时间机器（存档集）

大家好，我是西蒙，《In Our Time》的制作人。在梅尔文宣布他离开工作近二十七年的《In Our Time》后，我们正借此机会从档案中精选一些最受欢迎的节目来庆祝他的杰出贡献，并感谢所有与我们联系的朋友。在适当的时候，我们将带着新节目和新主持人回归，但在此之前，请欣赏梅尔文2019年主持的《时间机器》。

Hello. I'm Simon, producer of In Our Time. Following Melvin's announcement that he stepped down from In Our Time after almost twenty seven years, we're taking the time to celebrate his outstanding work with some favorite episodes from our archive, and thanks to everyone who's been in touch. In due course, we'll return with new programs and a new presenter, but till then, here's Melvin with The Time Machine from 2019.

大家好。1895年，H·G·威尔斯创作了《时间机器》，书中富有的时间旅行者来到公元802701年，被未来景象所震惊。他遇见了艾洛伊人——源自像他这样的精英阶层后裔，却更加矮小、虚弱且漫无目的；还有莫洛克人——工厂工人的后代，居住在地下，将艾洛伊人当作肉畜饲养。威尔斯对阶级斗争、进化论和优生学的探索深受当时科学政治思潮影响，这部作品自此产生了深远影响。与我共同探讨H·G·威尔斯《时间机器》的嘉宾有：约克大学科学史学家阿曼达·里斯、杜伦大学英语研究系教授西蒙·詹姆斯，以及剑桥大学科学史教授西蒙·谢弗。

Hello. In 1895, h g Wells wrote the time machine in which the wealthy time traveler goes to the year August and is shocked by the future. He meets the Eloi descended from elite people like himself, but much smaller, weaker, and aimless, and the Molochs, the descendants of factory workers who live underground and farm the Eloi for their meat. World's exploration of class struggle, evolution, and eugenics was informed by the latest ideas in science and politics, and it's been highly influential ever since. With me to discuss the time machine by h g Wells are Amanda Rees, an historian of science at the University of York, Simon James, professor in the department of English studies at Durham University, and Simon Schaffer, professor of history of science at Cambridge University.

西蒙·谢弗，H·G·威尔斯早年是如何开启人生道路的？

Simon Schaffer, how did HG Wells start out in life?

威尔斯的早年生活被贫穷、聪慧、年轻和重病所笼罩。他生命最初的约二十年都在为生存挣扎。他的（此处原句不完整）

Wells' early life is dominated by the fact that he's poor and he's bright, and he's young, and he's extremely ill. And the first, what, twenty years of his life are a struggle for existence. His What was

他患的是什么病？

his illness?

他患有肺病，还摔断过腿。断腿的好处是让他卧床期间如饥似渴地阅读，而肺病的折磨在于——事实上他大半生都在病痛中煎熬。他的父母非常特别，对其早年影响深远：父亲曾是肯特郡板球队出色的快投手，

He had lung disease, and he'd broken his leg. The advantage of having broken his leg is that he kept some time in bed and read avidly. The disadvantage of the lung disease is that, really, for most of his life, he was ill, he was suffering, he was struggling. His parents are remarkable and, I think, important for his early years. His father was an absolutely brilliant fast bowler for Kent.

曾为郡队连续四球击倒四名击球手，这至今仍是项纪录。但威尔斯的父亲经营布罗姆利的瓷器店却糟糕透顶。H·G·威尔斯厌恶布罗姆利，称其为'最该死的小镇'。而他的母亲曾是萨塞克斯乡间别墅的女仆兼管家。

He took four wickets in four balls for the county, which is still something of a record. But he was much worse, was Wells' father, at running a shop in Bromley, a kind of China shop. Wells, h g, loathed Bromley. He described it as a suburb of the damnedest. His mother, on the other hand, had been a servant and housekeeper in a country house in Sussex.

那正是她遇见威尔斯父亲的地方。威尔斯回忆说，他的技艺传承自父亲，想象力则得自母亲。威尔斯的早年生活既是对这种成长环境的逃离尝试，也是对其意义的深刻反思。

That's where she'd met Wells' father. Wells reminisced that it was from his father that he got his skill, from his mother that he got his imagination. And a lot of Wells' early life is both an attempt to escape that upbringing, but also to reflect on what it meant.

他是如何获得教育，最终写出《时间机器》的？

How did he get the education that led him to be able to write the time machine?

他为此付出了艰苦努力。18岁那年，经过巨大挣扎，他被当时的科学师范学校（现属南肯辛顿帝国理工学院）录取为见习生。从18岁到21岁，他在那里度过了至关重要的三年。1884年的第一年无疑最为关键，因为他师从托马斯·亨利·赫胥黎。这位被称为'达尔文的斗犬'的维多利亚时期科学巨擘，是自然选择理论的杰出阐释者，拥有非凡魅力。威尔斯后来甚至将《时间机器》赠予赫胥黎，声称这部作品部分体现了赫胥黎的观点。

He had to fight for it. At the age of 18, after an immense struggle, he was admitted as a pupil student at what was then called the Normal School of Science, now part of Imperial College in South Kensington, and he spent three extraordinarily important years there from the age of 18 to the age of 21. The first year was undoubtedly the most important, 1884, because he was taught by Thomas Henry Huxley. Huxley was Darwin's bulldog, the one of, perhaps, the most famous man of science in Victorian London, an expositor of natural selection and of Darwinism, a man of extraordinary charisma, to whom, in fact, Wells eventually sent a copy of the time machine as a gift, alleging that it was partly an illustration of Huxley's views.

还有谁影响了他？这只是第一年的导师。还有两年呢，后来发生了什么？

And who else? That's one person who educated him. We're still in his first year. Two to go, then what happened?

他以优异成绩完成第一年后，这个聪慧却挣扎的年轻人典型地陷入了学生政治、新闻事业和情爱纠葛。这三者的结合使他逐渐远离科学领域。更糟的是，相比赫胥黎在动物学和生物学上的卓越教学，主导他第二、三年学业的物理教授弗雷德·古思里和查尔斯·博伊斯缺乏个人魅力。威尔斯勉强通过第二年考试，却在毕业年彻底失败。

So he his first year with flying colors. And then, perhaps not untypically for a very bright struggling student, he got into student politics and journalism and sex. And the combination of those three took him perhaps rather away from the sciences. It wasn't helped by the fact that whereas Huxley was a brilliant teacher in zoology and biology, the physics teachers who dominated Wells' student career in his second and his third year, Fred Guthrie and Charles Boys, were much less charismatic, and Wells barely passed his second year and completely flunked his final year.

那几年后他如何成为写出那部杰作的人？仅仅几年时间啊。

So how did he come to be the chap who wrote the book a few years later? Just a few years later.

他未获学位就离开了师范学校，随后从事教职。起初作为科学记者和小说家开启了非凡生涯，每年创作数百篇作品。到1894-1895年我们所知的《时间机器》版本问世时，他已开始获得可观收入。

Left the normal school with no degree. He then worked as a teacher. He began his extraordinary career initially as a science journalist and a writer of stories. He was writing hundreds of pieces each year. By the time the version that we know of the time machine appears in 1894 and 1895, he was beginning to earn real money.

他以我们的货币计算年收入接近5万英镑，这对一名记者和作家来说是相当可观的。他确实通过伦敦大学校外生的方式获得了科学学位。二十多岁时，他就聪明到能撰写一整本生物学和动物学教科书，这是一项重要成就。

He was earning in our money something close to £50,000 a year, which is a lot as a journalist and writer. He did get a science degree as an external student of the University of London. He was smart enough in his mid twenties to write an entire textbook in biology and zoology, which is an important achievement.

索菲·罗歇除了接受过一些高等教育的片段外，主要是自学成才。好吧。西蒙·詹姆斯。在威尔斯推出《时间机器》之前，已有关于角色被传送到未来的书籍。其中最具影响力的似乎是由贝拉米和莫里斯所著的两部作品。

Sophie Roche's autodidact apart from being having some snippets of superior education. Fine. Simon James. There were already books about characters being transported to the future when Wells brought out the time machine. The two most influential seem to have been by Bellamy and Morris.

你能给我们讲讲那两部作品吗？

Can you tell us about those two?

没错。贝拉米的《回顾》是美国出版物，在大西洋两岸都取得了巨大成功，作为美国社会主义文学文本实属罕见。它描绘了一个没有私有财产、人人劳动的未来社会，国家如同一家巨型企业，所有人18至21岁期间从事体力劳动，45岁退休。尽管这个构想极受欢迎，威廉·莫里斯却对此提出了反抗。莫里斯在评论《回顾》时指出，每个乌托邦都暴露了作者的个性——正如你所料，莫里斯认为这种高度技术化的未来更像反乌托邦而非乌托邦。因此他创作了《乌有乡消息》，描绘了一个更田园牧歌式的未来：人们简朴地生活在乡村，万物皆美。

That's right. So Bellamy's Looking Backward was an American publication, tremendously successful on both sides of the Atlantic, unusually an American socialist literary text, which portrays a future in which there is no private property, in which everybody works, in which the state is a giant corporation, everybody does manual labor from the ages of 18 to 21 and everybody retires at the age of 45. And while this was tremendously popular, this is a vision that William Morris rebels against. When Morris reviewed Looking Backward he says that every utopia betrays or reveals the personality of author and as you would imagine Morris found a a kind of highly technological future and a dystopian rather than a utopian vision. So so William Morris writes News From Nowhere, which is a much more pastoral, much more Arcadian version of the future where people simply, live in the countryside and things are beautiful.

而且弥漫着温和的无政府状态。

And a gentle anarchy prevails.

绝对如此。是的。我认为这正是威尔斯对其有所保留的部分原因。

In abs absolutely. Yes. Which I think is a part of Wells' problem with it.

所以威尔斯知道这些是他的先驱。还有其他先驱者。马克·吐温写过相关题材，凡尔纳也写过。但他是否多少受到了贝拉米的影响呢？

And so Wells knew those were his forerunners. There were other forerunners. Mark Twain had written about, Anke and Joel Verne had written. But did he did he come in slightly on the back of Bellamy?

是的。我认为他确实如此。当然，西蒙提到过威尔斯的校园政治活动。威尔斯曾聆听过莫里斯的演讲。因此我认为，他的政治思想深受莫里斯理念的影响，但在《时间机器》中描绘未来时，他激烈反抗莫里斯的叙事方式。

Yes. I think he did. And, of course, Simon has mentioned Wells' student politics. Wells had heard Morris speak. So I I think he was he was very much dealing with Morris' ideas as as foundational in his politics, but rebelling against Morris' way of writing the future when he comes to the time machine.

能否简要概述《时间机器》的情节？

Can you give us a brief outline of the plot of the time machine?

当然可以。故事开篇采用第一人称叙述，讲述一位天才发明家——我们不妨称其为时间旅行者——邀请叙述者共进晚餐。我们始终不知道时间旅行者的真名。随后他向叙述者及其他上流社会男性朋友展示了时间机器。

Yes. Of course. So we have a first person narrator at the beginning of the story who is invited to dinner by the brilliant inventor, the time traveler, as it would be convenient to speak of him. We never know the time traveler's name. And the time traveller shows the narrator and his other upper middle class male friends a time machine.

时间旅行者引导观众想象时间是继三维空间后的第四维度，并让他们思考：若能像交通工具革新实现三维空间移动那样，在第四维度自由穿梭会怎样。于是他启动机器冲向未来，抵达802701年的世界。眼前的景象令他震惊——他原以为会看到贝拉米《回顾》中描绘的科技乌托邦，却发现这个社会毫无技术痕迹，反而回归田园牧歌式的生活，人类形态也完全超出预期。

The time traveller imagines asks his audience to imagine that time is a fourth dimension like the other three spatial dimensions and then invites them to reflect on what it would be like to be able to move quickly and freely in the fourth dimension just as technological innovations in transport allow human beings to move in the three spatial dimensions. So the time traveller throws himself forward into the future. He travels into the world 08/27/2001, and he's very surprised. He expects to see a future like Bellamy's future in Looking Backward, but instead he finds that the society is is not at all technological, that it's, again, it's peaceful and rural, and that human beings are not what he expects them to be either.

那里有两类人类，地表居民与地底居民，他们是？

And there are two sets of human beings, those above ground and those below ground, and they are?

埃洛伊人与莫洛克人。

The Eloi and the Morlocks.

埃洛伊人居住地表，是贵族阶级退化后的后代；而莫洛克人则是无产阶级的顽强后裔。

Eloi above ground, they're sort of the degenerated descendants of the aristocracy, and the Morlocks are the emphatic descendants of the proletariat.

没错。他首先遇到的是埃洛伊人。他们外表美丽，但智力低下，身材比时间旅行者所处时代的人类更为矮小，使用的语言极其简单，仅有约500个词汇。

That's right. And he encounters the Eloi first. They are they're pretty, but they're stupid. They're shorter than the human beings of the time traveler's own time. They have a very simple language of only about 500 words.

他们整日闲坐，优雅地嬉戏，以水果为食，旅行者认为这群人基本上毫无用处。而莫洛克人呢？这些地下生物是他在书中稍后发现的。莫洛克人形似猿猴，令他深感厌恶。埃洛伊人让他觉得美丽，但莫洛克人却激起他内心的暴力与反感。

They they sit around playing beautifully, eating fruit and he finds them generally rather useless. And the Morlocks? The Morlocks are the underground creatures whom he discovers later on in the book. The the Morlocks are ape like and he's much more revolted by them. He finds the Eloi beautiful but the Morlocks stir up violence and antipathy in his heart.

但事实证明，在这两个未来人类亚种中，莫洛克人才是技术更先进的族群。他们居住在地下，与埃洛伊人不同，他们拥有机械设备。

But it turns out that the Morlocks are the more techno technologically advanced of the two subspecies of humanity in the in the future. The Morlocks live underground, and unlike the Eloi, they have machines.

而且他们以埃洛伊人为食。将埃洛伊人当作肉畜饲养。

And they cannibalize the Eloi. They groom the Eloi for their meat.

正是如此。这是时间旅行者在途中发现的骇人真相。莫洛克人以这种血腥的阶级报复方式，字面意义上地'吃掉富人'。曾经的普罗阶级变成了贵族般的埃洛伊人，当埃洛伊人吃着水果时，莫洛克人的食物正是埃洛伊人。

That's right. That's the grizzly discovery that the time traveller makes part way through. So in a a grizzly act of of class revenge, the Morlocks literally get to eat the rich. So as the the proletarians have become the aristocracy have become the Eloi. And while the Eloi eat fruit, what the Morlocks eat is Eloi.

无论如何，时间旅行者察觉了这一切后设法逃脱，一周后（以我们的时间计算）回到里士满同一张餐桌前向绅士们讲述经历。众人半信半疑，而后他再次启程——我想是再次出发了——从此音讯全无。阿曼达·莱斯，为什么旅行者拥有载具机器这件事如此重要？

And one way or another, the time traveler notices all this and then manages just it's just to escape and to come back to meet the same gentleman around the same table in Richmond a week in our time later, tells them all this. They only half believe him, and then he goes off again. I think he goes off again, and we never they never hear of him again. Why does it matter, Amanda Rice, that the traveler has a machine to convey him to where he's going?

因为在H·G·威尔斯《时间机器》之前已有许多时间旅行故事，但都依赖机缘或神迹。比如有人躺下入睡便穿越到未来，有人去拜访神明。印度教等神话中也有类似传说：人们前往神界时，未察觉人间时光飞逝，实质上已抵达自己的未来。这些全都是关于时间旅行的古老叙事。

Because there have been plenty of time travel stories before h g Wells' the the time machine, but they all depend on chance or divine intervention. So somebody lies down and goes to sleep and is transported into the future. Somebody goes to visit a god. There's several sort of myths, Hindu myths as well, Indian myths as well, that have basically people going to visit the divine and while they're in heaven, not noticing that in fact time has passed by on earth more swiftly than they'd expected and they are effectively in their own future. So you have all of these tales of travelling forward in time.

但这里既没有控制也没有方向。对威尔斯而言，关键在于这是一台机器。这是人类制造并受人类掌控的产物。作家纳洛·霍普金森曾将科幻小说定义为文学的一个分支，探讨人类使用工具所带来的后果。而时间机器正是一种操控时间、以可控方式穿越时空的工具。

But there is no control and there is no direction. And what matters for Wells is the fact that this is a machine. This is something that is produced by humans and is under human control. The writer Nalo Hopkinson once defined science fiction as that branch of literature which deals with the consequences for humanity of the use of tools. And the machine is a tool for manipulating time and being able to move through time in a controlled fashion and in a controlled way.

有趣的是——我小时候可能读过，但这次为节目重读时发现——开篇相当生硬。这本书立即成为超级畅销书，影响深远至今。前两三章充斥着严肃的科学讨论，关于第四维度这个新概念，他是在《自然》杂志上读到的。

One of the interesting things must have read it when I was a kid, but I I read it for this program, obviously, is that the opening is quite stiff. It became an enormous bestseller instantly, an enormously influential, still is. It is quite stiff. There's a serious scientific discussion goes on in the first two or three chapters. The fourth dimension of this new idea, that new idea, he's read it in in nature.

他在这里读到过。医生、心理学家等人都认同这个理论。回顾往事，这种学术讨论竟能开启一本取得巨大商业成功的书，是否令你感到惊讶？

He's read it here. They all agree. The doctor, the psychologist, and so and so forth. Does it surprise you looking back that this sort of discussion could start a a book that would have such an enormous popular success?

不，完全不。我认为这本书序章的重要性在于——科幻常被批评不够现实主义（无论这具体指什么）——但这个开篇极具现实主义色彩。它描绘了维多利亚时代中上阶层专业人士的日常生活场景。

No. Not at all. I think what's really important about the introduction, the the first part of the book, is that it's you know, science fiction is often criticized for not being realist, whatever that means, but this is a profoundly realist introduction. You are within the domestic sphere. You are within the the lived life of upper middle class professional Victorian households.

有点像福尔摩斯的设定，

A bit like Sherlock Holmes is set up,

不是吗？正是这种生活化的铺垫，使得威尔斯后续能将不可思议之事变得真实可信。

isn't it? It's it's that domestication that makes it possible for Wells to domesticate the impossible later on and to make it real for the readership.

他设计时间机器并运用科学知识——正如西蒙在节目开头指出的——是因为真心相信这可能实现，还是仅仅为了迷惑和吸引读者？

Did he use the machine and use his knowledge of sciences, which Simon pointed out at the beginning of the programme, because he thought this might really happen, or just as a way to beguile and entrap his readers?

我认为这个问题可以从两个角度回答，最重要的角度取决于你对科幻小说这一体裁或互动模式功能的认知。若将其视为裹着糖衣提升公众科学素养的手段，那么当人们读到《时间机器》时会惊讶地发现，书中对时间机器运作原理的细节描写如此之少。你几乎无法了解这个机器的具体构造。每次重读时我都觉得，这本质上就是H.G.

I think that there are two ways of answering that and I think the most important way has to do It depends on what you think in a sense science fiction is for or that genre or that mode of engagement is for. If you think of it as something as a kind of sugar coated way of increasing the public understanding of science, then people are sometimes surprised when they read the time machine to find there's actually so little detail on exactly how it happened. Know, how you don't actually get to find out an awful lot about how the time machine works. I always read it and think, well this is basically H. G.

威尔斯作为自行车爱好者的思维映射——那些操纵杆其实就是自行车把手，座椅就是鞍座。但比起理解时间旅行的原理，更重要的是思考威尔斯如何通过时间旅行者的经历，从根本上反思人性的本质与人类生存状态，以及我们如何识别彼此身上的人性光辉。

Wells, the cyclist, the cycling enthusiast and effectively the handles are the handlebars and the seat is the saddle kind of thing. But it's less important to think about what the understanding of time travel was I think and more to think about the ways in which Wells is using the experiences of the time traveller to reflect essentially on the nature of of humanity and on the nature of the human condition and how, in essence, we recognize the the humanity in each other.

这里存在一种并非矛盾而是对比的关系：一方面我们对这台机器的认知极其有限——他只需坐在扶手椅上按下几个按钮就能启程；另一方面，在给定的叙事空间里，关于时间本质的讨论却异常开阔，涉及不同维度的概念、物理学、生物学等前沿思想。

There is a con there is a not a contradiction, but a contrast between the limited nature of our knowledge of this machine. He sits in an armchair, presses a few buttons, and away he goes. And the not unlimited, but very wide open, given the space, a discussion of the ideas of the time. So he's way up with the ideas or the ideas about this dimension, that dimension, physics, biology. You know.

但归根结底，你说得对，这就是个自行车扶手椅。西蒙·谢弗（Simon Schaffer），对此你有什么看法？

But it in the end, it's you're right. It's a bicycle armchair. What do you have to say to that Simon Simon Schaffer?

威尔斯对此有过明确表述。晚年时他指出，菱形车架自行车与《时间机器》的出版几乎同时发生。正如阿曼达所说，鞍座与把手的设计映射了廉价自行车带来的社会关系革命——特别是对中产阶级和工人阶级出行能力的影响，以及两性摆脱父母监管自由交往的可能性，这两点对威尔斯至关重要，从他后续作品中可见一斑。此外，关于'驯化不可能'这个概念——这也是威尔斯的原话——我想补充的是...

Wells is pretty explicit about this. Much later in his life, he points out that the diamond frame bicycle and his story, The Time Machine, appeared at exactly the same moment. And as Amanda says, the saddle and the seat and the handlebars absolutely speak to this extraordinary revolution in social relations that cheap and affordable bicycling had, above all, you might say, on the middle class and the working class' capacity to travel, and on the capacity of the sexes to meet each other away from their parents, two things that mattered a great deal to Wells, as we know from the fiction that he followed Time Machine with. There's something else, just to expand a little on what Amanda has already said about the domestication of the impossible. Again, that's Wells' that's Wells' phrase, which is cinema.

在《时间机器》问世数月后，一位名叫罗伯特·保罗的电气工程师联系了威尔斯，此人是托马斯·爱迪生在伦敦的电影代理。保罗想将《时间机器》改编成电影，这个超前构想促使双方展开合作。根据现有资料，保罗甚至申请了关于'重现时间旅行效果装置'的专利。

A few months after the appearance of Time Machine, he was contacted by an electrical engineer called Robert Paul, who was Thomas Alvarez's cinema agent in London. And what Paul wanted to do was to turn the time machine into a movie. An extraordinary vision. Wells and Paul collaborate. Paul wrote a patent, as far as we can tell, on a machine for reproducing the effects of time travel.

换言之，不仅威尔斯构想出了这台机器，更关键的是，乘坐这种机器的体验开始与1895-96年间伦敦维多利亚时期观众在早期影院中的观影体验产生强烈共鸣。

It wasn't, in other words, just that Wells had evoked a machine, but that the experience of traveling on such a machine began to conform ever more closely with the experience the Victorian audience in London was beginning to have in 1895 and '96 of early cinema.

你想进来吗，阿曼达？

You want to come in, Amanda?

我刚想说，还有个游乐场设施的提案对吧？这样人们就能亲身体验乘坐时光机穿越的物理感受，仿佛真的去了那个博览会。

I was just going there's a a proposal for a fairground ride as well, isn't there? So that effectively that people can go to the fair and experience what it would have been like physically for themselves to travel in the time machine.

西蒙，我们来到这个无名星球之地。其实它就在这里，不是吗？我们讨论的是时间而非空间。所以他最终回到了出发地泰晤士河附近，文中描述了泰晤士河口的景象。

Simon, we come to this this unnamed planet place place. Well, it's here, isn't it? I mean, it's time we're talking about, not space. So he ends up near the Thames where he starts from. There's a description of the Thames Estuary.

显然，泰晤士河对此猝不及防。突然间他描述起近百万年后的泰晤士河口。不过没关系。场景就在那里，有埃洛伊人和莫洛克人。

Obviously, Thames rather by surprise about that. It was all of a sudden he's talking about Thames Estuary nearly a million years on. Never mind. There he is. We have Eloy and the Morlocks.

时间旅行者对他们的反应揭示了什么关于那个时代和他自身的信息？

What does his the travelers' reaction to them tell us about the time and about him?

我认为时间旅行者最后的话是在邀请听众将他不被相信的故事视作预言或警告。威尔斯将智人退化为埃洛伊和莫洛克人，视为对其所处时代政治不平等所导致生物学后果的警示。

I suppose that the time traveller says at the end that invites his audience to take his story when they don't believe him as a prophecy or a or a warning. And I think Wells sees the the de evolution of homo sapiens into the Elo and the Morlocks as being a warning about the biological consequences of the political inequality of his of his own time.

这给十九世纪末的阶级差异施加了巨大压力，不是吗？七十多万年后，最终演变成了这般景象。

It's put pressure on the class differences of the late nineteenth century, hasn't it? Put immense pressure on it. So seven hundred odd thousand years on it and ended up with this.

完全正确。因为威尔斯在他的作品中，始终致力于向读者传达教诲。这从他五十年写作生涯的开端直至结束，都是其鲜明的标志。他总说自己宁愿被称为教师或记者，而非艺术家。

That's absolutely right. Because Wells, in his writing, always wants to teach his audience a lesson. It's very much the hallmark of his fifty year writing career right from the very beginning here right until the end. And he always says that he would call himself a teacher or a journalist before he would ever call himself an artist.

那么他试图通过埃洛伊人和莫洛克人告诉我们什么？我们知道他们体型娇小、无能无用、以水果为食、终日游荡、偶尔跳舞、语言贫乏。但他这样描写的用意何在？

So what is what what is he trying to tell us about the Eloi and then about the Molochs? That's that we know that and we've said they're small, they're they're useless, they eat fruit, they moon about, they have a few dances, they don't speak they haven't many words of their language. But what is he saying by saying that?

阶级分化最终导致埃洛伊人与莫洛克人产生生物性差异，而在威尔斯的世界观里，教育可以弥合这种分裂。教育是他眼中解决所处时代社会分化的万能药。后来他将科学与社会主义视为一体——都是以特定认知方式理解世界，从而改造和完善它。

The class divisions of the the class divisions that eventually result in the biological differences between the Eloy on the and the Morlocks can be fixed in Wells' worldview with education. The education is Wells' panacea for the social divisions that he sees in his in in the world that he lives in. Later on, he identifies science and socialism as being essentially the same thing. It's about seeing the world in a particular way and an informed way that allows you to address it and fix it and try and make it better.

这对人类真是既悲观又刻薄的看法，不是吗？我们要么变成瘦弱无用、只会采莓唱歌的废物，要么沦为深居地底、苍白可怖的食人魔。除此之外别无他路，对吧？

It's a pretty pessimistic and bitter view of us, isn't it? We either end up as sort of weedy, small and useless and singing and eking raspberries or we end up as deep in the earth, white, creepy, and murderous cannibals. It does That's that's about it. There isn't anybody else knocking about, is there?

威尔斯始终难以调和其乐观与悲观。作为科学家他或许是悲观的，但作为政治关注者又显乐观。他在《世界史纲》中写道：人类历史日益成为教育与灾难的竞赛。当他在政论中推崇教育时，《时间机器》却展现了'若不听从我辈警告'的灾难图景。

Well, Wells really struggled to reconcile his optimism and his pessimism. I wonder I wonder if as a scientist, he's a pessimist, and as someone interested in politics, he's an optimist. He writes in the outline of history later on that human history becomes more and more of a race between education and catastrophe. And while he's recommending education in some of his political writings, in the time machine, he shows a catastrophe that this is what happens if you don't listen to people like me.

有趣的是灾难叙事更能抓住公众不是吗？他还引入了当时盛行（如今已遭摒弃）的优生学理念。阿曼达，能谈谈这些元素在小说中的作用吗？

It's interesting that the catastrophe seizes the public isn't it, Amanda? And he brings in the idea of eugenics, which were important then and and bleed in there, not now, but and they were mainstream then. Can you say how they play inside this novel?

某种程度上，西蒙·詹姆斯刚才的见解与你所言相通——莫洛克人与埃洛伊人的分化，正是对'楼上楼下'空间阶级的具象化呈现。正如西蒙·谢弗所言，他深受赫胥黎思想熏陶。

Well, to a certain extent, what Simon James just had to say about the kind of the and and what you yourself have said, you you can you can see it as a kind of the division between the Morloy Morloy? I've just invented invented a a new new category. Category. The division between the Eloy and the Morlocks as the literal kind of representation of upstairs downstairs in terms of the spaces that they are occupying. He's taught by Huxley as Simon Schafer has already said.

但我认为这里最关键的一点涉及规划的概念，以及为未来、为人类进行规划的理念。因为从根本上说，他在对人类未来图景的描述与构想中，实际上是在挑战进步这一观念，质疑智力必然引领我们获得救赎的信念。这一切都与他所批判的机器、机器经济、城市及人与自然关系等问题紧密相连。但本质上，我认为这里争论的核心是：人类未来能在多大程度上通过设计实现？他挑战的是进化存在终点的观点。

But I think that the most significant point here has to do with the notion of planning and the idea of being able to plan for a future and the idea of being able to plan for humanity. Because fundamentally what he is challenging, think, in his account and his vision of what this human future might look like, he is challenging the notion of progress, he is challenging the notion that intelligence is necessarily the thing that is going to lead to our salvation. And that is all tied up with the issues that he has with the machine, with the machine economy, with the city and relationships to nature and so on. But fundamentally what is at issue here I think is the question of to what extent can you create a human future by design? He's challenging the the idea that there's there's there's there's an endpoint to evolution.

西蒙·西蒙·谢弗，如各位可能已察觉，我们现场有两位西蒙。他的悲观主义从何而来？他本人生活态度积极乐观，热爱科学，常称这是知识的伟大馈赠。他总是这样滔滔不绝。

Simon Simon Schaffer, we have two Simon's with us, as you might have picked up by now. Where did he get that pessimism from? His own life was optimistically driven. He loved science, and he would say this is this is a great bounty of knowledge. On he would go.

然而据我观察，整段关系中找不到一丝一毫的乐观成分。

And yet it as far as I can tell, there's not a drop. There's not a gram of of optimism in the whole of the relationship.

没错。《时间机器》故事主体中没有任何进步或救赎的倾向。不仅如此，事态发展比这还要糟糕得多。

No. There is nothing progressive or salvation oriented in the bulk of the time machine story. And not only that, but things get even worse than that.

故事尾声处，时间旅行者继续前行约三千万年，发现整个宇宙即将终结。太阳燃尽了一切，然后他返回家中。嗯，正是如此。

When it goes on it goes on for a tiny bit at the end of the book, goes on about thirty million years and discovers the whole thing is coming to an end. The sun's burning everything out, and then he comes back home. Mhmm. Right.

因此在我看来，《时间机器》的核心驱动力是他所谓的'灭绝悲剧'。这本书的主旨无疑是悲观的——他在给赫胥黎寄书时明确表示：'若社会发展消弭了生存竞争压力，人类终将分裂成《唐顿庄园》与'撒旦磨坊'两个极端。'

So it seems to me the driving force of the time machine is what he calls the tragedy of extinction. The main lesson is undoubtedly pessimistic. This is what he tells Huxley when he sends Huxley a copy of the book. He says, this struggle. If social development removes the pressure of struggle, it will also divide us between Downton Abbey and the Satanic Mills.

所以这种悲观主义不仅源自当代自然科学的论断——对威尔斯而言更关键的是，他始终试图通过写作介入科学领域。他并非被动传递知识，这本书本身就是一场论辩。其核心论点是：切勿认为自然选择本身会带来或确保社会进步。这既是对当时生物学与政治现状的批判，也是从中衍生出的思想交锋。

So the pessimism, pessimism, it seems to me, comes from not just what contemporary natural science is saying, but also, and this is always crucial for Wells, he wants to use his writing to intervene in science. He isn't just passively transmitting it. This book is an argument. And the argument is partly, do not suppose that natural selection on its own will give us or guarantee or produce social progress. That is an argument with contemporary biology and politics, as well as an argument derived from contemporary biology and politics.

就在他撰写《时间机器》最终出版版本的那段时期，他的导师赫胥黎在牛津大学发表了十九世纪最伟大的科学演讲之一——《进化论与伦理学》。赫胥黎在演讲中提出了一个极其重要的观点（这个观点似乎当下牛津并非所有人都记得）——人类伦理与达尔文主义原则是相悖的。赫胥黎的论点是：如果人类要进步，就必须彰显其摆脱自然选择的能力。人工选择、社会伦理并非达尔文主义赋予我们的，我们必须与之抗争。

During the exact period that he was writing the final published version of of Time Machine, his master, Huxley, had given one of the greatest science lectures of the nineteenth century, which is Evolution and Ethics delivered at Oxford. And in Evolution and Ethics, Huxley makes the extraordinarily important point, a point that not everyone at Oxford at the moment seems to remember, that human ethics are contradictory to the principles of Darwinism. Huxley's argument is that if humans are going to progress, they have to register their capacity to break with natural selection. That artificial selection, social ethics, are not given to us by the principles of Darwinism. We have to fight against them.

最终，威尔斯的著作是对这场至关重要辩论的介入，他反对那种被他称为'卓越生物学'（一个他深恶痛绝的生物学变体）的学说。

Wells' book, finally, is an intervention in that extraordinarily important debate against what he calls, magnificent phrase, Excelsior biology, a version of biology he'd loathed.

旅行者西蒙·詹姆斯向晚宴宾客解释时提到，在众人眼中他只离开了一周。尽管他进门时看起来憔悴不堪——身上带着伤疤，衣衫褴褛。

Simon James, the traveler explains this to his dinner guest. He's only been away a week as far as they're concerned. Even though when he came through the door, looks he looks wracked a bit. He's got scars. His clothes are filthy.

他看起来像是历经磨难。此前已有人评价他'聪明得令人难以置信'，此刻他试图向众人解释自己的经历。这是否意味着威尔斯在借此向读者传递某种可信度？还是说其中另有深意？

He looks as if he's been through the mill and so on. He's he's already been called a person too clever to be believed, and he tries to explain to them what what he has done. Is there a sense that well, Wells is Wells seems to me to be using this to explain to the audience, to give it plausibility to the audience. But is there anything more to it than that?

我认为威尔斯非常清楚时间旅行者在故事中的不可信性——在开篇的第一次晚宴上，他就展示了迷你时间机器并使其消失，但全书将这一幕笼罩在魔术戏法般的氛围中，或许更像是催眠术：聚焦于逐渐暗淡的光晕。有位宾客问道：'这是真实的吗？还是像去年圣诞节你展示的幽灵把戏？'时间旅行者除了韦娜（他结识的女性埃洛伊人）赠送的两朵花之外，没有任何证据能证明他去过未来，而这两朵花似乎也......

Well, I think Wells is very conscious of the time traveller's lack of plausibility in his in his story that that that right in the the first dinner party at the beginning he shows them a mini time machine and makes it disappear but the book frames this in an atmosphere that makes it look like a magic trick or possibly an act of hypnosis perhaps focuses on a darkening pool of light. One of the guests says now is this for real or is it like the ghost that you showed us last Christmas? That the time traveller has absolutely no proof of his going into the future other than the two flowers that Weena, the female Eloi whom he befriends, gives him that don't seem to correspond to

听着，重点在于：他带回来的东西是这个受他保护的埃洛伊孩子送给他的两朵花。不知怎么它们穿越了时间，他把花放在桌上仿佛在说'这就是证明'。

Listen. Listen. Got to know about this. What what the thing he brings back are two flowers given to him by this child, Eloy, who he protects. She's given and they somehow come back, and he puts them on the table as if to say so there.

没错。

Yes.

没错。而作为客人的植物学家看着那些花说，这些花与我见过的任何其他花都不一样。所以这是一点点诱人的证据。

That's right. And the the botanist at his guest does look at the flowers and say, well, these don't look any other flowers I've I've ever seen. So it's this tantalizing little bit of little bit of proof.

我能请你回应一下西蒙·谢弗的观点吗？关于人类必须被保持在必要性磨石上的需求。你对此有何看法？

Can I ask you to take on something that Simon Schaffer was saying? The need for humanity to be kept keen on the grindstone of necessity. What do you have to say about that?

嗯，我认为这是时间旅行者所看到的性选择和自然选择的博弈未来，这两者是达尔文进化论的两大驱动力。当达尔文撰写《物种起源》时，他试图给它一个圆满的结局。达尔文自己读小说时，也偏爱有圆满结局的作品。所以他在《物种起源》中努力让结局显得美好，说从饥荒、战争、物种灭绝中，最奇妙的生命已经并正在进化。但当然，有人读过达尔文后会说，查尔斯，这并非你书中真正主张的观点。

Well, I think this is the playing future that the time traveller sees of sexual selection and natural selection, the two great engines of of the Darwinian theory of of evolution. When Darwin writes The Origin of Species, he tries to put a happy ending on it. When Darwin himself read fiction, he preferred fiction with a happy ending. So he writes The Origin of Species and tries to make it end nicely and says that from from famine, from war, from extinction of species, you know, most wonderful beings have been and are being evolved. But of course, of read Darwin and said but Charles that's not what you're actually arguing in your book.

智力、美丽或物种的复杂性本身并不被进化所固有地奖赏。进化奖赏的是物种对环境的适应性。而人类的环境变得高度管理化、非常平静、高度受控且极其稳定。因此，对人类而言，保持智力已不再具有优势。

That intelligence or beauty or sophistication in a species aren't in themselves intrinsically rewarded by evolution. What evolution rewards is fitness for a species' environment. And the environment of humanity becomes very managed, becomes very calm, becomes very controlled, becomes very stable. And therefore it's not to humanity's advantage anymore to be intelligent.

为什么，阿曼达，阿曼达里斯，你认为威尔斯要在埃洛伊人和莫洛克人之间设置如此鲜明的对比？如此巨大的反差，中间没有任何过渡。没有层次。没有微妙之处。砰。

Why, Amanda, Amandaris, do you think that Wells set up such a contrast between the Eloi and the Morlocks? Such a such a massive con with nothing in between. No gradations. No subtleties. Bang.

失败。无用。终结。砰。残酷。

Defeat. Useless. Finished. Bang. Brutal.

食人族掌权。被埋入地下。

Cannibal's in charge. Put underground.

这实际上是他其他著作中遵循的模式，也是他后续将继续沿用的。我认为阶级斗争对故事至关重要，但威尔斯也在玩弄西方文明或西方思想中的其他二元对立。你可以将埃洛伊人和莫洛克人视为这些对立的体现。另一个极为引人注目的是，他降落在这片伊甸园般的天堂。

It's actually a pattern that he's followed in other books or that he will go on to to follow later on as well. I think the class struggle is absolutely essential to the story. But I think Wells is also playing around with some other binaries in Western civilisation or in Western thought there. And I think that you can see the Eli and the Morlock as representations of those as well. So one of the things that's really, really striking as well is that he lands in this Edenic heaven.

他身处看似伊甸园的地方。所有机器都停止运转，于是你看到地表葱郁花园与地下机器的鲜明对比。这里展现了自然与文明、自然与社会的分裂。这又与他开始提出的种种问题相呼应：文明对我们理解人性有何影响？某些群体如今能享受的闲适生活产生了什么后果？

He's in what appears to be the Garden of Eden. The machines are all under so you have this contrast on the one hand between the lush garden on the surface and the machines underneath. So you have this nature culture, this nature society division being played out there. Which ties again into all kinds questions that he is also beginning to ask about what impact is civilisation having on the way in which we understand humanity? What impact this relaxed life that we that certain groups can now lead?

这种生活如何钝化了他们在生存斗争中的能力？

How is that blunting their efforts in the struggle for existence?

我们很幸运拥有《时间机器》1895年5月出版前的多个版本。在早期版本中，威尔斯并未如此明确地对比贵族与工人阶级。他使用的短语耐人寻味——这是审美家与清教徒的对比。值得记住的是，《时间机器》出版于奥斯卡·王尔德审判的当月。关于美学、退化、倦怠以及社会与自然腐败的主题当时充斥报端。

We're lucky enough to have many different versions of Time Machine before the one that was published in May '95. In earlier versions, Wells doesn't make the contrast so explicitly between the aristocrats and the working class. The phrase he uses, I think, fascinatingly, is that this is a contrast between aesthetes and Puritans. And it's worth remembering that Time Machine is published the month of Oscar Wilde's trials. The themes aesthetics, of degeneration, of languor, and social and natural corruption are all over the newspapers at this point.

威尔斯笔下未来的双重性不仅捕捉了生物学特征，也反映了当时的政治氛围。

And the bipolar quality of Wells' future is capturing not just biology, but also politics of the time.

是啊。西蒙·詹姆斯这位时间旅行者似乎完全、彻底、离谱地不适合这份工作。他就这么穿着晚餐礼服坐在那儿，连衣服都没换。我猜他大概穿着某种晚宴夹克。

Yeah. Simon James, the time traveler, seems to be massively, massively, spectacularly ill equipped for this job. I mean, he's sitting at dinner. Doesn't change or anything. He's obviously in some sort of, I presume, dinner jacket.

他抽着雪茄，口袋里装着几根后来派上大用场的火柴——就像殖民文学里那样，你划亮火柴人们就四散逃跑。你觉得威尔斯塑造这个角色的方式如何？

He's smoking cigars. He's got a few matches in his pocket, which come in very handy. As as in colonial literature, you strike a match and people run away, that sort of stuff. What do you think of the way that Earnwell's presented him?

嗯，我认为他是一个充满矛盾魅力的人物。事实上，他自己也指出了这一点。在讲述自己故事的大部分过程中，他突然说，也许我该带把枪。你知道吗？或许带个相机也是个好主意。

Well, I think he's a he's a fascinating set of contradictions. In fact, the it's it's he points out to himself. He's putt most of the way through telling his own story when he says, maybe I should have brought a gun. You know? Perhaps a camera would have been a good idea.

也许我该多带几盒火柴，而不是仅有一盒。作为读者也会想，是啊，你确实该这么做。同时我觉得他是审美家与技术员的奇妙结合体。当他在结尾说‘请将我对其真实性的断言视为增添趣味的艺术手法’时，简直像是奥斯卡·王尔德附体——一个典型的中产阶级浪荡旅行家。从这个角度看，他像极了埃洛伊人。但别忘了，他同时也是个技术专家。

Maybe I should have brought more matches than a single box of and also as a reader, think, well, yes, maybe you should too. I think also he's a a fascinating combination of of aesthete and technician himself. When he says at the end, treat my assertion of my story's truth as a mere stroke of art to enhance its interest, I think he's sounding like Oscar Wilde, that he is he is this very bourgeois, you know, know, louche traveler. So in that sense, he's like he's like the Eloy. But of course, he's also a technician.

他既是科学化身，也是人文艺术的代表。你看，他反抗莫洛克人，但我怀疑在某种意义上他自己也是莫洛克的一员，毕竟操纵机器的正是莫洛克人。

He is he is science as well as as well as the arts and humanities as well too. So, you know, he's he, you know, revolts against the against the Morlocks, but I wonder if he is, in a sense, part Morlock himself too because it's the Morlocks who work the machines.

他身上有种类似福尔摩斯的自大感。这些受过良好教育的精英总是超然物外，能解决常人无法解决的问题，但往往独自在伦敦舒适的寓所里完成。这种特质也很明显，不是吗？

Well, there's a sense of grandiism about him, slightly like with Sherlock Holmes as well. These these very well educated men who are apart from the rest and can solve problems that the rest can't solve but tend to do it on their own in in, I presume, in in London in well upholstered circumstances. That's going on as well, isn't it?

确实如此。其实对话就是从数学讨论开始的。他说，我想告诉你这就是我...

Indeed. And that's, I mean, the the conversation starts with the discussion about maths. He says, I want to tell you That's what I

最初想表达的意思。

meant at the beginning.

正是如此。完全正确。

Exactly. Exactly.

对一本畅销书来说有点难。

It's a bit tough for a bestseller.

你们知道，大家晚上好。我要反驳你们在学校学到的几何学版本。是的。

You know, you know, good evening, everyone. I'm going to contradict the version of of geometry that you were taught in schools. Yeah.

故事就是这样开始的。

That's how it begins.

但这与斯芬克斯的行为有所关联，我认为这也是他从贝拉米那里得到的灵感，因为贝拉米说过，19世纪斯芬克斯之谜的答案——那部小说的主角在19世纪入睡，醒来时已是20世纪的最后一年，具体是二月份。他说19世纪斯芬克斯之谜的核心是劳工问题。正如西蒙所言，当时间旅行者前往未来，看见斯芬克斯矗立面前。戏剧中斯芬克斯的谜题是：早晨四条腿，中午两条腿，晚上三条腿行走的是什么？答案是人。而时间旅行者，正如我们听到的，在时间机器上摇晃，一开始就从机器上摔了下来。

But it it ties in, I think that's partly what the Sphinx is doing in there too, which I think he gets from Bellamy because Bellamy says that the riddle of the Sphinx in the nineteenth century, the hero of that novel falls asleep in the nineteenth century and awakes in the last year of the twentieth, he awakes in the year February. And he says the riddle of the sphinx in the nineteenth century is the labor question. And as as Simon said, when the the time traveler goes into the future and he sees the sphinx in front of him. The riddle of the sphinx, of course, in the play is what goes on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, three legs in the evening and the answer is man. The time traveller, as we've heard, wobbles on his time machine when Elians, he falls off the time machine right at the beginning.

他最初用四条腿行动。随后以双腿探索公元802800年的未来，在小说最后部分，他手持一根铁棍意图对抗莫洛克人。因此，他自身就体现了斯芬克斯之谜的答案。更有甚者，为强调这一点，书中还提到他礼服鞋里一颗松动的钉子让他跛行，使时间旅行者成为未来知识探索中的俄狄浦斯式角色。

He's on four legs. He then explores the future of 08/2800 on two legs and then in the final section of the novel he has a crowbar, he has an iron bar that he wants to hit Morlocks with too. So he embodies the riddle of the Sphinx himself that he is and on top of that, just to labor the point still further, at one point we're told he a nail in one of his dress shoes works itself loose and he finds himself limping so that the time traveler becomes the Oedipal questure for knowledge in the future.

这很棒，不是吗？阿曼达·里斯，最初的读者会将其视为警告、足够准确的预测，还是一种娱乐？我们讨论过巨大的反响。那么这巨大反响的要点是什么？

It's great, isn't it? Amanda Reese, what would the would the first readers have seen it as a warning or as an accurate enough prediction or a bit of fun? What would what was the we've we've talked about the immense reaction. So what was the gist of the immense reaction?

这取决于你认为他的意图是预测未来，还是对当下发出警告。在我们目前的讨论中已略有涉及：重要的不是科学细节或未来预测的准确性，而是利用科学与技术可能性的碰撞，来思考我们社会可能做出的选择，以及如何运用已有的知识。

It depends on whether or not you think that what he was trying to do was to predict the future or whether what he was trying to do was to give a warning about the present. And we've heard that theme come through a little bit in the conversations that we've we've had thus far. That it's less important to get the science right and less important to get the future right. And more important to use the encounter with the potentialities of science, potentialities of technology, to start thinking about choices that we as a society might choose to make. What we might choose to do with the knowledge that we have.

这开启了整个推测性文学中的一个主题，其中科学与技术之间的关系实际上被置于相当紧张的境地。一系列关于社会组织或文化组织的社会学或推测性实验，其中

And it starts a whole theme within that kind of speculative literature in which this kind of relationship between science and technology is actually put into actually into quite close tension. A kind of series of sociological or speculative experiments with sociological organisation or or cultural organisation in which It

他最终构建的组织看起来确实非常简化，不是吗？地下的人们在拼命劳作，试图捕捉地上的人来食用。而地上的人则四处游荡，吃着草莓，几乎就是在等待被捕获。

does seem very simplistic, the organisation he ends up with, isn't he? Below ground people are hacking away and and trying to capture the up ground people to eat. Up ground they're wandering around and eating strawberries, waiting to be caught really.

这不正是灾难文学的普遍标志吗？一旦你抹去了先进文明的复杂性（她边说边做了个引号手势）？我认为这正是威尔斯试图阐述城市与文明作用的核心观点——本质上，文明依赖的是复杂性，依赖于高度发达的劳动分工体系。马克思、韦伯、涂尔干等社会学家都在探讨专业化加剧的后果。

Isn't that the mark of catastrophic literature in general once you've wiped out the complexities of advanced, she said doing scare quotes? That's that is I think really absolutely central to the point that Wells is trying to make about the role of the city and the role of civilisation. That essentially what it depends upon is complexity. It depends upon an advanced system of the division of labour. You know all the sociologists like Marx, Weber, Durkheim, they are all addressing the consequences of increasing specialisation.

他们以极其冷静的笔调论述，而威尔斯则用情感的语言，直击读者内心关切的事物——这种方式比枯燥的学术语调更能引发共鸣，尽管开头确实用了'让我告诉你一些数学冷知识'的套路。但他本质上说的是：人类最伟大的成就是文明，而城市是这一成就的象征。但在未来，城市消失了。

They are doing it in very, very dry tones. Wells is doing it in the language of the emotion, in a way that will actually get to the heart of things that his readers might care about, in a way that they wouldn't necessarily care about reading a kind of a rather drier tone, even though granted we do begin with a let me tell you things you don't know about mathematics. But what he's saying essentially is that the the greatest achievement of humanity is civilization, and the city is emblematic of that achievement. The city is the icon of civilization. But in the future the city is not there.

未来城市为何消亡？因为人类最伟大的成就内部孕育着自我毁灭的种子。这是贾娜的面容，是阿喀琉斯之踵。现代性包含着自我毁灭的因子，注定无法善终。

In the future the city is gone. Why? Because the greatest achievement of humanity contains within it the seeds of its destruction. It is Jaina's face and it's it's the Achilles heel. Modernity contains the seeds of its own destruction and can't possibly end well.

有个绝佳例子我们尚未提及：时间旅行者在802701年造访的绿瓷宫。他遇到的实际上是百万年后的南肯辛顿区。这座博物馆建筑群显然引发了作者和读者对时间悖论的思考——在未来博物馆里能找到什么？比如，我一直觉得时间机器出现在未来博物馆里完全合理。

There's a very good example of this which we haven't mentioned so far, which is one of the places the time traveler visits in 08/27/2001, which is the palace of green porcelain. He comes across what is effectively South Kensington, almost a million years from now. This is a museum complex, which obviously begins to raise both, I think, for the author and for the reader, some reflection reflection on on the the paradoxes of time. Because what are you going to find in a museum of the future? You might, for example, it's always seemed to me perfectly plausible, you might find the time machine in a museum of the future.

但时间旅行者似乎从未想过要去那里寻找自己的机器。正如阿曼达所说，他只找到废墟。绿瓷宫浩瀚图书馆里的每本书都被撕碎，几乎所有机器都被遗弃、锈蚀、报废。都市文明的每座纪念碑、每项成就都已分崩离析，湮没在尘埃中。

It doesn't seem to cross the time traveler's mind to go and look for his own machine there. What he finds is exactly as Amanda has said, ruin. Every single book in the vast library in the Palace Of Green Porcelain is shredded. Almost all the machines abandoned, rusted, useless. Every monument, every achievement of urbanity has fallen to bits and is now neglected.

因此在我看来，与其将其解读为纯粹的预言，不如说这是一种审判。这是警告。这里没有构成都市特质的那种压力。这就是我们的未来，而它最贴切的体现莫过于想象一个荒废的南肯特，这绝非巧合。

So rather, it seems to me, than reading this as pure prediction, this is judgment. This is warning. This is without the kind of pressure that makes urbanity what it is. This is what our future will be, and it's no coincidence that it's best embodied imagining a ruinous South Kent.

但他提到的还不止这些。在我看来，西蒙·詹姆斯在书中——他他他按错了操纵杆，他急着要逃离。如果不离开就会被暗杀。千钧一发之际，非常惊险刺激。

But he mentions more than that. Simon James, it seems to me in the book that he he he presses the wrong lee he was in a hurry to get out. He's gonna be assassinated if he doesn't get out. It's a near thing. It's it's very exciting.

他猛拉操纵杆，但没有返回家园，而是跃入了三千万年后的未来，依然假定是在泰晤士河畔。他在那里发现了什么令人毛骨悚然的事物？

He bangs a lee, but instead of going back home, he zips into the 30,000,000 years ahead future, still one presumed beside the Thames. And what does he find there that is eerie?

他发现了地球上动物生命的灭绝或近乎灭绝。当他造访埃洛伊人和莫洛克人的世界时，确实注意到那里似乎没有昆虫，没有杂草，泰晤士河流域、伦敦周边地区的生态系统已变得极为简单，复杂性大大降低。而当他向更遥远的未来进发时，还面临着太阳即将热寂带来的后果。他目睹了未来的一次日食，周围世界陷入无边黑暗——那是月球运行至地球与太阳之间。

He finds the extinction of animal or the near extinction of animal life on the earth. He does notice when he visits the world of the Eloi and the Morlocks that that there don't seem to be insects, that there don't seem to be weeds, that that the the ecology of the Thames, the parts of London around the Thames have become much simpler, have become less complex. And when he travels even further into the future, he's also dealing with the consequences of the impending heat death of the sun as well too. So he witnesses an eclipse in the future so that he sees the world around him become much much darker. So it's the moon passing between the earth and the sun.

但我想这也暗示着：即便我们努力修复社会结构，弥合造就埃洛伊人与莫洛克人的社会裂痕，太阳产生的能量终有尽时，人类乃至任何物种都不可能永远存在于未来。

But I think it also it's suggestion of the reminder that, you know, that even if we do try and fix our own society, that we try and and and remedy the social divisions that create the Eloi and the Morlocks, the energy that the sun produces is finite and that mankind no species can exist forever in the future.

阿曼达，我们注定毁灭。回到西蒙·谢弗早前提到的观点，本质上关于文明的崩溃——人类所有成就，那些巅峰造极的创造，如今都化为尘埃。值得注意的是，这个主题后来被约翰·温德姆等作家继承，在后世科幻作品中得到了强烈呼应。

Amanda. We're doomed. Just to go back to something that Simon Schaffer was saying earlier which had to do with break essentially the breakdown of civilization and the fact that all of these achievements of humanity, the acme of human creations are now just so much done to dust. And I think that the what's interesting here as well is the way in which that then gets By later writers like people like John Wyndham. It's a theme that gets picked up very very strongly in later science fiction.

这种自然与城市之间不可避免的冲突，以及自然力量重新夺回城市空间的努力。

This notion of the inevitable conflict between nature on the one hand and the city on the other. And the efforts made by the city to re by nature to reclaim the space of the cities.

为何威尔斯将真实性的概念保持开放？他在结尾处留下悬念——这是真实的还是梦境？他们是否被时间旅行者所迷惑？你认为他为何如此处理？

Why does the why does Wells leave the idea of truthfulness open? He leaves it open at the end of is this true or not? Is it a dream? Have they been flummoxed by the the the time traveler? Why you do think he leaves it like that?

请大家快速回答。西蒙，詹姆斯，轮到你们了。

Quickly for each of you. Simon, James, though.

因为我认为他希望展现的未来具有可变性。叙述者在时间旅行者消失后重返旅程，此后我们再也未见其踪，只留下未来开放的可能性。框架叙述者称时间旅行者是悲观主义者，认为文明正走向黑暗未来，但他最终总结道：'若真如此，我们更应活出相反的可能'。这意味着我们应努力改善，未来并非板上钉钉。

Because I think he wants the possibility for the future that he has shown to be different, to be to be changed. The narrator at the end after the time traveler disappears, he goes back for another journey and then we never see the time traveller again and we're just left with the possibility of an open future. And then the frame narrator says that the time traveller was a pessimist and he didn't think he thought that civilization was heading for a black future. But the frame narrator himself concludes, if that is so, it remains for us to live as though it were not so. So we should try to make things better, that that that future is not is not written in ink.

人类仍有改变未来的机会。

There is a chance for humanity to change it.

西蒙。西蒙·谢泼德。

Simon. Simon Shepherd.

当代读者阅读《时间机器》时最震撼的是，时间旅行者并未回到过去。这本书探讨的是我们可能的未来，因此本质上是推想性的。

One of the striking things about Time Machine for us reading it now is that the time traveler doesn't go into the past. This is a book about our possible future and therefore confessedly conjectural.

阿曼达怎么看？因为真实性确实重要。故事本身是否具有判决性并不重要，重要的是故事本身及其蕴含的警示意义。

And Amanda? Because it does matter if it's true or not. It doesn't matter if what's it doesn't matter if the story is is is verdictal in any sense. What matters is the story, and what matters is the warning contained within the story.

好的，非常感谢大家。谢谢阿曼达·里斯、西蒙·詹姆斯、西蒙·谢弗。所有关于听众周的建议请于10月25日前提交。下周，我们将介绍诗人罗伯特·罗比·伯恩斯，他的首部诗集《主要用苏格兰方言写的诗》为他赢得了世界性的声誉。感谢收听。

Well, thank you all very much. Thank you, Amanda Reese, Simon James, Simon Schaffer. All suggestions for our listener week in by the October 25, please. Next week, it's a poet Robert Robbie Burns whose first collection, poems chiefly in the Scottish dialect, set him on the way to worldwide fame. Thanks for listening.

现在，《我们的时代》播客将额外延长几分钟，播放梅尔文和他的嘉宾们的一些额外内容。

And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests.

感觉就像只过了五分钟。感觉我们才刚刚开始。

That was a that feels like five minutes. It feels like we just got just got going.

除非你不。

Unless you No.

听起来像是里士满的一场晚宴。实际上，西蒙，我有一个问题想问你，关于威尔斯与美学运动的关系，以及当时时尚写作中发生的事情。这总是让我觉得既反常又迷人。比如在我们最后讨论的那段，威尔斯向我们描绘了公元3000万年的景象，所用的语言风格完全是奥布里·比尔兹利和奥斯卡·王尔德式的——那种慵懒衰败的调调，宛如日本水彩画中太阳缓缓熄灭的意境。

It sounds like a dinner party in Richmond. One question I have actually for you, Simon, is what you think about Wells' relation with the aesthetic movement, what is happening in fashionable writing at the time. It's always struck me as perverse and fascinating. So for example in the passage that we got onto towards the end where Wells is invoking for us what 30,000,000 AD will be like, the idiom is the idiom of Aubrey Beards, Lee and Oscar Wilde. It's an idiom of languorous decay, of a kind of Japanese pastels as the sun slowly dies.

这是美学运动中堕落的一面。这是批评还是赞同？他到底在做什么？

This is the degenerate side of the aesthetic movement. Is that criticism or an endorsement? What's he doing?

我认为他是在与之对话，但最终彻底反对这种思潮。在《道林·格雷的画像》的晚宴场景里，有人用了这个说法，亨利勋爵接过话头说'但愿如此。生活真是可怕的失望'。威尔斯能用这种语言写作并与之交锋，但他完全反对'为艺术而艺术'。我研究威尔斯的关键点，是他写完《时间机器》二十年后与亨利·詹姆斯的那场决裂。

I think he's engaging with it and eventually he absolutely turns against it. So there's a moment in there's a dinner party in the picture of Dorian Gray where someone uses the term and Lord Henry picks it up and says, wish it were. Life is a terrible disappointment. So Wells can write in that language and he's engaging with it, he absolutely turns against art for art's sake. Key And in my own work on Wells is the falling out that Wells has with Henry James twenty years after he writes The Time Machine.

威尔斯二十年来一直受到詹姆斯的赞许，后者拍着他的头说，小威尔斯做得很好。这是一本杰出的书。最终他认为唯美主义在道德上是失责的。他认为小说如此重要，应该将其作为教化工具来改善世界，而为艺术而艺术则会导致埃洛伊人的出现。

That Wells has had twenty years of James patting him on the head and saying, very good little Wells. It's a splendid book. And eventually he thinks that aestheticism is morally irresponsible. He thinks that the novel is so important, you should use it as a vehicle of instruction to make the world better and that art for art's sake leads to the Eloi.

我们还没讨论到的另一点——我总觉得这也很迷人——就是像克里斯托弗·考德威尔这样的二十世纪三十年代马克思主义批评家所说的，旅行者与埃洛伊人相处得比与莫洛克人更好，显然感到矛盾，但基本上同情埃洛伊人，而对莫洛克人则充满绝对的厌恶和憎恨，这是因为这是下层中产阶级的困境。嗯。他们说，这就是威尔斯所属阶级的处境。这是真的吗？你怎么看？

Another thing we didn't get onto, which I always find also fascinating, is Marxist critics in the nineteen thirties, like Christopher Caldwell, say, look, the reason why the traveler gets on better with the Eloi than he does with the Morlocks, and obviously feels admitted ambivalence, but basically sympathy for the Eloi and absolute loathing and detestation for the Morlocks is because that is the predicament of the lower middle class. Mhmm. That is the situation in which Wells' class, they say, finds himself. Is that true? Do you think?

我认为这种说法很有道理。不过我更愿意先思考你之前提出的那个观点：旅行者没有回到过去。这之所以有趣有两个原因。首先，当你想到威尔斯之后的时间旅行小说，后爱因斯坦时代的时间旅行小说都是关于回到过去、时间悖论，以及过去的行为如何改变现在从而改变未来。

I think there's a lot to be said for it. Suppose what I'd rather think about for the minute is that point that you raised before that. The traveller doesn't go back in time. And that's interesting for two reasons. First of all because when you think about the kind of time travel fiction that follows on from Wells, the post Eisensteinian time travel fiction is all about going back in time, paradoxes in time, how actions in the past change the present therefore change the future.

旅行者是个游客。他什么都没做。只是回去看了看，然后说‘哦，天哪！’然后以最快的速度逃跑了。但威尔斯确实涉足了史前题材的小说。

The traveller is a tourist. He doesn't do anything. Just goes back, looks, goes Oh my goodness! And runs away very, very fast as fast as he possibly can. But Wells does get involved in pre historic fiction.

很多。在史前和历史题材中，我想到两个例子，尤其是那个令人毛骨悚然的《格里兹利人》。他写的一个关于智人与尼安德特人在时间黎明时相遇的故事。故事中，尼安德特人抓走了一个人类小孩并吃掉了他。所以你有这样一个主题：两种不同的人类在不可避免的冲突中，以同类相食——人类能对彼此犯下的最恶劣罪行——作为互动的方式。

Lot. Lot in pre And historic there are two examples that I'm thinking of but particularly the grizzly folk. This story that he writes about the encounter between Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthal at the dawn of time. And the notion is that in this encounter the Neanderthals nick a human kid and they eat it. So you have this theme of two different kinds of humans in inevitable conflict and with cannibalism, worst sin that a human can commit against each other, with cannibalism as the mode of engagement.

只不过事实并非如此

Except it isn't

但重点就在于此，不是吗？正是这种无法认识到彼此人性的失败，你又在埃洛伊人和莫洛克人身上看到了这一点，回到关于威尔斯阶级立场的问题，以及这如何影响他对埃洛伊人和莫洛克人的描绘。那种无法正视外貌不同的人，无法在他们身上看到并赋予他们对自己本质人性的认可。

that's the point though isn't it? But it's that failure to recognise the humanity in each other which again you see it with your Eloy and the Morlock and you see it going back to the point about what is the class position of Wells and how does that then relate to the way in which he is depicting the Eloy and the Morlock. With that kind of inability to look at somebody that looks different and to see in them and to confer on them a recognition of their own essential humanity.

你提到了——我是说，我本不该介入。我的原则是不干涉这类事。你提到他与亨利·詹姆斯后来的争执，以及东方东方的问题，当时他被视为受欢迎的作家，但仍是局外人，或者说处于边缘地位。

You raised I mean, I'm not supposed to. I mean, my own rule about this is not to interfere. As you raised the business about his quarrel with later quarrel with Henry James and the East East, was he considered to be a popular success but an an outsider or rather below the salt as far as

确实如此。事实上，由于威尔斯活到了二十世纪中叶，我们常把他归类为维多利亚-爱德华时代的作家。他逝于1946年。我这里正好有个例子可以用。

Yes. Very much so. In fact, Wells because, of course, he lived long into the the twentieth century, we tend to think of him as a as a Victorian Edwardian writer. He died in in 1946. So we have the example I'm gonna use.

我们存有他的录音。威尔斯自称是伦敦东区人。他说自己从不是个成功的公众演说家，也未能真正进入公共生活领域，就因为那尖细的底层阶级嗓音。不过现在听那些录音倒不觉得如此。我想他童年贫困的经历也导致他身材比应有身高矮小。

We have recordings of his voice. Wells described himself as Cockney. He said that he was never much of a success as a public speaker, and he was never very successful at going into public life because he had this squeaky lower class voice. It certainly doesn't sound like that if you hear that if you hear that voice now. I I think also because of the the poverty of his upbringing too, he he he he was shorter than he should have been.

1905年在《现代乌托邦》中，他构想出理想世界的样子，并遇见了平行宇宙里的H.G.威尔斯——那个版本因为成长过程中营养充足，比现实中的他更高大英俊。

In nineteen o five in a modern utopia, he imagines the world as it should be made perfectly, and he meets the parallel universe version of HG Wells, who is larger and hence more handsome than the real HG Wells is because he's been fed properly when he's been grown up.

威尔斯持续创作的时间长得惊人。他从未停止过谈话、写作、广播等活动。要知道，他在1888年就完成了这个故事的首个版本。

It is extraordinary how long Wells goes on. He doesn't stop talking, writing, broadcasting, and so on. This is someone who, after all, writes this story in its first version in 1888. Yeah. Yeah.

而五十年后的1938年，他还在澳大利亚电台讲解《时间机器》的真正寓意。所以我总觉得，时间旅行者形象之所以成为威尔斯的标志性符号，一个重要原因（虽非唯一）在于——他自己就是那个穿越时光的人。

And is broadcasting on Australian radio in 1938, fifty years later, explaining what the time machine really means. So there's it always seems to me that there's a very strong sense in which the reason why the figure one reason, it's not the only reason, one reason why the figure of the time traveler is so constitutive of Wells is that he is that person.

是啊。确实。

Yeah. Yeah.

他是这位时间旅行者。毕竟，他有能力且比他那一代的任何其他作家都更擅长将我们带到另一个时代。而他对待小说就是如此。是吗？抱歉。

He is this time traveler. After all, he's capable and more better than any other writer of his generation of taking us to some other time. And he treats fiction like that. Does he? Sorry.

您先请。

After you.

但我是说，我最喜欢的高清广播之一是他1933年做的一个。基本上，这是一次对预见力教授的呼吁。是的，太棒了。非常精彩。本质上，他是在呼吁科幻小说的社会价值。

But it was I mean, one of the one of my favorite HD broadcasts is one that he does in 1933. And it's basically it's a it's a call for professors of foresight and it is Yeah. Brilliant. It is wonderful. Essentially, he's he's he's making a call for the for the for the social value of science fiction.

他在其中说道，你们知道，全国各地我们有成千上万研究历史的教授和学生，却没有一位预见力教授。你们知道他认为谁应该成为那位预见力教授。他说，伙计，给我个工作吧。他呼吁这位预见力教授，因为他试图指出，公众民主想象力的重大失败在于无法预见科学将带来的影响。想象下一步科学或技术发展很容易。

In that he's saying, you know, up and down this country, we have thousands of professors and students of history all studying the past, not one not one professor of foresight. And you know who he wants that who he who he thinks that professor of foresight ought to be. It was, Look mate, give us a job. Could do with So he's calling for this Professor of Foresight because what he's trying to suggest, what he's arguing in essence is that grand failure of the public, of the democratic imagination to conceive of the kind of impact that science is going to have. It's really, really easy to imagine what the next scientific step might be or what technological It's easy to imagine or to speculate on scientific and technological development.

但要弄清楚这些发展将带来怎样的社会后果则困难得多。这就是我个人热爱科幻小说的原因，因为它们正是在做这件事。它们在进行应用社会学、应用科学史的研究，而且我认为在许多方面比我们写的那些更成功，因为它们将其置于情感背景中，让人们感受到身处那种情境会是什么样子，特别是在威尔斯本人也经历的经济或智力权力分配不均的尖锐分化中。他的继承者约翰·温德姆也做了完全相同的事，发出了完全相同的呼吁。

It is so much harder to figure out what the social consequences of those developments are going to be. And that's why I personally love science fiction because that's exactly what they're doing. They're doing applied sociology, they're doing applied history of science and they're doing it in a way that's much more successful than the stuff that we write I think in many ways because it's putting it in the emotional context. It's enabling people to feel what it would be like to be in that position, particularly in the kind of sharp divisions divisions of the differential distribution of economic or intellectual power that Wells himself is experiencing as well. And his heir, John Wyndham, did exactly the same thing and made exactly the same set of calls.

嗯。但是，是的，这真是极其有价值的...抱歉，有点激动了。

Mhmm. But, yeah, it's just an incredibly valuable sorry. Slight rant.

完全不会。我同意。你说完了吗，还是想再聊点？制作人还没到。他马上就会从那扇门里出现了。

Not at all. I agree. Are you are you are you talked out or would you like to say some more? The producer has not yet arrived. He will loom through loom through that door in a minute.

你有一两分钟时间。哦，他正逼近呢。所以有什么要说的吗

You've got a minute or two. Oh, he's looming. So there's anything to say

今天 还有一件事我想快速说一下，如果可以的话。威尔斯痴迷于作为交通工具的技术，而这只是威尔斯笔下关于太空飞行的第一个作品，坦克，你知道的，动力飞机，直升机。人们在其中。甚至在这些东西真正存在之前。

today Just one more thing I wanted to say quickly if that's alright. Wells was obsessed with technology as a transport, and this is just the first one that Wells writes about space flight, the tanks, you know, the powered aeroplane, the helicopter. People in. Before they're even before they even exist.

孤独的男人。

The man alone.

但其中第一部是时间机器，我们还没提到这本书的副标题。它是《时间机器与发明》，这个双关语巧妙地将机器与故事结合在一起。

But the first of them is time the machine, and we haven't mentioned the book subtitle. It's the time machine and invention, which is a wonderful pun on the machine and the story together.

是啊。非常感谢你，西蒙。同时有三个西蒙在场，还有更多。这是

Yeah. Thank you very much, Simon. And three Simons in and more at the same time. It's

不。我说过世界会走向

No. I said the world would come to

末日，如果有三个西蒙的话。哦，是啊。

an end if you had three Simons and Oh, yeah.

变得更富有，

Be more wealthy,

你有吗？

have you?

在那之前，你可以先喝杯茶或咖啡。

You can have a cup of tea or coffee first before that happens then.

那会很不错。

That would be lovely.

茶。咖啡。咖啡？

Tea. Coffee. Coffee?

如果可以的话，请给我茶。

Tea, please, if that's okay.

某种水果茶。我记得有姜茶之类的，如果

A fruit tea of some kind. I think there was a ginger one or something like that, if that's

哦，我准备好了。

Oh, I'm ready.

我们也在纪念今年夏天去世的西蒙·詹姆斯，据我们所知，他非常喜欢这段录音。《与梅尔文·布拉格共度的时光》由我和西蒙·蒂勒森制作，是BBC工作室的作品。

We're also remembering Simon James who passed away this summer and who, we're told, really enjoyed this recording. In Our Time with Melvin Bragg is produced by me, Simon Tillerson, and it's a BBC Studios production.

我是罗里·斯图尔特，我想谈谈英雄。小时候，我为自己设想了英雄般的未来，认为自己会在30岁前成就伟业，并为崇高事业献出生命。但我在中东和政治领域的经历让我意识到，我对英雄主义的理解存在严重问题。BBC广播四台的播客《英雄主义的长久历史》探讨了不同时代英雄形象的含义。这些观念是如何演变的？

I'm Rory Stewart, and I want to talk about heroes. When I was a child, I imagined a heroic future for myself in which I would achieve great things and die sacrificing my life for a noble cause before I was 30. But my experiences in The Middle East and in politics showed me that there was something deeply wrong with my idea of heroism. From BBC Radio four, my podcast, The Long History of Heroism, explores ideas of what it meant to be a hero through time. How have these ideas changed?

当今时代我们需要怎样的英雄？收听罗里·斯图尔特的《英雄主义的长久历史》，BBC Sounds平台首播。

Who are the heroes we need today? Listen to Rory Stewart, The Long History of Heroism, first on BBC Sounds.