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When I was seven or eight years old, I began
to read the science-fiction magazines that were brought by guests into my grandparents’1)boarding house, in Waukegan, Illinois. Those were the years when 2)Hugo Gernsback was publishing Amazing Stories, with vivid, 3)appallingly 4)imaginative cover paintings that fed my hungry imagination. Soon after, the creative beast in me grew when 5)Buck Rogers appeared, in 1928, and I think I went a trifle mad that autumn. It’s the only way to describe the intensity with which I devoured the stories. You rarely have such fevers later in life that fill your entire day with emotion.
When I look back now, I realize what a 6)trial I must have been to my friends and relatives. It was one frenzy after one elation after one enthusiasm after one hysteria after another. I was always yelling and running somewhere, because I was afraid life was going to be over that very afternoon.
My next madness happened in 1931, when 7)Harold Foster’s first series of Sunday color panels based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’s “Tarzan” appeared, and I simultaneously discovered, next door at my uncle Bion’s house, the “8)John Carter of Mars”books. I know that “9)The Martian Chronicles”would never have happened if Burroughs hadn’t had an impact on my life at that time.
I memorized all of “John Carter” and “Tarzan,”and sat on my grandparents’ front lawn repeating the stories to anyone who would sit and listen. I would go out to that lawn on summer nights and reach up to the red light of Mars and say, “Take me home!” I yearned to fly away and land there in the strange dusts that 10)blew over dead-sea bottoms toward the ancient cities.
While I remained earthbound, I would timetravel, listening to the grownups, who on warm nights gathered outside on the lawns and porches to talk and 11)reminisce. At the end of the Fourth of July, after the uncles had their cigars and philosophical discussions, and the aunts, nephews, and cousins had their ice-cream cones or lemonade, and we’d exhausted all the fireworks, it was the special time, the sad time, the time of beauty. It was the time of the fire balloons.
七八岁时，我开始读科幻杂志。那时我的祖父母在伊利诺斯州沃基根市经营一所寄宿公寓，那些杂志都是入住的客人带来的。那些年正是雨果·根斯巴克出版《惊奇故事》的年代，杂志上那些虚构的、刻画得栩栩如生又令人毛骨悚然的封面插图填补了我贫瘠的想象力。之后不久，1928年, 当巴克·罗杰斯出现后，我心中创作的欲望愈发膨胀，我想那年秋天我简直有点疯掉了。唯有这么说才足以形容当时我啃下那些故事的激动心情。在尔后的人生中，你已很难再有这种能让你一整天都激动不已的澎湃心情了。
如今，回顾往昔，我才意识到那时的自己对于亲友来说一定是个讨厌鬼。那时的我时而怒气冲冲，时而兴高采烈，时而热情高涨，时而歇斯底里。那段日子，我时常在某处叫喊、奔跑，因为我害怕生命会在那个下午戛然而止。
我的再次疯狂出现于1931年，当时哈罗德·福斯特以埃德加·赖斯·巴勒斯所著的“人猿泰山”为蓝本，推出首辑周日连载的彩色连环画；与之同时，我还在隔壁的比昂叔叔家发现了“火星上的约翰·卡特”系列图书。我知道，如果那时没有受过巴勒斯作品的熏陶，我不会写出“火星纪事”。
我记下所有关于“约翰·卡特”和“泰山”的故事，并且坐在祖父母前院的草坪上，向每个愿意坐下来听的人复述。夏夜里，我会跑到屋外那片草地上，向天边那抹火星发出的红光伸出双臂，高喊：“带我回家！”我渴望着飞离地球，降落到那片土地，那里奇异的尘土飞扬着，掠过死海海底，飘往那些古老的城邦。
在我依然身陷地球的时候，我会来一趟时光旅行，听大人们在温暖的夜晚聚在门廊和草坪上谈天说地、追忆往事。七月四日即将过去的时候，当叔叔们抽完雪茄，讨论完哲学问题后，当姨姨、侄儿和表亲们享用完圆筒冰激凌和柠檬水后，当我们燃尽了所有的烟花后，特别的时刻来临了。那是悲伤而又美丽的时刻。那是属于火气球的时刻。
Even at that age, I was beginning to perceive the endings of things, like this lovely paper light. I had already lost my grandfather, who went away for good when I was five. I remember him so well: the two of us on the lawn in front of the porch, with twenty relatives for an audience, and the paper balloon held between us for a final moment, filled with warm 12)exhalations, ready to go.
I’d helped my grandpa carry the box in which lay, like a gossamer spirit, the paper-tissue ghost of a fire balloon waiting to be breathed into, filled, and set adrift toward the midnight sky. My grandfather was the 13)high priest and I his altar boy. I helped take the red-white-and-blue tissue out of the box and watched as Grandpa lit a little cup of dry straw that hung beneath it. Once the fire got going, the balloon whispered itself fat with the hot air rising inside.
But I could not let it go. It was so beautiful, with the light and shadows dancing inside. Only when Grandpa gave me a look, and a gentle nod of his head, did I at last let the balloon drift free, up past the porch, illuminating the faces of my family. It floated up above the apple trees, over the beginning-to-sleep town, and across the night among the stars.
尽管当时我年纪尚轻，却也开始察觉到事物均有完结的一刻，就像这别致的纸灯。那时我已经失去祖父，他与世长辞时，我只有五岁。但我对他的记忆历历在目：我俩在门廊前的草坪上，由二十位亲戚见证，纸灯在我们手中作最后的停留，里面充满了暖烘烘的热气，随时飞上高空。
我会帮着祖父把箱子抬出来，箱子里似躺着一个轻飘飘的灵魂——一个火气球的纸魂，等待着被注满，然后飘向午夜的天际。祖父是一位大祭司，而我就是他的侍童。我帮祖父把红白蓝三色的纸灯从箱子里拿出来，然后看着他将悬挂在纸灯下方的一小杯干稻草点燃。火一窜起来，热气就在里面升腾起来，火气球就自己呼呼地膨胀起来了。
可是，我却舍不得放手。火光和影子在灯内翩然起舞，那是多么的漂亮啊。只有当祖父向我使个眼色，轻轻点头示意时，我才松开纸灯，任其自由飘走。它高高地飞越门廊，照亮了全家人的脸；它又飞过苹果树梢，飞过即将入睡的小镇，在群星簇拥下划过黑夜。
We stood watching it for at least ten minutes, until we could no longer see it. By then, tears were streaming down my face, and Grandpa, not looking at me, would at last clear his throat and 14)shuffle his feet. The relatives would begin to go into the house or around the lawn to their houses, leaving me to brush the tears away with fingers 15)sulfured by the firecrackers. Late that night, I dreamed the fire balloon came back and drifted by my window.
Twenty-five years later, I wrote “The Fire Balloons,” a story in which a number of priests fly off to Mars looking for creatures of good will. It is my tribute to those summers when my grandfather was alive. One of the priests was like my grandpa, whom I put on Mars to see the lovely balloons again, but this time they were Martians, all fired and bright, adrift above a dead sea.
我们站在那里，看着气球飞走，至少有十分钟之久，直到再也看不见它为止。那一刻，泪水从我脸颊流了下来。而祖父并没有看着我，只是清清嗓子然后挪动脚步。亲戚们会陆陆续续回到祖父母的屋里，或者绕过草坪回各自屋里，只剩我一个用沾满烟花火药的手指擦去泪水。那晚夜深之时，我梦见火气球又飞了回来，飘到我的窗边。
二十五年后，我写下了《火气球》，讲的是一群神父飞到火星去寻找友好外星生物的故事，以此献给那些祖父在世的夏天。其中一个神父就像我的祖父，我把他送往火星，让他与那些美丽的天灯重逢。但这一次，天灯全部化作火星人，他们全都灯火通明，在一片死海的上空肆意漂浮。
to read the science-fiction magazines that were brought by guests into my grandparents’1)boarding house, in Waukegan, Illinois. Those were the years when 2)Hugo Gernsback was publishing Amazing Stories, with vivid, 3)appallingly 4)imaginative cover paintings that fed my hungry imagination. Soon after, the creative beast in me grew when 5)Buck Rogers appeared, in 1928, and I think I went a trifle mad that autumn. It’s the only way to describe the intensity with which I devoured the stories. You rarely have such fevers later in life that fill your entire day with emotion.
When I look back now, I realize what a 6)trial I must have been to my friends and relatives. It was one frenzy after one elation after one enthusiasm after one hysteria after another. I was always yelling and running somewhere, because I was afraid life was going to be over that very afternoon.
My next madness happened in 1931, when 7)Harold Foster’s first series of Sunday color panels based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’s “Tarzan” appeared, and I simultaneously discovered, next door at my uncle Bion’s house, the “8)John Carter of Mars”books. I know that “9)The Martian Chronicles”would never have happened if Burroughs hadn’t had an impact on my life at that time.
I memorized all of “John Carter” and “Tarzan,”and sat on my grandparents’ front lawn repeating the stories to anyone who would sit and listen. I would go out to that lawn on summer nights and reach up to the red light of Mars and say, “Take me home!” I yearned to fly away and land there in the strange dusts that 10)blew over dead-sea bottoms toward the ancient cities.
While I remained earthbound, I would timetravel, listening to the grownups, who on warm nights gathered outside on the lawns and porches to talk and 11)reminisce. At the end of the Fourth of July, after the uncles had their cigars and philosophical discussions, and the aunts, nephews, and cousins had their ice-cream cones or lemonade, and we’d exhausted all the fireworks, it was the special time, the sad time, the time of beauty. It was the time of the fire balloons.
七八岁时，我开始读科幻杂志。那时我的祖父母在伊利诺斯州沃基根市经营一所寄宿公寓，那些杂志都是入住的客人带来的。那些年正是雨果·根斯巴克出版《惊奇故事》的年代，杂志上那些虚构的、刻画得栩栩如生又令人毛骨悚然的封面插图填补了我贫瘠的想象力。之后不久，1928年, 当巴克·罗杰斯出现后，我心中创作的欲望愈发膨胀，我想那年秋天我简直有点疯掉了。唯有这么说才足以形容当时我啃下那些故事的激动心情。在尔后的人生中，你已很难再有这种能让你一整天都激动不已的澎湃心情了。
如今，回顾往昔，我才意识到那时的自己对于亲友来说一定是个讨厌鬼。那时的我时而怒气冲冲，时而兴高采烈，时而热情高涨，时而歇斯底里。那段日子，我时常在某处叫喊、奔跑，因为我害怕生命会在那个下午戛然而止。
我的再次疯狂出现于1931年，当时哈罗德·福斯特以埃德加·赖斯·巴勒斯所著的“人猿泰山”为蓝本，推出首辑周日连载的彩色连环画；与之同时，我还在隔壁的比昂叔叔家发现了“火星上的约翰·卡特”系列图书。我知道，如果那时没有受过巴勒斯作品的熏陶，我不会写出“火星纪事”。
我记下所有关于“约翰·卡特”和“泰山”的故事，并且坐在祖父母前院的草坪上，向每个愿意坐下来听的人复述。夏夜里，我会跑到屋外那片草地上，向天边那抹火星发出的红光伸出双臂，高喊：“带我回家！”我渴望着飞离地球，降落到那片土地，那里奇异的尘土飞扬着，掠过死海海底，飘往那些古老的城邦。
在我依然身陷地球的时候，我会来一趟时光旅行，听大人们在温暖的夜晚聚在门廊和草坪上谈天说地、追忆往事。七月四日即将过去的时候，当叔叔们抽完雪茄，讨论完哲学问题后，当姨姨、侄儿和表亲们享用完圆筒冰激凌和柠檬水后，当我们燃尽了所有的烟花后，特别的时刻来临了。那是悲伤而又美丽的时刻。那是属于火气球的时刻。
Even at that age, I was beginning to perceive the endings of things, like this lovely paper light. I had already lost my grandfather, who went away for good when I was five. I remember him so well: the two of us on the lawn in front of the porch, with twenty relatives for an audience, and the paper balloon held between us for a final moment, filled with warm 12)exhalations, ready to go.
I’d helped my grandpa carry the box in which lay, like a gossamer spirit, the paper-tissue ghost of a fire balloon waiting to be breathed into, filled, and set adrift toward the midnight sky. My grandfather was the 13)high priest and I his altar boy. I helped take the red-white-and-blue tissue out of the box and watched as Grandpa lit a little cup of dry straw that hung beneath it. Once the fire got going, the balloon whispered itself fat with the hot air rising inside.
But I could not let it go. It was so beautiful, with the light and shadows dancing inside. Only when Grandpa gave me a look, and a gentle nod of his head, did I at last let the balloon drift free, up past the porch, illuminating the faces of my family. It floated up above the apple trees, over the beginning-to-sleep town, and across the night among the stars.
尽管当时我年纪尚轻，却也开始察觉到事物均有完结的一刻，就像这别致的纸灯。那时我已经失去祖父，他与世长辞时，我只有五岁。但我对他的记忆历历在目：我俩在门廊前的草坪上，由二十位亲戚见证，纸灯在我们手中作最后的停留，里面充满了暖烘烘的热气，随时飞上高空。
我会帮着祖父把箱子抬出来，箱子里似躺着一个轻飘飘的灵魂——一个火气球的纸魂，等待着被注满，然后飘向午夜的天际。祖父是一位大祭司，而我就是他的侍童。我帮祖父把红白蓝三色的纸灯从箱子里拿出来，然后看着他将悬挂在纸灯下方的一小杯干稻草点燃。火一窜起来，热气就在里面升腾起来，火气球就自己呼呼地膨胀起来了。
可是，我却舍不得放手。火光和影子在灯内翩然起舞，那是多么的漂亮啊。只有当祖父向我使个眼色，轻轻点头示意时，我才松开纸灯，任其自由飘走。它高高地飞越门廊，照亮了全家人的脸；它又飞过苹果树梢，飞过即将入睡的小镇，在群星簇拥下划过黑夜。
We stood watching it for at least ten minutes, until we could no longer see it. By then, tears were streaming down my face, and Grandpa, not looking at me, would at last clear his throat and 14)shuffle his feet. The relatives would begin to go into the house or around the lawn to their houses, leaving me to brush the tears away with fingers 15)sulfured by the firecrackers. Late that night, I dreamed the fire balloon came back and drifted by my window.
Twenty-five years later, I wrote “The Fire Balloons,” a story in which a number of priests fly off to Mars looking for creatures of good will. It is my tribute to those summers when my grandfather was alive. One of the priests was like my grandpa, whom I put on Mars to see the lovely balloons again, but this time they were Martians, all fired and bright, adrift above a dead sea.
我们站在那里，看着气球飞走，至少有十分钟之久，直到再也看不见它为止。那一刻，泪水从我脸颊流了下来。而祖父并没有看着我，只是清清嗓子然后挪动脚步。亲戚们会陆陆续续回到祖父母的屋里，或者绕过草坪回各自屋里，只剩我一个用沾满烟花火药的手指擦去泪水。那晚夜深之时，我梦见火气球又飞了回来，飘到我的窗边。
二十五年后，我写下了《火气球》，讲的是一群神父飞到火星去寻找友好外星生物的故事，以此献给那些祖父在世的夏天。其中一个神父就像我的祖父，我把他送往火星，让他与那些美丽的天灯重逢。但这一次，天灯全部化作火星人，他们全都灯火通明，在一片死海的上空肆意漂浮。