乌托邦与反乌托邦

A couple of weeks ago, over several nights on British television, a drama series was aired entitled Utopia. The premise of the drama was that a secret cabal of ruthless and powerful operators had dedicated themselves over decades to inoculating 90% of the human race with the drug that would render them infertile.

几周前，英国电视上连续几晚播放了名为乌托邦的连续剧。该剧大概讲一帮凶恶之人组成一隐秘阴谋集团，几十年来给九成的人注射了药物，致使他们不能生育。

The aim of the would-be utopians was to avert the environmental catastropheimplicit in the population explosion. Of course, the titled Utopia has an ironic cast, for, depending on your perspective and how you view the moral relation between means and ends, this is surely a dystopian as much as a utopian vision.

他们的目的通过避免人口爆炸引发的环境灾难来打造乌托邦的世界。当然，这个乌托邦虽有其名，却意喻讽刺。从不同的角度出发，选择不同的看待手段与目的之间道德关系的方式，它可以是一个乌托邦，也可以是反乌托邦。

But then Utopias and Dystopias indissolubly linked, both have a long and honourablecultural history in the English-speaking world. We can go back as far as Thomas More's novel of the early 16th century which coined the term, and we can come forward to the present day Utopia on television.

可是乌托邦和反乌托邦也难分难解地联系在一起，它们都在英语世界有着漫长而光辉的历史。早在十六世纪早期，托马斯·莫尔就在小说中创造了乌托邦这个词，今天我们也可以在电视上看到乌托邦连续剧。

Doubtless, the future, whatever it may hold in terms of social reality, should contain plenty of fictive Utopias and Dystopias. As to what this kind of speculative fiction actually says and does for us, what function it fulfils for the collective psyche, one thing is clear. It's not about our future, but what's happening to us right now.

毫无疑问，未来不管社会如何发展，各种虚构的乌托邦和反乌托邦应该是不胜枚举的。有一点可以肯定，这种臆想式虚构对我们所说所做的，及其对集体心理产生的功能，不关乎我们的未来，而在于现在。