经典科幻文学:《宇宙尽头的餐馆》第5章1

Chapter 5
Ursa Minor Beta is, some say, one of the most appalling places in the known Universe.
Although it is excruciatingly rich, horrifyingly sunny and more full of wonderfully exciting people than a pomegranate is of pips, it can hardly be insignificant that when a recent edition of Playbeing magazine headlined an article with the words “When you are tired of Ursa Minor Beta you are tired of life”, the suicide rate quadrupled overnight.
Not that there are any nights on Ursa Minor Beta.
It is a West Zone planet which by an inexplicable and somewhat suspicious freak of topography consists almost entirely of sub-tropical coastline. By an equally suspicious freak of temporal relastatics, it is nearly always Saturday afternoon just before the beach bars close.
No adequate explanation for this has been forthcoming from the dominant lifeforms on Ursa Minor Beta, who spend most of their time attempting to achieve spiritual enlightenment by running round swimming pools, and inviting Investigation Officials form the Galactic Geo-Temporal Control Board to “have a nice diurnal anomaly”.
There is only one City on Ursa Minor Beta, and that is only called a city because the swimming pools are slightly thicker on the ground there than elsewhere.
If you approach Light City by air – and there is no other way of approaching it, no roads, no port facilities – if you don’t fly they don’t want to see you in Light City – you will see why it has this name. Here the sun shines brightest of all, glittering on the swimming pools, shimmering on the white, palm-lined boulevards, glistening on the healthy bronzed specks moving up and down them, gleaming off the villas, the hazy airpads, the beach bars and so on.
Most particularly it shines on a building, a tall beautiful building consisting of two thirty-storey white towers connected by a bridge half-way up their length.
The building is the home of a book, and was built here on the proceeds of an extraordinary copyright law suit fought between the book’s editors and a breakfast cereal company.
The book is a guide book, a travel book.

第五章
小熊星座贝塔星，据有的人说，是整个已知宇宙中最令人震惊的地方之一。
这颗星球非常富裕，阳光普照，到处都是讨人喜欢的居民——比饱满的石榴里的籽还要密集。但你却很难忽略一件事：最近一期《花花生物》杂志推出了一篇头条文章，“当你对小熊星座贝塔星感到厌倦时，你也就对生活本身感到厌倦了”——文章发表之后，该星球的自杀率一夜之间上升了四倍。
当然，小熊星座贝塔星上根本不存在夜晚。
它是一颗西区行星，具有一种无法解释、甚至在某种程度上可以说令人不解的奇特地貌，几乎全部由亚热带海岸线构成。同样令人不解的奇特之处是，在时间上，它几乎永远处于海滩酒吧关门之前的星期六下午。
在小熊星座贝塔星上占统治地位的生命形式从来没有对这样的问题作出过恰当解释，他们的时间主要花在如下方面：绕着游泳池奔跑，以试图获得精神上的启蒙，以及邀请银河系地理－时间控制委员会的调查官员来“过一过每天都反常的美妙日子”。
小熊星座贝塔星上只有一座城市，而这里之所以被称为一座城市，只是因为这里的游泳池比其他地方稍微密集一点儿。
如果你有机会乘飞机去光彩城（其实，去那儿并没有别的交通工具。没有公路，没有港口。如果你不是飞着去，那么他们在光彩城就不想见你），你将看到它为什么会得到这样一个名字。这里的日光照射是最强烈的，在游泳池里闪耀着，在白晃晃的棕榈树成行的林荫大道上闪耀着，在他们戴着的上下晃动的青铜眼镜上闪耀着。闪烁的光芒甚至掩盖了别墅、机场、海滩酒吧……
日光闪耀得最厉害的地方是一栋建筑。这是一栋高耸、漂亮的建筑，由两座三十层的白色高塔构成，在高度的一半有一座桥，将两座高塔连接起来。
这栋建筑是一本书的家，是用一场非同小可的版权诉讼中所获得的款项来修建的，这场诉讼发生在这本书的编辑者和一家早餐麦片公司之间。
这本书是一部指南，一部旅游书。