评论
打印
As time travel became more popular, so did all the twists that instantly enthralled an audience.
随着时间旅行的概念越来越受欢迎，对这一概念进行发挥利用的作品也立刻收获了一批观众。
And it was only a matter of time until time travel was used to kill.
在作品里用时间旅行来杀人不过是早晚的事情。
This is Roger Sherman Hoar, a state senator and assemblyman from Massachusetts.
这位是罗杰·谢尔曼·霍尔，马萨诸塞州上下两院的议员。
He was the author of 1932’s Unemployment Insurance in Wisconsin, among other works.
他的著作包括《1932年威斯康辛州失业保险研究》等。
He was also Ralph Milne Farley — that’s the pen name he used to write “I Killed Hitler,”
他还有一个身份：拉尔夫·米尔恩·法利—— 他就是用这个笔名写了《我杀了希特勒》，
the first story in the killing Hitler time travel genre.
该作品为杀死希特勒系列穿越作品的开山之作。
“Pulp magazines, aimed at especially teenage boys,
"低俗杂志，主要针对的是青少年的男生，
started to produce an outlet for people who wanted to write this kind of fanciful story.”
开始为想创作这类虚构小说的作家提供了施展才华的机会。”
Farley’s story actually appeared before the Pearl Harbor attack.
事实上，法利这本小说问世的时候，珍珠港还没遭到袭击。
His narrator was supposed to be HItler’s cousin, who traveled back to 1899 to kill Adolph.
书中叙述者被认为是希特勒的远房同辈，他穿越到1899年杀死了阿道夫·希特勒。
And it opened up an enduring time travel dilemma.
一个长久的时间旅行困境就是从这里诞生的。
“It’s two problems at once.
立刻就遇到了两个问题。
There’s a scientific problem: you can set your mind to work imagining could such a thing possible and how would that work.
一个是技术问题：试想这种事真的可能吗？即便可能，又要怎么实现呢？
And then there’s an ethical problem: if I could, would I, should I...
第二个是伦理问题：如果真的能，我会那么做吗？我应该那么做吗？
Time travel is so often about regret. It’s about something in your past that you wish you could do over.
因为很多很多的时间旅行都跟悔恨有关：你希望你能改变过去。
In this case, here is the entire planet allowing this monster to arise and kill millions of people,
既然如此，整个地球都容许这个魔鬼出现然后残杀成百上千万人，
does that justify, in advance, the preventive killing of this dictator?”
这是否事先就能为预先杀死这个独裁者开脱呢？”
Killing Hitler, and time travel assassinations, gave a philosophical problem narrative tension.
杀死希特勒这一想法，乃至所有的时间旅行刺杀，营造了一种哲学困境式的叙述张力。
Pulpy stories like “I Killed Hitler” took advantage of an increasingly time-travel savvy public.
《我杀死了希特勒》之类的低俗小说正是利用了人们对时间旅行越来越多的了解。
And assassination became a tradition, maybe even a cliche.
刺杀又已经成了小说的一个传统，甚至可以说是套路了。
Time travel assassination plots soon showed up in arty sci fi movies,
时间旅行刺杀的桥段很快也进入了科幻电影，
like La Jetée, and its remake 12 Monkeys.
比如《堤》及其翻拍《12只猴子》。
It motivated naked Arnold, And almost naked thespian Jean Claude Van Damme.
施瓦辛格赤身上阵以及尚格·云顿基本赤身都是受了这一灵感的启发。
Killing some version of Hitler himself shows up in video games and comic books.
连电子游戏和漫画中都出现了杀死某个年龄段的希特勒的故事。
And somehow the trope even has to be addressed in a time travel rom com by the guy who made “Love Actually.”
甚至《真爱至上》的导演都在他以时间穿越为主题的浪漫喜剧里引入了这个问题。
“I can’t kill Hitler or shag Helen of Troy unfortunately.” OK stop.
“不幸的是，我不能穿越回去杀死希特勒或是特洛伊的海伦。”够了，别说了。
With all that, the most interesting thing about Killing Hitler might be how the story manages to stay alive.
说了这么多，关于杀死希特勒这一话题最有趣的，应该是这个故事是怎么一直保持新鲜的。
That story by Ralph Milne Farley: you can probably guess that killing Hitler didn’t work.
从拉尔夫·米尔恩·法利的《我杀死了希特勒》我们差不多可以猜到，杀死希特勒并不会有什么分别。
The narrator killed Hitler, but then he became a Hitler-like figure himself.
书中的叙述者的确杀死了希特勒，但接下来他自己也变成了一个希特勒式的人物。
Even former future President Jeb Bush realized “it could have a dangerous effect on everything else.”
连曾经的总统候选人·杰布·布什也说，“那样做可能会给一切都带来非常危险的影响。”
“The moral of the stories that I find somehow most believable,
我觉得，这类故事蕴含的最可信的道理就是，
is that when you change history, you don’t get the result you’re looking for.
即便你改写了历史，你也不会得到你期望的结局。
Every day, everything we do is at a turning point in history, whether it’s obvious to us or not.
我们每天做的每一件事都是历史的一个转折点，无论这一点明显与否。
And of course some of these points really matter tremendously and others don’t.
当然了，有的转折点无比关键，有的则并非如此。
But the difference is not announced to us.
但没有人告诉我们这两者的区别。
Nobody rings a bell and says that what you do in the next five minutes may change the course of history.
没有人敲锣打鼓地告诉你，接下来五分钟你的所作所为可能会改变历史。
We are contemplating momentous decisions that we have to feel the weight of
我们会衡量那些重大选择，我们必须了解这些选择的重要性，
and at the same time, have to feel the futility of,
同时也必须了解这些选择徒劳的一面，
because, because of the many laws of unintended consequences.
因为有很多的结局是我们意想不到的。
We just have to do the best we can.”
我们只能付出最大的努力。”
“Now I can’t imagine a circumstance in which doing the best I can would involve killing a person, much less a child,
“所以，我想象不到在什么样的情况下，我能做的最大努力会是杀人，更何况是一个孩子，
even if I had what you would consider quite certain knowledge that that person was about to kill six million innocents.”
即便我有你所谓的对‘那个人会杀死六百万无辜者’ 非常确定的了解。”
“So alright, I guess I wouldn’t kill baby Hitler, given the chance.”
“所以，好吧，我觉得我还是不会杀死幼年的希特勒，有机会的话。”
Thank you to James Gleick for talking to me about Time Travel,
感谢詹姆斯·格雷克跟我聊了这么多关于时间旅行的内容，
and thanks to Roger Sherman Hoar for writing awesome time travel stories under a pen name,
感谢罗杰·谢尔曼·霍尔用笔名写出了那些精彩的时间旅行小说，
and other books under his own name, like “Constitutional Conventions: Their Nature, Power, and Limitations.
以及用真名创作的其他作品，比如《宪法管理：本质、作用及局限》。
That’s gonna be a Bruce Willis movie any day now.
这本小说可能不久就会被布鲁斯·威利斯改编成电影喔。
