Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky made a science fiction film called Solaris (1972), adapted from the science fiction novel of the same name by Polish novelist Stanisław Lem.
On a distant planet completely covered by the ocean, scientists at the observation station discovered strange phenomena on the planet, such as a four-meter-tall naked man. Experts on Earth believed that these scientists were insane, so they sent the protagonist of the story, a psychologist, to the observation station to investigate and assist.
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After the protagonist arrives at the station, he discovers that his wife, who has been dead for 10 years, appears out of thin air on the space station. Not a ghost, but a human being of flesh and blood, with the same appearance and memories as his wife, but unaware that she is dead, like an amnesiac.
It turns out that the ocean is a creature of this planet that can understand and visualize the thoughts in the human mind.
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The resident scientists called these uninvited “people” “visitors” and were driven crazy by this inconceivability.
If it simply recalled the dead, “Flying to Space” would be nothing more than a fantasy love movie, but the story digs the theme very deep and is deeper and greater. After the protagonist kills his “wife”, she appears again out of thin air, but she knows she is not his wife, and asks: “I don’t know where I come from, who I am, or what I am.”
With the blessing of these philosophical questions, the entire film’s structure is elevated to a philosophical level. And “Where do I come from? Who am I? Where am I going?” These three philosophical questions, since they were first raised by Plato, have also become issues that each of us must face in life, otherwise we would not There are many people who are keen on asking God for divination and want to know about their past lives and future.
➤The moment you get on the plane
The ending of “Flying to Space” throws out that “the world we live in is not real”, which is also a concept that often appears in science fiction novels and movies. From Philip K. Dick’s novels and adapted film and television works, to the “The Matrix” series, to the recent “Westworld”, readers and viewers are constantly reminded that Even Musk believes that we live in a world with extremely high levels of fidelity.
I didn’t expect Hervé. Le. Hervé Le Tellier’s “Anomalies” plays with the same concept. The word “play” is used because this novel is very different from the science fiction novels that show off future high technology in many people’s minds. The author seems to be using French humor to play with the science fiction genre.
The story begins by introducing the background of a series of unusual characters. Their lives are exciting, but none of them are science fiction. However, just like the Korean movie “Parasite”, there is a drastic change in the middle, taking the reader along that unexpected staircase to the underground secret room. No, “Abnormal” takes the reader on a plane.
Then the whole story changed.
It turns out that these characters all boarded the same flight, but strangely, the plane of this flight (with the exact same passenger manifest) turned out to have landed a few months ago.
So who are these people showing up again? Or, what on earth is it? Or, as the scientists in the book ask, are they in a world similar to The Matrix?
The novel couldn’t stop after reading this point, and was driven straight to the ending by the author’s whimsical ideas.
The military detained these passengers, and also called in experts from different fields such as scientists, psychologists, and philosophers to do everything possible to investigate “what they are” (I’m afraid they are not even human beings), just like in “Flying to Space” The characters face visitors.
Since these reappearing passengers were not missing persons, no country asked for their release, but the military could not find a reason to kill them, so it had to release them back to the outside world.
➤How to deal with “extra people”
If you’ve ever written a novel or screenplay, you know that killing off characters is actually the easiest way to deal with conflict. When a person dies, the conflict disappears. The author only needs to deal with how the family and friends of the deceased face life and death, and then grow up in the face of adversity and learn a valuable lesson in life.
“Abnormal” is like “Flying to Space”, played in reverse, adding “characters that shouldn’t be there”.
This is the problem faced by two top magicians in Nolan’s “The Prestige”. We also know that no matter who they are, they have to pay a corresponding price.
How to live peacefully with the extra one? Who is the extra person? How to deal with property? How to deal with identity? How to face the same self?
One of the characters kills the extra self and makes the most unsurprising decision, but not everyone is so vicious.
How could the family do this when their daughters went from one to two? The palms and backs of the hands are full of flesh!
From one mother to two, the extra mother has the same memory as the original mother. How do the children and the husband choose?
The most interesting thing about the book “Anomaly” is not that the author uses earth-shattering science fiction methods to explain the anomaly, but that he uses literary techniques to solve the anomaly. This series of characters face abnormalities, and their different handling methods reflect the personalities of different characters, that is, different destinies.
There is an image in the book that I think is very clever. One of the girls was very sad when her pet toad died. Her father picked up the toad and put it in a soup bowl. I didn’t know why and thought he was going to eat the toad. Unexpectedly, the girl’s mother added water to the soup bowl and the toad came to life again.
This is equivalent to giving an outline of the entire book: life and death are just a thought.
Facing “abnormality”, by extension, is far more than just one person facing another self. It can also be how a nation faces foreigners on the same land. I was particularly moved by this book when I talked about it during the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. ●
Abnormal[Goncourt Award winner, New York Times best thriller of the year]
The anomaly
Author: Hervé.Letelier
Translator: Chen Yongwei
Published by: Trojan Culture
Pricing: 450 yuan
【Content introduction➤】
About the author: Hervé. Le. Hervé Le Tellier
Born in Paris in 1957. French writer, linguist, former science journalist, and member of the international literary group Oulipo. This group is good at creating various possibilities for writing with new structures. Its members include mathematicians, novelists, poets, etc.; Italian writer Calvino is also a member.
Tellier has numerous works, and letting words escape from restrictive frameworks is a major feature of his writing. He won the 2020 Prix Goncourt, one of France’s most prestigious literary awards, for his science fiction novel “Anomaly”. It has sold one million copies in France alone and sold in 45 languages.
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