The Big Space Fuck

“The Big Space Fuck” Kurt Vonnegut / "Again, Dangerous Visions," Harlan Ellison, ed., 1972 “What was the dirtiest story I ever wrote?” wrote Kurt Vonnegut in “Palm Sunday,” his 1981 “autobiographical collage.” “Surely ‘The Big Space Fuck,’ the first story of literature to have ‘fuck’ in its title. It was probably the last short story I will ever write. I did it for my friend Harlan Ellison, who printed it in his anthology ‘Again, Dangerous Visions.’” It’s a terrific, and terrifically relevant, story. I found only a fragment of it on the Web. Here’s the story in full as it appeared in “Palm Sunday,” courtesy of the Notebooks’ head clerk, O.C.R. In 1987 it became possible in the United States of America for a young person to sue his parents for the way he had been raised. He could take them to court and make them pay money and even serve jail terms for serious mistakes they made when he was just a helpless little kid. This was not only an effort to achieve justice but to discourage reproduction, since there wasn’t anything much to eat any more. Abortions were free. In fact, any woman who volunteered for one got her choice of a bathroom scale or a table lamp. 到了1987年的美利坚合众国，年轻人可以因他受养育的方式控告父母。他能把他们拉上法庭，教他们赔偿钱财，甚至去监狱服刑，为了他尚是无助孩童时他们犯下的严重错误。这不仅是践行正义的途径，更是要拦阻繁殖的意愿，因为再没有更多的食物了。堕胎是免费的。实际上，自愿堕胎的女性可以任选浴室秤或是台灯做礼物。 In 1989, America staged the Big Space Fuck, which was a serious effort to make sure that human life would continue to exist somewhere in the Universe, since it certainly couldn’t continue much longer on Earth. Everything had turned to shit and beer cans and old automobiles and Clorox bottles. An interesting thing happened in the Hawaiian Islands, where they had been throwing trash down extinct volcanoes for years: a couple of the volcanoes all of a sudden spit it all back up. And so on. 1989年，美国发射了“太空大操”，这是确保人类生命得以在宇宙某个角落延续的重要举措，人类显然无法继续在地球厮混。一切的一切都变成粪便、啤酒罐、旧汽车和消毒药水瓶。一件趣事发生在夏威夷群岛，人们拿垃圾堵火山口已有经年；但几座火山忽然喷发，将垃圾又统统吐了回来。诸如此类的。 This was a period of great permissiveness in matters of language, so even the President was saying shit and fuck and so on, without anybody’s feeling threatened or taking offense. It was perfectly OK. He called the Space Fuck a Space Fuck and so did everybody else. It was a rocket ship with eight-hundred pounds of freeze dried jizzum in its nose. It was going to fired at the Andromeda Galazy, two-million light years away. The ship was named the Arthur C. Clarke, in honor of a famous space pioneer. 这是一个语言的大放任时代，即便总统也满口放屁狗屎操你妈，没人会感觉受伤或是遭了冒犯。这完完全全没问题。他管“太空大操”叫“太空大操”，普罗大众也一样。这艘火箭船的鼻端中装载了八百磅的冻干屌汁。它将朝两百万光年外的仙女座星系发射。船被命名为“阿瑟 C. 克拉克”号，向著名的太空先锋致敬。 It was to be fired at midnight on the Fourth of July. At ten o’clock that night, Dwayne Hooblere and his wife Grace were watching the countdown on television in the living room of their modest home in Elk Harbor, Ohio, on the shore of what used to be Lake Erie. Lake Erie was almost solid sewage now. there were man-eating lampreys in there thirty-eight feet long. Dwayne was a guard in the Ohio Adult Correctional Institution, which was two miles away. His hobby was making birdhouses out of Clorox bottles. He went on making them and hanging them around his yard, even though there weren’t any birds any more. 飞船将于七月四日午夜升空。当晚十点，德维安 胡白烂和妻子格雷斯坐在俄亥俄州麋鹿港简朴家里的会客室中，这地方曾是伊利湖的岸边。伊利湖现已全是硬结的下水道污物，其中还有三十八英尺长的食人七鳃鳗出没。德维安是两英里外俄亥俄州州立成人矫正所的门卫。他的癖好是拿消毒药水瓶造鸟舍。他没完没了地造啊造，把它们挂满自家院子，尽管鸟儿们早已绝了踪迹。 Dwayne and Grace marveled at a film demonstration of how jizzum had been freeze-dried for the trip. A small beaker of the stuff, which had been contributed by the head of the Mathematics Department at the University of Chicago, was flash-frozen. Then it was placed under a bell jar and the air was exhausted from the jar. The air evanesced, leaving a fine white powder. The powder certainly didn’t look like much, and Dwayne Hoobler said so– but there were several hundred million sperm cells in there, in suspended animation. The original contribution, an average contribution, had been two cubic centimeters. There was enough powder, Dwayne estimated out loud, to clog the eye of a needle. And eight hundred pounds of the stuff would soon be on its way to Andromeda. 冻干保存屌汁让它好上路的演示影片令德维安和格雷斯大为惊异。一小烧杯的那物事，由芝加哥大学数学系的头儿捐献，先是瞬间速冻。然后放进钟状杯抽成真空。空气渐渐稀薄，留下一撮精细的白色粉末。粉末和原来的玩意儿迥然不同，德维安 胡白烂如此评论——但其中包含了几亿个暂停了生机的精子。原来的捐献物，平均而言，是两立方厘米。剩下的粉末，德维安大声估算道，只够塞满一个针眼。八百磅的这东西，很快就要踏上去仙女座的旅程。 “Fuck you, Andromeda,” said Dwayne, and he wasn’t being coarse. He was echoing billboards and stickers all over town. Other signs said, “Andromeda, We Love You,” and “Earth has the Hots for Andromeda,” and so on. “操你妈的，仙女，”德维安说，这不是说粗话。他只是在重复城中遍布的广告牌和贴纸而已。其他的标志上面写，“仙女，我们爱你，”还有，“地球的鸡巴瞄准仙女。” There was a knock on the door, and an old friend of the family, the County Sheriff, simultaneously let himself in. “How are you, you old motherfucker?” said Dwayne. 传来一下敲门声，这家人的老朋友，郡执法官，自己开门进来。“傻逼，你好啊？”德维安说。 “Can’t complain, shitface,” said the Sheriff, and they joshed back and forth like that for a while. Grace chuckled, enjoying their wit. She wouldn’t have chuckled so richly, however, if she had been a little more observant. She might have noticed that the sheriff’s jocularity was very much on the surface. Underneath, he had something troubling on his mind. She might have noticed, too, that he had legal papers in his hand. “没啥抱怨的，大便脸，”警官说，两人如此你来我往好一会儿。格雷斯格格直乐，享受着两人的妙语连珠。要是她的观察力更敏锐些，她笑得肯定不会这么嚣张。她应该注意到警官的打趣仅流于表面。而底下他心里却是暗流涌动。她也应该注意到他手中握着法律文书。 “Sit down, you silly old fart,” said Dwayne, ” and watch Andromeda get the surprise of her life.” “请坐请坐，二杆子屁蛋，”德维安说，“瞧瞧仙女座怎么受惊。” “The way I understand it,” the sheriff replied, “I’d have to sit there for more than two-million years. My old lady might wonder what’s become of me.” He was a lot smarter than Dwayne. He had jizzum on the Arthur C. Clarke, and Dwayne didn’t. You had to have an I.Q. of over 115 to have your jizzum accepted. there were certain exceptions to this: if you were a good athlete or could play a musical instrument or paint pictures, but Dwayne didn’t qualify in any of those ways, either. He had hoped that birdhouse-makers might be entitled to special consideration, but this turned out not to be the case. The Director of the New York Philharmonic, on the other hand, was entitled to contribute a whole quart, if he wanted to. he was sixty-eight years old. Dwayne was forty-two. “照我的理解，”警官答道，“我得在这儿坐两百万年。我家婆子会琢磨我上哪儿去了。”他的嘴皮子比德维安伶俐许多。他的精子也在“阿瑟 C. 克拉克”号上，但德维安却没有。你的智商得高于115才能让屌汁上天。也有部分例外：如果你是优秀的运动员，或弹得一手好乐器，或是画得漂亮，而德维安也不符合这些规定。他多希望鸟舍制造者也能入列特例名单，但结果却令他大失所望。纽约爱乐乐团的指挥，却是另外的极端，他可以捐献整整一夸脱（(0.946升），只要他造得出。他已经六十八岁。德维安只有四十二。 There was an old astronaut on the television now. He was saying that he sure wished he could go where his jizzum was going. But he would sit at home instead, with his memories and a glass of Tang. Tang used to be the official drink of the astronauts. It was a freeze-dried orangeade. 电视画面上一个老年宇航员露面。他说他真想去他屌汁的目的地。不过，他打算坐在家里，带着旧日记忆和一杯果珍。果珍曾是宇航员的指定饮品。果珍是一种冻干橙汁。 “Maybe you haven’t got two million years,” said Dwayne, ” but you’ve got at least five minutes. Sit thee doon.” “可惜你没有两百万年，”德维安说，“顶多五分钟。给我他妈的坐下。” “What I’m here for–” said the sheriff, and he let his unhappiness show, “is something I customarily do standing up.” “我是来——”警官说，他现出愁容，“履行我的职责的。” Dwayne and Grace were sincerely puzzled. They didn’t have the least idea what was coming next. Here is what it was: the sheriff handed each of them a subpoena, and he said, “It’s my sad duty to inform you that your daughter, Wanda June, has accused you of ruining her when she was a child.” 德维安和格雷斯不知所措。他们完全不知道接下来将发生什么。好戏开场：警官递上传票，他说，“很不幸地通知你们，你们的女儿，汪达 朱恩，控告你们在她的儿童时代糟蹋了她。” Dwayne and Grace were thunderstruck. They knew that Wanda June was twenty-one now and entitled to sue, but they certainly hadn’t expected her to do so. She was in New York City and when they congratulated her about her birthday on the telephone, in fact, one of the things Grace had said was, “Well, you can sue us now, honeybunch, if you want to”. Grace was so sure she and Dwayne had been good parents that she could laugh when she went on, “If you want to, you can send your rotten old parents off to jail.” Wanda June was an only child, incidentally. She had come close to having some siblings, but Grace had had them aborted. Grace had taken three table lamps and a bathroom scale instead. 德维安和格雷斯如遭雷击。他们知道汪达 朱恩已有二十一岁，有资格提出控诉，但他们怎能想到她会这样做。她住在纽约城，说真的，他们在电话上祝她生日快乐时，格雷斯讲到的事情之一是，“嗯，好宝贝儿，你可以告我们了，愿意吗。”格雷斯很确定她和德维安是对好父母，确定到她可以边笑边说的地步，“要是你愿意，你可以把你可怜的老爸老妈送进大牢。” 顺便说一句，汪达 朱恩是独女。她险些有弟弟妹妹，但格雷斯拿他们换了三个台灯和一个浴室秤。 “What does she say we did wrong?” Grace asked the sheriff. “她说我们做错什么？”格雷斯问警官。 “There’s a seperate list of charges inside each of your subpoenas, ” he said. And he couldn’t look his wretched old friends in the eye, so he looked at the television instead. A scientist there was explaining why Andromeda had been selected as a target. There were at least eighty-seven chrono-synclastic infundibulae, time warps, between Earth and the Andromeda Galaxy. If the Arthur C. Clarke passed through any one of them, the ship and its load would be multiplied a trillion times, and would appear everywhere throughout space and time. “传票里一项一项控诉写得很清楚，”他说。他没法迎上老友们哀诉的眼神，因此他扭头去看电视。科学家正在解释为什么选仙女座当目的地。地球和仙女座星系间至少有八十七个宙内同向漩涡（chrono-synclastic infundibulae），时间翘曲点。只要“阿瑟 C. 克拉克”号经过其中之一，飞船和它的货物就会被复制万亿次，就会出现在时间和空间的任何位置。 “If there’s any fecundity anywhere in the Universe, ” the scientist promised, “our seed will find it and bloom.” “只要宇宙中有任何丰饶之地，”科学家发出许诺，“我们的种籽就将在那里蓬勃发芽。” One of the most depressing things about the space program so far, of course, was that it had demonstrated that fecundity was one hell of a long way off, if anywhere. 此太空计划中最令人郁闷的地方，迄今为止，无疑是它说明了所谓的丰饶之地离我们有他妈的好大一段路，无论它在何方。 Dumb people like Dwayne and Grace, and even fairly smart people like the sheriff, had been encouraged to believe that there was hospitality out there, and that Earth was just a piece of shit to use as a launching platform. 如德维安和格雷斯的愚民，甚至是警官这样算是聪明的人，都被煽动着相信宇宙中存在好客之地，地球不过是作为人类起步跳板而存在的小小屎球。 Now Earth really was a piece of shit, and it was beginning to dawn on even dumb people that it might be the only inhabitable planet human beings would ever find. 而现在，地球真的变成了一陀大便，即便傻瓜也开始明白，人类也许能找到的可居住星球或许仅有一个。 Grace was in tears over being sued by her daughter, and the list of charges she was reading was broken into multiple images by the tears. “Oh God, oh God, oh God—” she said, “she’s talking about things I forgot all about, but she never forgot a thing. She’s talking about something that happened when she was only four years old.” 格雷斯因为遭女儿控告而泪流满面，眼中的罪名列表更是被泪珠弄成了复像。“噢上帝，噢上帝，噢上帝——”她说，“她说的这些我早就忘记，但她却记得清清楚楚。她连四岁时发生的事情都提到了。” Dwayne was reading charges against himself, so he didn’t ask Grace what awful thing she was supposed to have done when Wanda June was only four, but here it was: Poor little Wanda June drew pretty pictures with a crayon all over the new living-room wallpaper to make her mother happy. Her mother blew up and spanked her instead. Since that day, Wanda June claimed, she had not been able to look at any sort of art materials without trembling like a leaf and break-ing out into cold sweats. “Thus was I deprived,” Wanda June’s lawyer had her say, “of a brilliant and lucrative career in the arts.” 德维安也在读控告书，他没去问格雷斯，汪达 朱恩四岁时她对孩子做了什么骇人听闻的恶行，因为它正在眼前：可怜的小汪达 朱恩在客厅的新壁纸上画了幅再可爱不过的蜡笔画，为的是让妈妈开心。她的母亲却怒火中烧，打了她的屁股。从此以后，汪达 朱恩声称，她再也不能直视任何形态的艺术作品，否则就会如风中残叶般颤抖，还要发一身冷汗。“我就是这样被剥夺了，”汪达 朱恩的律师教她这样说，“在艺术方面前途无量且收入可观的职业机会。” Dwayne meanwhile was learning that he had ruined his daughter’s opportunities for what her lawyer called an “ad-vantageous marriage and the comfort and love therefrom.” Dwayne had done this, supposedly, by being half in the bag whenever a suitor came to call. Also, he was often stripped to the waist when he answered the door, but still had on his cartridge belt and his revolver. She was even able to name a lover her father had lost for her: John L. Newcomb, who had finally married somebody else. He had a very good job now. He was in command of the security force at an arsenal out in South Dakota, where they stockpiled cholera and bubonic plague. 德维安也了解到他毁了女儿获得——按律师的话叫——“优势婚姻和舒适以及由此获得的爱情”的机会。据说德维安是这样干的：无论何时有求婚者上门，他总是一身邋遢打扮。更有甚者，他还喜欢赤膊应门，但武装腰带和左轮手枪却从不离身。她甚至指名道姓地说出一个被她父亲赶走的爱人：约翰 L. 纽康，他后来娶了别人。他现在的工作很好。他在南达科他某处的军工厂指挥保安部队，那地方是霍乱菌和黑死病的储存库。 The sheriff had still more bad news to deliver, and he knew he would have an opportunity to deliver it soon enough. Poor Dwayne and Grace were bound to ask him, “What made her do this to us?” The answer to that question would be more bad news, which was that Wanda June was in jail, charged with being the head of a shoplifting ring. The only way she could avoid prison was to prove that everything she was and did was her parents’ fault. 警官还有更多的坏消息，他知道很快就要有机会传达了。可怜的德维安和格雷斯一定会问，“她干吗要这样对我们？”这问题的回答是更多的坏消息，因为汪达 朱恩进了监狱，被控组织入店行窃。唯一能让她免于入狱的方法，是证明她所作所为的本源是父母的错误。 Meanwhile, Senator Flem Snopes of Mississippi, Chair-man of the Senate Space Committee, had appeared on the television screen. He was very happy about the Big Space Fuck, and he said it had been what the American space program had been aiming toward all along. He was proud, he said, that the United States had seen fit to locate the biggest jizzum-freezing plant in his “l’il ol’ home town,” which was Mayhew. 同时，密西西比州的佛雷姆 贼无耻参议员，参议员太空委员会的主席，出现在电视屏幕中。他对“空中大操”开心极了，他说这是美国空间计划长久以来一直努力的方向。他骄傲无比，他说，因为美利坚合众国在他的“甜蜜老家”修建了最庞大的冻干屌汁工厂，那地方叫没晓。 The word “jizzum” had an interesting history, by the way. It was as old as “fuck” and “shit” and so on, but it continued to be excluded from dictionaries, long after the others were let in. This was because so many people wanted it to remain a truly magic word—the only one left. “屌汁”这词儿的历史颇有趣。它和“操”还有“屎”的历史一般悠久，但它总是进不了字典，而它的同侪却早已跻身其中。这是因为许多人希望它保持魔词本色——仅有的幸存者。 And when the United States announced that it was going to do a truly magical thing, was going to fire sperm at the Andromeda Galaxy, the populace corrected its government. Their collective unconscious announced that it was time for the last magic word to come into the open. They insisted that sperm was nothing to fire at another galaxy. Only jizzum would do. So the Government began using that word, and it did something that had never been done before, either: it standardized the way the word was spelled. 当美国宣布她将完成一桩伟大壮举——她要把精液射向仙女星系时，平民纠正了政府。他们的集体无意识宣布，这该是最后一个魔词走上台面的时候了。他们坚持射向其他星系的不该是精液。只有屌汁才有这本事。因此政府也开始使用这个词语，而它完成了其他词从未做到过的：它成了这个东西的学名。 The man who was interviewing Senator Snopes asked him to stand up so everybody could get a good look at his cod-piece, which the Senator did. Codpieces were very much in fashion, and many men were wearing codpieces in the shape of rocket ships, in honor of the Big Space Fuck. These cus-tomarily had the letters “ U.S.A.” embroidered on the shaft. Senator Snopes’ shaft, however, bore the Stars and Bars of the Confederacy. 访问贼无耻参议员的男人要他起身，好让大家好好端详端详他的卵袋，参议员依样而行。卵袋正在流行大潮的风口浪尖，许多男人戴着火箭飞船形状的卵袋，向“空中大操”致敬。船身上通常绣有“美利坚”的字样。贼无耻参议员的那玩意儿却不同，它上面是邦联的星和杠。 This led the conversation into the area of heraldry in general, and the interviewer reminded the Senator of his campaign to eliminate the bald eagle as the national bird. The Senator explained that he didn’t like to have his country represented by a creature that obviously hadn’t been able to cut the mustard in modern times. 对话于是进入纹章学范畴，访问者说参议员的阵营不该去掉作为国鸟出现的秃鹫。参议员解释说他不希望让显然无法代表时代精神的动物象征祖国。 Asked to name a creature that had been able to cut the mustard, the Senator did better than that: he named two—the lamprey and the bloodworm. And, unbeknownst to him or to anybody, lampreys were finding the Great Lakes too vile and noxious even for them. While all the human beings were in their houses, watching the Big Space Fuck, lam-preys were squirming out of the ooze and onto land. Some of them were nearly as long and thick as the Arthur C. Clarke. 要说哪个动物能够代表时代精神，参议员举一反二——七鳃鳗和血蚯蚓。顺便说说，他和其他人都不知道，七鳃鳗最近觉得五大湖对它们的健康来说都不怎么受得了。当人类正坐在屋子里观看“空中大操”时，七鳃鳗正爬出烂泥，登上地面。它们中有些和“阿瑟 C. 克拉克”号一样长，一般粗。 And Grace Hoobler tore her wet eyes from what she had been reading, and she asked the sheriff the question he had been dreading to hear: “What made her do this to us?” 格雷斯 胡白烂被读到的文字折磨得老泪纵横，她问了警官那个他最害怕听见的问题，“她干吗要这样对我们？” The sheriff told her, and then he cried out against cruel Fate, too. “This is the most horrible duty I ever had to carry out—” he said brokenly, “to deliver news this heartbreaking to friends as close as you two are—On a night that’s supposed to be the most joyful night in the history of mankind.” 警官告诉了她，然后他也在残酷的命运面前痛哭流涕。“这是我执行过的最可怕的任务——”他抽噎道，“向你们这么亲近的朋友传递这样令人心酸的消息——还要在人类历史上最欢欣鼓舞的这个夜晚！” He left sobbing, and stumbled right into the mouth of a lamprey. The lamprey ate him immediately, but not before he screamed. Dwayne and Grace Hoobler rushed outside to see what the screaming was about, and the lamprey ate them, too. 他泪奔而出，一跤跌进七鳃鳗的嘴巴。七鳃鳗立刻吃了他，他只来得及叫一声。德维安和格雷斯 胡白烂冲出去看他叫什么，七鳃鳗把他们也吃掉了。 It was ironical that their television set continued to report the countdown, even though they weren’t around any more to see or hear or care. 多讽刺啊，他们的电视正在转播倒计时，虽说他们已经不在附近，听不见，也无所谓了。 “Nine!” said a voice. And then, “Eight!” And then, “Seven!” And so on. “九！”一个声音说。然后，“八！”然后，“七！”然后继续。