books into the new generation.

Black and blue to He: I wonder if it is of special significance for Brother He to publish his works under two names?

He: "It's a rare night, and this lamp is a candle" is a poem by Du Fu. I use "He" as my pen name, because my surname is He, and it also expresses my confusion in the face of the eternal mystery of time. Now I use the pen name He. Including "He Xi", which is also used to submit exoticism. As for "aliens", the use of nicknames is just a measure taken by the editor to cooperate with the so-called "comeback", with my prior consent.

Yao: Imagination is the core of science fiction. Therefore, from a reader's point of view, among your early works, I like Primitive Man best, rather than the award-winning Computer Demon and Parallel. I want to hear your opinions on the works before 1996. Which of those works do you like best?

Mr. Hu: It seems that there are differences among editors, authors and readers here. I like Pangu and Xiaoyu. Primitive people are actually popular science storytelling, which is also the original intention of my creation. Most modern people in China have long believed that the world is deterministic, and they like to talk about how history will develop. Anti-determinism in quantum theory runs through this work, which is actually the original work of the original work.

Pangu's original name was Legend of the Giant, which was created by 1995 and published by 1996. The editor made some minor changes. It is not uncommon to write science fiction novels based on China's fairy tales, and there are also many works in this field in Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Compared with Greek mythology, China's mythology is rough and unsystematic, but there are many nutrients that can be used for science fiction creation. However, many works with myth as the theme often lack creativity and often only make simple modern analogies. For example, mythical characters are changed into aliens, and automatic puppets are changed into robots. So "science" is "science", but readers' tastes seem to be the same. In fact, this phenomenon does not only exist in the creation of such themes. In recent years, many science fiction novels are suspected of being put on the cloak of science fiction, and many readers and friends are deeply disgusted with this. Personally, if you don't have good sci-fi ideas, don't write them. Readers don't have to buy a science fiction world if they want to see romance. The reason why I like Pangu is that even if I look at the existing stones, I can still attract myself (I look at the revised version), and the yearning for the mythical spirit expressed in the article remains unchanged.

Rain is an attempt, mainly in words. I told a standard science fiction story in the language of pure abortion, which was a bit interesting. One of the reasons why mainstream literature can accept magic doctrine is language exchange. No one will say that The Journey to the West and One Hundred Years of Solitude are not novels, but many people don't regard science fiction as novels. Since science fiction is labeled as "novel", it is obliged to communicate with pure fiction in language. I know that many people in science fiction don't agree with this view, but if science fiction is "isolated" from mainstream literature, it will not have any impact on mainstream literature, but only science fiction itself will suffer. Of course, the connection here is based on maintaining the characteristics of science fiction.

What do you think is the essence of science fiction, its significance, status and future development? What is your motivation for writing science fiction? How to evaluate the merits of a science fiction work? And what do you think are the requirements for writing science fiction? Who are your favorite sci-fi works and authors? Besides science fiction, what other books do you like to read? Hehe, it's a little too much. Please forgive me. Thank you.

Mr. Hu: Your problem is not only "many" but also "big". Even if you write a book, it is difficult to fully explain the essential meaning of science fiction. The more we reach the boundary of modern science fiction, the more vague it seems, and more and more magical realism, mysticism and other factors permeate it. The science fiction we are talking about now is far from Verne's time, and I really can't define it. The future development direction of science fiction is definitely the combination of best-selling books and movies.

My motivation for writing science fiction is only two words: hobby. The easiest way to evaluate the merits of science fiction works is to let readers bid, and so is the science fiction world. As for the insufficient representation of readers who participated in the voting, this is another problem.

Engaging in sci-fi creation requires three points of talent, three points of scientific literacy, three points of literary literacy and one point of perseverance. Limited by time and other factors, I don't read much on weekdays. Science fiction works are rarely read, compared with miscellaneous books such as popular science and history.

Yao: What influence will the remaining 1997 and 1998 have on your future creation?

He: I have accumulated rich experience in retreat, so I won't be caught back so easily if I run again (joking).

During that time, I didn't write a word of science fiction, but this "parting" with science fiction also let me know that I have an inseparable fate with science fiction. My mind is full of sci-fi ideas that only I know. If I don't write them down, they will disappear forever. There are also the expectations of readers and friends, as well as the unforgettable friendship with Science Fiction World magazine. These factors prompted me to return to the science fiction world.

Yao gave a warm response to He: 1999' s first work Alien, which returned to the world of science fiction. Will you tell the readers the creative background?

Ho: The science fiction concept of "foreign land" is quite simple, and children of several years old can understand it. The trigger point of creation is very accidental. I remember seeing pictures of slow recording and fast playing on TV. The picture is a vilen, and the clouds in the sky roll rapidly, casting a large moving shadow on the ground. The sun sets slowly in the sky, the moon rises, and the grass on the Yuan Ye dances mysteriously like a soul. After a few seconds, the story of "foreign land" took shape in my mind.

Ffice to He: Most of the characters in your novels are two boys returning to a girl, and most of them are interested in that girl, such as Pangu, defects and my parting. I really want to know why this happened. Is it emotional deviation caused by personal experience? Just curious, don't take it seriously.

Ho: In my works, emotional description is generally in a secondary position, which has little to do with the theme of science fiction, but it is sometimes used to achieve another effect. The heroine in Pangu likes me, and Ruby Lin in Defect likes Wei Jieru, but they choose to give up in pursuit of more important goals. Love Parting is an out-and-out love novel, whose original intention is to make people cry. There was a time when readers were invited to scold every romantic science fiction, as if science fiction could not write love. In fact, literary themes like love are inevitable in any literary form. I want to prove that touching love stories can be written according to the standard science fiction model. It's hard to say that my parting completely achieved this goal. Fortunately, cursing me is not far from other voices, and many people like it.

As for the emotional deviation caused by personal experience, I don't think we should joke with old comrades.

Luke: I like defects very much The reasoning process of science fiction should be natural and interesting. I want to ask, when you wrote this story, did you realize that there was something you couldn't push?

Defects is an old work. The theme is relatively simple, a bit like an interesting question. Any theory or viewpoint is worth studying as long as it does not lead to contradictions within its scope. For example, Euclid geometry assumes that it is flat, and within this assumption, many theorems have been proved without contradiction. Non-Euclidean geometry assumes that space is curved, and many non-contradictory theorems have been proved under this assumption. This shows that they all have their own reasons for existence. In the defect of the story, the starting point is that a person can only predict for ten minutes, but through reasoning, it will be concluded that this person can predict forever. This leads to contradictions. Personally, I prefer to use a game that always refutes a set of theories, which gives people a sense of pleasure. Your question didn't specify what kind of injury it was, but one thing is certain. If I find an injury while writing, I will try my best to correct it, and I will not let it go. I have a personal experience of this. I used the wrong information in the original book because of my memory mistakes, and I still feel uneasy after a long time.

Yao Dunhe: What is your creative environment? Is there a contradiction between daily work and life and creation?

Ho: I am an amateur writer, and all the difficulties that amateur writers feel in their creation are beyond my reach. Main time. Science fiction writing is actually very difficult. Today's readers receive a lot of information every day, and their horizons and knowledge are very different from before. It is impossible to win readers' favor by dropping books or playing garrulous, which is actually the reason why science fiction has been scolded more and more in recent years. Undeniably, some authors in science fiction don't know much about science fiction. They wrote very hard and worked hard, but the response after the work came out was not ideal. The time limit is a big trouble for me. After all, life comes first, so I can only try my best to arrange it.

Yao: Your Six Living Beings and other works show your persistent concern for reality. What do you think of the relationship between science fiction and reality? Do you like readers to call you a hard science fiction writer or a soft science fiction writer, if we agree with this classification?

Ho: As far as the attention to reality is concerned, Six Living Beings still shows the traditional theme, which is similar to its previous work Foreign Land. There are new discoveries in science, and the application has brought benefits, but at the same time it also hides great dangers. As Yao Bian said: "The monster beast is a symbol, symbolizing the sacred law of nature. It crouches in the process of human purchase, waiting for us to be awakened when we ask nature. "

More realistic works include Pastoral and Heartbroken Man, which will be published in Nebula. They were completed from 1999 to the beginning of 2000, which was the heyday of the new economy. In these two works, I injected my own views. As a passage in "Broken Heart" said: "Now everyone is trapped in the beautiful flowers and leaves on that giant tree, trying in vain to grow more beautiful flowers and leaves to surpass it, but no one notices the humble roots." The main difference between pastoral and heartbreak is food crops and mathematics, which is exactly what I call "roots" and what we lack most in this flashy era. These two works are sisters and express similar themes. The original name of the pastoral is Sad Wood. Not long ago, two projects won the highest national science prize in China, one was hybrid rice, and the other was machine proof of mathematical theorems.

The dispute between soft and hard science fiction has a long history. As I said before, I always thought that the gap between them was not big enough to become two camps. The general view is that hard science fiction that pays attention to technical details is more difficult to write, which also means that the author's literacy is higher, but I think hard science fiction is more like an exaggeration. Compared with science itself, most science fiction novels are very, very "soft". The performance specification of an airplane model written by a middle school student or the description of pesticide proportion in an agricultural technology station is definitely more difficult to read than the most "hard" science fiction in 200 1 science fiction. It is unrealistic to think that science fiction writers are ahead of scientists in order to promote the development of science itself.

I am planning to write a monograph on soft and hard science fiction, entitled "The Beauty of Technology and the Beauty of Art". Excellent science fiction works should be a combination of the beauty of science and technology and the beauty of art, taking music as an example. Pavarotti's perfect cloakroom, out of tune will only be a series of annoying noises, and vice versa. Only the perfect combination of technology (sound) and art (melody) can make people listen to such beautiful and moving music as My Sun.

Yao: Can you talk about your future writing plan?

Ho: My headache is that I have good themes, but I don't have creative enthusiasm or the opposite. At present, there are still some sci-fi ideas in my mind that no one has written, but for various reasons, I haven't written much recently. I haven't made too many plans in writing. 1, please talk about your new work and your recent writing plan?

At present, five new works have been submitted to the editorial department of the sci-fi world: Six Living Beings in a Foreign Land, Judgment Day, Sad Heart, My Parting, and Natural Talent.

The first two articles are a little longer, more than 30 thousand Everything else is 20 thousand words. At the beginning, it was even longer, and the requirements of editors were deleted. The first two articles add up to almost 50 thousand words. I still have a lot of things in my hand, so I won't say much here because it's endless.

2. What do you think of science fiction in the current domestic scene?

Because there is no detailed data for reference, I can only say a few words according to my personal impression. Today's science fiction is undoubtedly more prosperous than in previous years, and new people and new works are constantly emerging. There are many novels that can be used as symbols of prosperity to some extent, but unfortunately, some works are relatively thin, and most of them are written about things that have little to do with science fiction. People feel that science fiction has become a thin layer on the surface of romance, adventure, detective, fantasy and war. Personally, I have a standard: if a theme can be expressed without relying on science fiction at all, it can.

If the performance is good enough, the subject matter need not be written as science fiction. According to this standard, readers can make interesting screening of their own works. You can try to peel off the sci-fi cloak of a work, such as changing the place where the work took place from an uninhabited planet to a desert island on earth, or changing a person who returned from 3000 AD to 1000 AD to an ordinary person at that time. If the work is completely intact after such an operation, the story can be unfolded as usual and the theme can be expressed as usual.

3. What do you want to show in your novel?

This question is difficult to answer. There is no theme in my novel that I deliberately want to express. Generally speaking, any field you are interested in can enter the topic.

Take several recent new works as examples. Six sentient beings in a foreign land is a foreign companion with the theme of body. Judgment day is a religious theme. The heartbreaker is a realistic theme. "Love is parting" is a love theme (it seems to be a subject that is easy to attract criticism at the moment). My innate talent is a whimsical theme.

After several years of silence, you wandered around the rivers and lakes again and were recognized immediately. But what do you think of it in your heart? And every novel you published from 1999, almost every novel will get a lot of controversy after it is published. Readers either love death or despise it. What do you think of this?

Just to be clear. Silence for several years is entirely personal. In fact, the editing teacher in science fiction has been encouraging me to care about me. A direct reason for "Coming Back" is also the manuscript with the theme of Y2K bug.

In fact, by the time I wrote this interview, I had only published three new works since I came back: Alien, Perpetual Disaster and Defect. Confess one thing: the defect is an old manuscript, which is written about 1993 (the manuscript was also left in Xinghe for some time). I'm not satisfied with any of these three works, but I think a foreign land is better. Maybe it's because I haven't written for a long time and I'm a little rusty. I hope my later works can be improved.

"Foreign Land" shows a standard (another expression of the word is "old-fashioned") science fiction theme: people have created new theories, which bring benefits but also hide disasters. The hero risked his life to resolve the crisis, and finally the tragic ending of heroism. What I am satisfied with this work is that its sci-fi content is relatively fresh as a whole, which is inseparable from the story, which means that its sci-fi clothes are difficult to peel off. Dissatisfaction is that the writing technique is outdated and the language is disgraceful. As for your mention that someone said there was a "serious injury" in the article, I didn't realize it. But I am happy to find opportunities to discuss with friends who care about this issue. )

"Evil is invincible" is an appointment work. After publication, it was argued that the article was exaggerated and that the "Millennium bug" was only the author's concern. To tell the truth, this sentence can almost be used as an example of the theme of the work. The article "disaster" mainly has two meanings. Firstly, the so-called computer "Y2K bug" and "Y2K bug" problems are essentially numerical overflow problems. At present, all the computer systems I have contacted have the problem of Y2K bug, so this problem is still widespread at least so far. Secondly, I want to make it clear that these small problems have brought great and serious consequences, which are entirely due to human inertia and short-sightedness.

In this case, the reason why people bury the nuclear waste that can't be treated and the disposable plastic products that can't be degraded is based on a kind of understanding. People believe that "children and grandchildren are blessed by their own children and grandchildren", and intelligent future generations can solve the problems we create effortlessly. But what about reality? Aren't many global problems we are facing caused by our predecessors? Anyway, I don't think the prospects are optimistic. It is said that the millennium bug has caused hundreds of billions of dollars in losses to the world. I think if the millennium bug is left unchecked, its cost will be ten million times this value (thousands of years later, of course).

As mentioned earlier, Defect is an old work. For example, Euclid geometry assumes that the space is flat. Under this assumption, many theorems have been proved without contradiction. Non-Euclidean geometry assumes that space is curved. Among the flaws in the story, the starting point is that one person can only predict ten kinds. Personally, I prefer to refute a set of theoretical games with a question, which makes people have a pleasure in thinking. Some readers mentioned that there are one or two imprecise inferences in this article, which I thank and fully accept.

The unpublished new work has nothing to do with the manuscript, but is a free creation. Personally, I think it may be better than the above three works. If it can be published, I hope readers can correct me.

5. As we all know, in the early 1990s, you published your works in Science Fiction World under the real name of He Hongwei, and won the China Science Fiction Galaxy Award for novels such as Love is Light. What do you personally think of your works in the early 1990s?

I first published science fiction in 199 1, when I was 19 years old. The naivety of my works can be compared with my age, and the publication of my works is purely driven by the editing teacher.

1992 writing about love in the light is a little better, but it still looks childish in all aspects. Later, there were parallel imports, primitive people, small fish and Pangu. Among those works, I personally prefer the short story Rain by 1994 and Pangu by 1996. I wonder if anyone remembers them.

6. What do you want to express most in your work? What do you want your readers to get from your work?

This question is very similar to the third question, and the difficulty of answering it is similar. China's science fiction has always been fashionable, sometimes about environmental protection, and sometimes about cloning. I can't avoid vulgarity, so I can only try my best to find another way. I dare not expect readers to get anything from my poor work. I will be very satisfied if readers can read it all at once when they get the evening science fiction, and don't think it's a waste of time.

7. What is the biggest headache you encounter in your personal writing?

First, there are good themes, but there is no creative passion or the opposite.

The second is to receive a polite refusal notice.

8. According to the legend of science fiction circle, when you work from Chengdu to Zigong for love, can you talk about your life and the love between the two places?

My job is to deal with computers all day. Writing is a hobby.

As for the legend, consider it a legend.

9. Every science fiction writer will be influenced by some senior science fiction writers because of his own preferences when he starts. Who is your favorite science fiction writer? What do you think you learned from him?

Isaac asimov. I want to learn a lot. His works may not be the best among science fiction writers, but once they are combined with his outstanding scientific ideas, their attraction is irresistible. There are many unique ideas in his works. If sci-fi ideas can also be patented, he will have the most patents. This also leads to my point of view that the essence of science fiction is always the word "science fiction". Without excellent sci-fi creativity as the cornerstone, no matter how good the words are, no matter how strange the plot is, it can't produce excellent sci-fi.

10, every science fiction writer has his own understanding of science fiction. On you, how do you define the meaning of science fiction?

I may not be able to define this in a positive way. But I think we can point out which ones are not science fiction from the opposite side.

(1) violates the basic scientific theory known to mankind. Such as the law of conservation of energy.

(2) Excessive promotion of mysticism, showing Machamp's confusion and so on.

(3) Create some absurd theories and novels based on them.

(4) The whole novel has no scientific flavor.

……

But I really hope that all my works can be considered as science fiction.

1 1. There are many arguments about soft and hard science fiction in China. What do you think of this?

There is a view that hard science fiction seems to be more difficult to write, which means that the author's literacy is higher. Theoretically speaking, this is right. Hard sci-fi works involving a lot of technical details are bound to face more difficulties than soft sci-fi. But I insist that there is no difference between them, and they are not so different as to become two different camps. I tend to think that hard science fiction is just an exaggeration. In fact, most science fiction novels are very, very "soft" compared with science itself.