《埃博拉浩劫》,20年前的預言
When the Ebola outbreak in West Africa began to escalate a few months ago, the writer Richard Preston was working on a children's fantasy novel. He dropped that and called David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker. "I said, ‘I've got to get back to Ebola,' " Mr. Preston said. "I've got to cover this."
幾個月前，當埃博拉病毒在西非肆虐日甚之際，作家理查德·普雷斯頓(Richard Preston)正在創作一本兒童奇幻小說。他停下來，給《紐約客》雜誌的主編戴維·雷姆尼克(David Remnick)打去電話。“我跟他說，‘我得回過頭去弄埃博拉，'”普雷斯頓說道。“我要去寫報道。”Mr. Preston first incited public fears about Ebola 20 years ago with "The Hot Zone," his thrillerlike narrative that details the virus's origins and scientists' struggle to understand and stop it. The book, which has sold 3.5 million copies, could perhaps be classified as dystopian nonfiction. Stephen King called it "one of the most horrifying things I've ever read." With fears about Ebola rising once more, "The Hot Zone" has been in high demand: Mr. Preston's publisher has released 150,000 more copies in recent months, and the book has reappeared on the New York Times best-seller list and on Sunday ranked No. 23 on Amazon.
20年前，普雷斯頓的《埃博拉浩劫》一書引發了公衆對這種病毒的恐慌；他用類似驚悚小說的寫法，描繪了這種病毒的起源，以及科學家是如何奮力瞭解、阻止這種病毒的傳播。這本已經售出350萬冊的圖書，或許可以劃入反烏托邦非虛構類。史蒂芬·金(Stephen King)曾說，這本書“是我讀過的最嚇人的書之一”。伴隨埃博拉再次爆發的恐懼，《埃博拉浩劫》的銷量也隨之大增，普雷斯頓的出版商在最近幾個月加印了15萬冊，該書再次登上了紐約時報暢銷書榜，週日的時候，它在亞馬遜的銷量榜上排在第23位。
This week, The New Yorker is publishing Mr. Preston's latest reporting on the virus, a dispatch about the efforts to sequence its genome intertwined with a narrative about a doctor's doomed effort to treat the disease on the front lines. In a telephone interview, Mr. Preston spoke about his decades-long quest to understand the virus. These are excerpts from the conversation.
本週，《紐約客》將發表普雷斯頓對於埃博拉病毒的最新報道，該文描繪了科學家如何給這種病毒的基因組進行測序，還穿插了一名大夫在一線如何治療這種疾病卻註定失敗的故事。在電話採訪中，普雷斯頓談到自己數十年來一直想要了解這種病毒。以下是訪談內容的摘錄。
Q. It has been more than two decades since you started writing about Ebola. How has your understanding of the virus evolved?
問：自從你開始寫埃博拉病毒以來，二十多年過去了，你對這種病毒的理解有了哪些變化？A. It's changed a great deal. We know a lot more about Ebola in the intervening 20 years. Initially, there were a lot of fears that Ebola could mutate to become the airborne Andromeda strain that would wipe us all out. With what we know now about the genetic code of the virus, Ebola does not travel through the air in airborne form and is very unlikely to mutate that way. Another thing that's been learned about Ebola is the mutation rate. The virus is continually mutating as it's moving through the human population. It's testing out its new environment. One of the biggest concerns is that all of our drugs and tests and vaccines for Ebola need to be adjusted. We can adjust the tests, but we need to watch how the virus is doing. We have a whole bunch of new tools that we never had in the 1990s. We now have the ability to use genetic sequencing machines to read the code of the virus again and again. This is like making a video of the virus moving in real time. We now have our eyes on the enemy.
答：變化挺大的。在過去的20年裏，我們對埃博拉的瞭解增加了不少。一開始的時候，很多人擔心埃博拉會出現變異，成爲經空氣傳播的“安德洛墨達菌株”，會把我們人類全給滅了。隨着對這種病毒的基因序列的瞭解，我們現在知道埃博拉不會通過空氣傳播，而且幾乎不可能出現這種變異。我們對埃博拉的另一個瞭解，就是它的突變率。這種病毒在人類的傳播過程中，不停地突變。這是在對新環境做調適。人們最大的一個擔憂是，我們針對埃博拉的所有藥、試劑和疫苗，都得做相應調整。調整試劑倒不難，但是我們需要知道病毒在做怎樣的變化。我們現在擁有的許多新工具，是上世紀九十年代完全沒有的。我們現在有能力使用基因測序儀來反覆讀取這種病毒的遺傳密碼。這就像是拿着攝像機對着正在運動的病毒，我們現在置敵人與眼皮之下。Q. Some of your descriptions of the virus and its symptoms in "The Hot Zone" have been called inaccurate and hyperbolic. Are you planning to release an updated version of "The Hot Zone" with information related to the current crisis?
問：《埃博拉浩劫》中對於這種病毒及症狀的描述，有人認爲是不準確的，有誇張在裏面。你有沒有計劃把與當下危機相關的信息加入進去，推出修訂版的《埃博拉浩劫》？A. Yes, I am dying to update the book. I want to make the clinical picture of the virus more clear and accurate. In the original "Hot Zone," I have a description of a nurse weeping tears of blood. That almost certainly didn't happen. When a person has Ebola, the eyes can turn brilliant red from blood vessels leaking and blood oozing out of the eyelid. That's horrifying, but it's not someone with tears of blood running down their face. I want to fix that. The other thing that's happening with Ebola today is there have been more outbreaks, and virologists are constructing a tree showing how they are related. The names of the viruses and the relationships have changed, and I want to get that into "The Hot Zone." Finally, I'm going to put in an introduction in which I place the story of "The Hot Zone" in today's context.
答：的確，我很想對這本書做修正。我想讓這種病毒的臨牀描繪更加的清晰、準確。在老版的《埃博拉浩劫》中，我寫道一個護士流血淚的情節。幾乎可以肯定，這是不會發生的事情。在感染了埃博拉病毒後，眼睛會因爲血管破裂而變得鮮紅，而且會有血從眼瞼滲出來。這非常可怕，但不會出現血淚在臉上滑落的情形。我想對這段進行修正。另外一個與埃博拉有關的、目前正在發生的事情是，出現了更多的爆發病例，病毒學家正在構築樹狀家譜圖，把它們之間的關聯呈現出來。許多病毒的名字以及之間的關係都發生了改變，我都想放進《埃博拉浩劫》。最後一點，我將把《埃博拉浩劫》的故事放在今天這個大背景下，寫一篇序言。Q. There are reports that "The Hot Zone" is being developed into a TV series for Fox. Will it be based on the book and the earlier outbreak you covered, or the current crisis?
問：有許多報道說，福克斯要把《埃博拉浩劫》改編成一部電視連續劇。它是以這本書以及你早些時候對該病毒爆發的報道爲基礎，還是當下的危機爲基礎？A. I feel pretty confident that they're going to want to move the story into the current situation. Fox bought the rights to the book way back when, and there was this attempt by Fox to make a movie out of "The Hot Zone," and it tended tragically in a Hollywood disaster involving Robert Redford and Jodie Foster and Ridley Scott. But the rights have been sitting at Fox ever since. The original screenwriter for the Fox movie and the producer Lynda Obst teamed up and have proposed a TV series to Fox.
答：我很肯定它們是想把這個故事放到當下的情境中。福克斯很早就買下了這本書的改編權，然後想把它拍成電影，最後卻不幸變成了一場好萊塢的災難，把羅伯特·雷德福(Robert Redford)、朱迪·福斯特(Jodie Foster)和雷德利·斯科特(Ridley Scott)都給牽扯進來。但改編權一直在福克斯的手上。那部電影原來的編劇和製片人琳達·奧布斯特(Lynda Obst)搭起班子，提出給福克斯拍一部連續劇。Q. Will the show be fictional or based on your reporting?
問：那這部劇集究竟是虛構的，還是以你的報道爲藍本？A. It's been the impulse in Hollywood to fictionalize it. I keep telling them: "Don't do that. Don't turn it into another predictable Hollywood drama."
答：好萊塢總有瞎編的衝動。我一直跟他們講，“不要這樣。不要把它變成又一部老套的好萊塢式的戲。”Q. You wrote about the threat of Ebola decades ago, and the fear sort of faded. Is it surreal to see it reappear so dramatically and so close to home?
問：二十年前，你就寫到了埃博拉的威脅，那種恐懼後來算是消退了。但現在看到它引人注目地重新爆發，而且距離我們如此之近，是不是有一種不真實的離奇感？A. It's wrenching. We're getting a feel for the magnitude of human suffering and fear, and it's awful. I was very surprised when this huge outbreak began and seemed to get bigger and bigger. I'd turned away from writing about Ebola and wrote about the world's largest living things, the Redwood trees, and most recently, I've been writing a fantasy novel for kids that I've been working on for years.
答：還蠻痛苦的。我們對人類的苦難和恐懼有了新的認識，真是駭人。這次大規模爆發，令我很驚訝，而且它的範圍似乎越來越大。我已經很長時間沒有寫過埃博拉病毒了，之前在寫世界上最大的活物——紅杉樹，最近的寫作情況是，我一直在寫一本兒童奇幻小說，寫了好幾年。Q. Besides its extreme fatality rate, what's so terrifying about Ebola?
問：除了極高的死亡率，還有什麼令埃博拉如此可怕？A. Here's what's terrifying about Ebola. Ebola is invisible. It's a monster without a face. With the science that we have now, we can perceive Ebola as being not one thing but as a swarm, and the swarm is moving through the human population and expanding its numbers. It has the qualities of a monster. It's the most important character in "The Hot Zone." It's the nonhuman other that all human beings are contending with in many different ways.
答：那我就來說說埃博拉病毒的可怕之處吧。這種病毒是肉眼看不見的。它是一個無臉怪獸。運用我們現有的科學技術，我們可以把埃博拉當成一串而非單一的病毒，它在人羣中移動，同時數量越變越多。它具有怪獸的特徵。在《埃博拉浩劫》裏最重要的角色就是它。它是全體人類通過各種方式與之搏鬥的非人生物。Q. Your brother is the techno thriller and horror novelist Douglas Preston. Do the two of you share writing tips and read drafts of each other's work?
問：科技驚悚和恐怖小說作家道格拉斯·普雷斯頓(Douglas Preston)是你的弟弟，你們倆會交流寫作經驗，閱讀彼此作品的草稿嗎？A. We often talk shop. Doug's books, quite a few of them have grisly aspects. People will ask us: "I've read your books and read your brother's books and they're so gruesome. Did you have a terrible childhood?" No, we had a happy childhood. It comes from storytelling around the dinner table. We all just got into the habit of telling weird and interesting stories.
答：我們經常有互動。道格拉斯的作品中，有相當多的書情節都挺嚇人的。大家愛問我們：“我讀了你的書，也讀了你哥哥（弟弟）的書，看得讓人毛骨悚然。你們的童年是不是很不幸？”不是這樣的，我倆的童年很幸福。我們愛在吃飯的時候坐在餐桌旁講故事。我們都有說各種離奇、有趣故事的習慣。
