双语 | 纽约时报全面解密《火星救援》小说和电影诞生始末
无数影迷们期待的《火星救援》今日起以3D、IMAX3D、中国巨幕3D版本全国上映，今天制片方也曝出了影片的终极预告，一个“燃”字可谓是对终极预告的最好形容。
纽约时报还全面解密了《火星救援》这本书和这部电影的诞生始末。
Andy Weir started writing a book about an astronaut stranded on Mars. He hadn’t had any success with publishers in the past, so he started posting chapters to his website. That was 2011.
安迪·威尔着手写一本宇航员受困火星的书，以前他从没出版过一部成功的作品，这回他开始把文章放在网上。那是2011年。
People really liked it — so much so that Crown Publishing came calling. The book became a best seller. Now 20th Century Fox is bringing out the movie, starring Matt Damon and a cast so full of stars that it’s like the monolith at the end of “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
故事大受欢迎，甚至皇冠出版社打来电话，一经出版就成了畅销书。现在20世纪福克斯将其搬上了大银幕，马特达蒙领衔主演，巨星云集，堪比《2001太空漫游》结尾飞来的巨石。
And before you stop me to say that Keir Dullea doesn’t actually say, “My God, it’s full of stars!” in the movie, that it’s from Arthur C. Clarke’s novelization, I know.
你可能要打断我，指出凯尔·杜拉在《2001太空漫游》里并没有真的说“天啊，这里众星云集”。那来自阿瑟克拉克的小说，跟你讲，我懂的。
Sorry. Writing about “The Martian” seems to be bringing out the geekiness in your humble correspondent. That’s because Mr. Weir, from online serial to book to screen, has brought a little-appreciated genre into the mainstream: the nerd thriller.
抱歉，给《火星救援》写评论看起来像谦逊地回信，展示其极客范儿。因为从网上连载到出版再到大银幕，威尔将一种不被欣赏的风格带入了主流：书呆子惊悚片。
This hypertechnical genre, deeply developed by novelists like Neal Stephenson, does something that classic thrillers do not: It puts the nerd (male and female) in the center of the action.
这种超技术风格是由尼尔·史蒂芬森等小说家大力推动的，与经典的恐怖小说全然不同：它让呆子成为事件的中心。
The intellectual swashbuckler is the hero, not the plucky, comic-relief sidekick. Imagine that instead of Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg is the star of “Mission: Impossible.”
聪明的混球是主人公，而非大胆妄为、插科打诨的伙计。试想在《碟中谍》中，西蒙·佩吉是主角，而不是汤姆·克鲁斯。
This is adventure for those of us who believe, deep in our hearts, that the heroes of “Star Trek” (the original series, naturally) are Spock and Scotty, the science officer and the engineer.
对于我们这些深信《星际迷航》的主人公是科学官斯波克和工程师斯科蒂的人而言，这算是冒险。
They don’t know why Kirk gets the gals, but they know they will end up saving the day, over and over again. With clever solutions, not fisticuffs.
他们不知道为什么科克船长万千宠爱，但明白到头来他们会不断挽救局面。聪明的解决之道，而非拳脚相向。
Little wonder, then, that the “Martian” novel and now the movie (due Oct. 2) come with the imprimatur of all that is nerdly. Randall Munroe, creator of XKCD, a funny, technically deep comic beloved of the tribe, devoted a strip to the phenomenon.
毫无悬念，《火星营救》小说、电影以及所有出版物都是呆萌的。风趣的XKCD网络漫画创始人兰达尔·门罗是资深科学漫画家，拥有大量粉丝，他也投身到这股潮流中来了。
“The Martian” is closer to classically optimistic science fiction than the dystopian works that have crowded the genre of late. Its heart, humor and rousing story of perseverance and global collaboration promise to broaden the film’s appeal well beyond nerds.
《火星救援》更像是一个经典的乐观主义科幻小说，而不是过时的反乌托邦作品。它暖心、幽默，有关毅力和全球协作的故事令人动容，这确保了电影比呆萌影片更具感染力。
When the astronaut Mark Watney, left on Mars with nothing but his considerable storehouse of snarky one-liners and powerful brain to save him.
宇航员马克·沃特尼滞留在火星上，除了拥有一大堆尖酸刻薄的俏皮话和超强大脑来自救外一无所有。
The story, which braids Watney’s efforts to survive with the struggles of the world’s space agencies and his departed crewmates to bring him home, can have meaning even to those who haven’t taught themselves how to use a slide rule for the archaic challenge.
这个故事将沃特尼谋生存和世界各空间机构与天各一方的机组成员营救他的过程交织在一起，这对那些还不会如何使用滑尺应对古老挑战的人们都很有意义。
In an interview from his home in Northern California, Mr. Weir, a former software engineer, said he wrote his book with one overarching thought in mind: It should be as scientifically accurate as possible.
在南加州家里的一次采访中，曾经是软件工程师的威尔说，他写这本书的一个重要理念是：故事要尽可能在科学上准确。
How much energy would a rover need to cover the enormous distances that Watney must drive? How many potatoes would he have to grow to provide the calories he will need? As he did the math, he found that the answers he got created new problems for his astronaut to surmount.
沃特尼驾驶探测车超长程行驶需要多少能量？他需要种多少土豆达到所需的卡路里摄入？这样一算，他发现答案给笔下的宇航员提出新的难题去克服。
All in an environment that, in terms of survival, constitutes a very tough neighborhood. The soil, he determined, would need hundreds of liters of water to be sufficiently moist to grow crops.
就生存而言，所有这些都处于一个非常恶劣的环境关系中。他得出土壤需要上千升水，保持湿润来种植玉米。
Water that Watney, with training in botany and mechanical engineering, would have to come up with somehow. (He ends up passing leftover hydrazine, the rocket fuel, over a catalyst, and, well, it’s complicated.)
沃特尼受过植物学和机械工程训练，他必须找到水。最后他把剩余的火箭燃料肼加进催化剂中，总之很复杂。
Mr. Weir, 43, said that his feel for the sensibility of astronauts and exploration came from “a life of being a space dork” who read everything he could get his hands on about such topics. The fact that this dedication has paid off in such a big way, with a major motion picture on the way, Mr. Weir said, is “really awesome.”
43岁的威尔说自己对宇航员和探险的感受力来自“一种太空呆子的体验”，他读了所有能找到的有关这个话题的东西。付出得到了巨大的回报，这就是一部正在上映的大银幕作品。威尔说，这棒极了。
After 20th Century Fox optioned the film, Drew Goddard, the director who built a fierce following with the horror comedy “The Cabin in the Woods,” took on the project and adapted the book but had to drop out because of conflicts with other productions.
20世纪福克斯选择这部电影后，曾经以恐怖片《林中小屋》获得狂热追捧的导演德鲁·高达接手了片子，对故事进行了改编，但由于其他电影档期冲突，不得不放弃了。
The director Ridley Scott, who transformed science fiction cinema with “Blade Runner” and “Alien,” stepped in. And with him came Matt Damon, as well as Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jeff Daniels and Donald Glover, among others.
曾经将科幻小说《银翼杀手》、《异形》搬上银幕的导演雷德利·斯科特加入进来。马特·达蒙，杰西·卡查斯坦、克里斯汀·韦格、切瓦特·埃加福特, 杰夫·丹尼尔和唐纳德·格洛弗等追随而来。
Mr. Damon said that unlike Mr. Weir, he is not a space dork. But when he read the script — cold, he said, with no idea what it was about — he found himself drawn to his character’s steady competence amid chaos. But when Mr. Goddard left the project, Mr. Damon said, “I thought it was just going to go away.”
达蒙说，和威尔不同，他可不是太空呆子。可当他读到剧本时，觉得好酷，虽然不知所云，他被角色在混沌中的稳健吸引。当高达离开这个剧时，达蒙说自己觉得这戏要流产了。
Later, however, Ridley Scott called. “That just made my life very easy in terms of decision-making — it was a no-brainer.”
后来，雷德利·斯科特打来电话。“让我做决定很容易，根本不用思考。”
He recalled telling Mr. Scott, “we don’t need an Oscar-bait kind of scene of some guy wailing and pulling his hair out. I don’t want to see that, and I don’t want to do that.”
他回忆起自己是这么对斯科特说的：“我们不需要一个奥斯卡获奖场景，一些人哀嚎着，撕扯着头发。我不想看到这些，我不想这么做。”
The enormity of his plight, the existential dread, will flow from the vast loneliness of the landscape, they agreed. With brief exceptions, that is how he plays the character.
他巨大的苦痛和存在主义式的恐惧会从恢弘孤独的场景中流露出来。除少数例外，他就这样来饰演角色。
Mr. Weir admits freely that his stranded astronaut has little angst or inner life. Watney simply pushes forward, putting crises into a mental lockbox and figuring out how to survive.
威尔坦白，他笔下那个被困的航天员并不焦虑，也没有内心活动。沃特尼只是加了把劲儿，把危机置于心灵盒子里，想出如何求生的方法。
“It could have been a deep psychological thing,” he said, but “that’s not the kind of book I like to read, and it’s not the kind of book I wanted to write.” James Bond, he notes, is not weepy; “I wanted it to be more MacGyver on Mars.”
“这可能是一种深刻的心理学。” 但是他说：“这不是我喜欢读的那类书，也不是我想写的。”他说詹姆斯·邦德不是催人泪下的，“我想该是火星上的《百战天龙》。”
The most visible emotional moment for Watney, at a time of great stress and seeming failure, was inserted at the request of an editor.
一个编剧要求加入沃特尼在重压和挫败时最煽情的时刻。
Mr. Weir said he is a fan of the dry and somewhat morbid sense of humor that many astronauts share; he cited the quip from the legendary John Young, who walked on the moon and also flew the space shuttle, about procedures that shuttle crews were trained to follow in case of one particularly serious launch mishap: He called them “keeping busy while you wait to die.”
威尔说自己喜欢冷幽默甚至有点病态的幽默，这是很多宇航员共有的特点。他引用了传奇宇航员约翰·沃茨·杨的妙语。杨曾经在月球上行走也曾驾驶航天飞机。宇航员会受训应对当特别严重的发射灾难发生后如何操作，约翰如是形容——“等死前的挣扎”。
A number of astronauts say that Mr. Weir got them right, from the joking interplay between team members to Watney’s aplomb. Garrett Reisman, who flew to space three times and now works at Elon Musk’s SpaceX, said that astronaut selection and training focus on what is known as being “operational,” a quality of staying focused and sorting quickly through priorities. “When all hell is breaking loose,” he said, “what do I have to do right now that will keep me alive?”
很多宇航员说威尔演的到位，包括队员间的玩笑和沃特尼的沉着。加雷特·赖斯曾从三次飞入太空，现在供职于埃隆·马斯克的太空探索技术公司。他说宇航员甄选和训练都集中在操作状态，一种保持专注并快速在诸多重要事项中作出抉择的品质。“当地狱之墙崩塌，我立刻要做什么来拯救自己？”
He noted: “That’s different from just being super smart. You can probably think of someone who’s a genius in a laboratory or as an engineer, but you would never lend your car to him.”
他指出：“这和仅是特别聪明不一样。比如你可能觉得某个人在实验室里是个天才，或者是个天才工程师。但你决不会把自己的车借给他。”
Chris Hadfield, an astronaut who retired from the Canadian Space Agency in 2013 and flew aboard the space shuttle and the International Space Station, met Mr. Weir recently and recalled gushing, “You pretty much nailed the personality type, and the level of capability and education, but also with an operational attitude.”
航天员克里斯·哈德菲尔德2013年从加拿大航天局退休，之前搭乘过航天飞机到过国际空间站。最近他和威尔先生会面，回忆起那令人血脉喷张的日子。“你要非常符合特定的性格类型，有一定的能力和学历，而且有一种愿意动手操作的态度。”
In space, he added: “Your life is absolutely reliant on your own abilities. It’s not a public relations exercise. You spend most of your life preparing for required parts of your job that could kill you.”
他说在太空中，“你的生活完全依赖你自己的能力。这不是公共关系训练。你花了生命中大多时间为可能要命的工作做必要的准备。”
The astronaut Scott Kelly, reached aboard the International Space Station, said that he had not read the book. He said he “was waiting for the movie to come out — just kidding.”
宇航员斯科特·凯力到达了国际空间站，他说自己没有读那本书，“在等电影在太空上映，开玩笑啦。”
Those at NASA who are hoping to get people to Mars someday also say Mr. Weir has captured something important about what makes humans want to explore.
美国航空航天局里那些想有一天把人类送上火星的人们也表示威尔抓住了那些诱使人类去探索的重点。
Dr. Jim Green, the director of the planetary science division of NASA, said that Mr. Weir didn’t get everything right — most notably, the dust storm that strands Mark Watney on Mars would, on the surface of the actual planet, not have much force.
NASA 的行星科学部主任吉姆·格林表示，威尔并不是事事正确的，最明显的就是，让马尔·沃特尼在火星上搁浅的尘暴在真正的星球表面不会有多大威力。
The air is just too thin. No matter, he said: “I check my science brain at the door when I watch a movie.” Besides, he said, “‘The Martian’ is reasonably realistic.”
空气太稀薄了。但没关系，他说：“我看电影时会进行科学思考。”此外，他说：“《火星救援》相当逼真。”
More important, he said, is that the movie could excite and inspire the public about a human mission to Mars at a time when the space program has essentially figured out how to get it done. “It makes it real,” he said.
他说，更重要的是，当太空项目基本上研究出来怎么把人类送到火星时，这部电影可以激励、激发公众参与人类前往火星的行动。“它让梦想成真。”
(He acknowledged, however, that the stylish NASA buildings in the movie are nothing like the functional edifices where scientists, astronauts and administrators work day to day. “NASA is a federal facility,” he said. “We buy from the lowest bidder.”)
然而他承认，电影里时髦的NASA大楼和科学家、宇航员、管理员夜以继日在工作的这些现实的大楼一点也不一样。“NASA是联邦设施，我们从最低的投标人那里买来的。”
Mr. Weir was raised in Northern California; his father worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and his mother, who earned a degree in electrical engineering, has worked in that field, among others.
威尔在南加州长大，他的父亲在劳伦斯利福摩尔国家实验室工作，母亲获得过电子工程学学位，并在该领域工作。
Until his success with his fiction, Mr. Weir had been a software engineer at AOL, the game giant Blizzard and many other companies, changing jobs every few years as tech nomads do. Now that job-hopping is unnecessary. He’s working on his next book, a more traditional sci-fi novel with a working title of “Zhek.”
在小说获得成功前，威尔在美国在线、暴雪娱乐公司和其他公司担任软件工程师。像技术移民一样，每隔几年他就会换工作。现在不必不停跳槽了。他开始新书的创作，一个更传统的科幻小说，初步标题定为“Zhek”。
Meanwhile, this author who took us to Mars is working to overcome a phobia: He is afraid of flying. “I’m getting better,” he said. He is seeing a therapist, he added, and has taken some flights — to Comic-Con in San Diego, to the Johnson Space Center in Houston at the invitation of NASA. “I could not say no to that,” he said.
同时，这位带我们上火星的作家正在研究怎么解决飞行恐惧症。“我好一些了。”他正在看医生，也搭乘过一些飞机，包括飞到Comic-Con圣迭戈动漫展，受NASA邀请去了休斯顿的约翰逊航天中心。“我不能拒绝。”
He still can’t quite believe that he now talks with astronauts, or that his movie was mentioned in XKCD, he said: “That’s hitting the big time.”
他依然不能完全相信自己在讲述航天员的故事，自己的电影甚至被XKCD提及。他说：“这次撞大运了。”
来源：英文联播