好书推荐： “Station Eleven” by Emily St. John Mandel

“Survival is insufficient.” 

Station Eleven。 这应该不能算是一本科幻小说，但故事的确以末世为背景：在一个寒冬雪夜，一场凶猛的致命流感袭卷了整个世界，在短短的两三周里，99.9%的人类被wiped out，我们习以为常的文明世界也就此奔溃。 

故事在世界崩毁前後来回切换。 人物颇为繁杂：好莱坞明星Arthur Leander和他的好友Clark丶前妻（们）Miranda和Elizabeth丶Elizabeth的儿子Tyler丶以及小演员Kristen丶狗仔队Jeevan。。。随着情节发展，他们各自的人生轨道也交织在一起。 只是因为角色太多，每一个都着墨不够，刻画得有欠深刻，叫我觉得他们像是熟人，但不够真的深切认识。

灾难二十年後，Kristen和一群幸存者组成的音乐兼话剧团在五大湖区徒步而行，遇到残留的村落就演出交响乐和莎士比亚戏剧，因为剧团的格言就是“Survival is insufficient.”  每到一地，村民们从破败的生存中暂时抽离，含着热泪享受演出。 然而，他们遇到了一个被邪教控制的村落，前面的道路險情遍佈。。。

这本书的情节推进比较弱，科幻也少的可怜，作者的更側重的是人文探讨。 当世界停摆丶文明中止，幸存的我们被迫重回蛮荒时代，没有水丶没有电丶没有汽油丶没有网络丶没有城市丶没有科技和医疗。 为了求生存就必须狩猎丶步行丶武装自己丶也要随时防范被攻击被屠杀。。。 重新适应一个充满危机险恶的世界。 但仅仅是生存，人和动物又有何区别？ 哪些文化会被传承下去？ 高雅的贝多芬第九交响乐和莎士比亚戏剧，没没无闻的漫画（贯穿整部书的线索就是Arthur第一任妻子Miranda画的叫“Station Eleven”太空站的漫画）丶甚至被我们不齿的狗仔队gossip杂志。。。都有可能被当成宝贝。 

Mandel的文笔温柔细腻，没有什麽惊天动地的情节，没有自相残杀的血腥描写，连末日时的混乱和失控都淡化。 但淡淡的哀愁贯穿着全书，Mandel借书中人物，以诗意的语言，柔情倾诉对过往的缅怀丶对人生的反思丶对未来的希冀。 在这凋敝的世界，即使笼罩在死亡的阴影下，仍然有一种凄怆的美，一种脆弱的珍贵。 被植物盘据的宅第丶布满铁锈的汽车丶机场一字排开永远不能起飞的飞机丶停了二十年大塞车的高速公路。。。都那麽有画面感。 那本科幻漫画Station Eleven的水下世界，在旧世界的甜美和新世界的残酷中苟且，正和残破的现实同样哀伤而无奈。 读起来非常吸引人，真的很喜欢。

Quotes:

“Hell is the absence of the people you long for.” 

 

“I stood looking over my damaged home and tried to forget the sweetness of life on Earth.” 

 

“First we only want to be seen, but once we’re seen, that’s not enough anymore. After that, we want to be remembered.” 

 

“No more Internet. No more social media, no more scrolling through litanies of dreams and nervous hopes and photographs of lunches, cries for help and expressions of contentment and relationship-status updates with heart icons whole or broken, plans to meet up later, pleas, complaints, desires, pictures of babies dressed as bears or peppers for Halloween. No more reading and commenting on the lives of others, and in so doing, feeling slightly less alone in the room. No more avatars.” 

 

“She had never entirely let go of the notion that if she reached far enough with her thoughts she might find someone waiting, that if two people were to cast their thoughts outward at the same moment they might somehow meet in the middle.” 

 

“It was gorgeous and claustrophobic. I loved it and I always wanted to escape.” 

 

“Jeevan found himself thinking about how human the city is, how human everything is. We bemoaned the impersonality of the modern world, but that was a lie, it seemed to him; it had never been impersonal at all. There had always been a massive delicate infrastructure of people, all of them working unnoticed around us, and when people stop going to work, the entire operation grinds to a halt. No one delivers fuel to the gas stations or the airports. Cars are stranded. Airplanes cannot fly. Trucks remain at their points of origin. Food never reaches the cities; grocery stores close. Businesses are locked and then looted. No one comes to work at the power plants or the substations, no one removes fallen trees from electrical lines. Jeevan was standing by the window when the lights went out.” 

 

“The thing with the new world,” the tuba had said once, “is it’s just horrifically short on elegance.” 

 

“We traveled so far and your friendship meant everything. It was very difficult, but there were moments of beauty. Everything ends. I am not afraid.” 

 

“Do you remember when we were young and gorgeous?” 

 

“Toward the end of his second decade in the airport, Clark was thinking about how lucky he’d been. Not just the mere fact of survival, which was of course remarkable in and of itself, but to have seen one world end and another begin. And not just to have seen the remembered splendors of the former world, the space shuttles and the electrical grid and the amplified guitars, the computers that could be held in the palm of a hand and the high-speed trains between cities, but to have lived among those wonders for so long. To have dwelt in that spectacular world for fifty-one years of his life. Sometimes he lay awake in Concourse B of the Severn City Airport and thought, “I was there,” and the thought pierced him through with an admixture of sadness and exhilaration.”