No matter whether you are writing science fiction or popular science, or even in your daily life, the only standard for measuring everything in the galaxy is time and love.
"Time is enough for you to love." This is the name of a science fiction novel by American science fiction writer Robert Heinlein, and it is also the motto of the writer Galaxy. Whether it is writing science fiction or popular science, or even in his daily repeated life, his standard for measuring everything is only time and love.
"Galaxy" is his pen name. It has nothing to do with "Galaxy Squad", and he doesn’t remember what it has to do with.
"I just started writing something casually. Since I’m writing science fiction, ‘Galaxy’ has a kind of cosmic poetry. Later, I used this in registrations everywhere, and I’ve been using it ever since. It turned out that only my parents still called me by my real name. Later, due to the strong influence of the outside world, they also called me Galaxy."
Born and raised in Beijing, Galaxy always speaks with a nice "son" voice.
Today’s Galaxy can be regarded as a writer, but he still doesn’t know his monthly income, let alone how many job offers he has missed in the mailbox – he just writes and lives with great energy as always, and strives to fill every gap of time with love.
Adolescent psychological science fiction
Galaxy’s parents are both teachers at Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He has lived in Beihang’s family home since childhood. Although he was very naughty when he was a child, he was also active and quiet, and especially loved reading.
Galaxy was born in science and engineering, and the reason why he embarked on the path of professional writing was just because he liked writing more. In 1991, Galaxy accidentally entered the class of the science fiction literature elective course offered by Wu Yan, a teacher at Beijing Normal University. Since then, he has officially become attached to writing, and quickly became one of the main forces of Chinese science fiction writing.
Everything was difficult at the beginning. Looking back now, everything seemed to be going well again. But in fact, Galaxy in the initial stage did a lot of different jobs to support himself. He left home very early to live independently, and in the most difficult time, he didn’t even know where the money for tomorrow’s meal was. But despite this, he still put all the money he earned in the bank in the early years.
"Just treat it as confiscated and earn it again tomorrow."
He was often asked if his background in science and engineering, and later his career in science writing, was of great help. Galaxy’s affirmative answer was not surprising, but what was more refreshing was the analogy he used when answering this question: "Writing science fiction, you don’t know science, just like writing poetry, you don’t know rhyme – you can definitely write it, but I’m afraid it’s hard to write it well."
Wu Yan called Galaxy’s work "psychological science fiction of adolescence" because Galaxy insisted on embodying the artistic essence of science fiction when creating, and the language characteristics were distinct. Although it was no longer young, Galaxy’s psychological state was indeed a first-class young man.
Speaking of this, it is impossible to fail to mention Galaxy’s representative work "Duel on the Internet" created at the end of the last century. With this work, Galaxy won the "Science Fiction World" Galaxy Award in one fell swoop and began to attract the attention of the science fiction community. As Galaxy’s own online science fiction "electric shock" work, it not only influenced the first batch of Chinese netizens, but even today, there are still people who continue to discuss this novel. Chen Liufan, a young science fiction writer, said that he liked it very much after reading "Duel on the Internet" in middle school, and later embarked on the road of science fiction creation, which was also influenced by this article to a certain extent.
While some people consider "Duel Online" to be China’s first "digital punk" work, Galaxy insists that the honor of China’s "earliest and best digital punk writer" should belong to Yang Ping. All he has done is expand the campus space to the Internet.
sculptural writing
Galaxy told the reporter that when he was a child, he often read that great writers would revise their manuscripts over and over again, so now he has developed a similar "bad" habit.
When Galaxy introduced his experience of revising the manuscript, he could not help but sigh, "So I don’t like editors to change their own sentences. However, excellent text editors nowadays will not touch your manuscript under normal circumstances."
Such an author who "always has to do everything" can be said to be very worry-free for editors, but one of the things that makes Galaxy a headache for his editors is that he can never tell his writing progress. It’s not because of being lazy or losing manuscripts, etc., mainly because his writing order is not from A to Z, many times E, G, and L are bouncing around.
"The editor asked me what the progress was. I couldn’t tell." He gave his original way of writing a name, "sculptural writing."
"A piece of raw material is placed there, first a rough outline is formed, then it is processed in depth little by little, then it is depicted in detail, and finally it is completed as a whole. So you asked me what the progress is, I really don’t know."
So before there were computers, the draft of Galaxy was often countless pieces of paper.
"It’s much better now that I have a computer. Before the computer, when I finally finished the draft, I had to cover the bed with small pieces of paper, and all kinds of different sentences and paragraphs were put together little by little."
And that kind of writing from beginning to end was named by Galaxy as "weaving writing" – weaving three meters today, five meters tomorrow, and the progress is very clear.
One of the great advantages of the "sculptural writing" method is that it can maximize the use of his fragmented time. After all, he started his professional writing path with the idea of "no need to deal with people, independent creation, no need to work", and slowly found that writers also need to interact with people and travel everywhere. After determining the "bones" of the article, Galaxy will become a "sculptor", chiseling and carving here and there. This way of writing has proved to be very efficient and very suitable for him. In the past year, although he has devoted most of his energy to his life, he has still completed a lot of work.
"Sculptor" Galaxy has published millions of words of works so far, including more than 10 science fiction novels such as "Online Game Allied Forces" and "Incomplete Magnetic Marks", medium and short science fiction novels such as "Time and Space Death", "Pilgrimage", "Duel on the Internet", "Take the Mind to Date", and more than 10 science fiction collections such as "Grasp the Left Fist Before Restoration", and editor-in-chief "Chinese Science Fiction New Generation Boutique Collection" and other collections. He has won the "Five One Project" Award, Soong Qingling Award, Bingxin Award and other awards. For Galaxy itself, there may be several awards that are particularly worth mentioning: in 1997, he was awarded the Galaxy Award of the Beijing International Science Fiction Conference; in 2007, he was awarded the "Popular Science Writer with Outstanding Contributions to Popular Science Editing and Creation"; in 2010, he was awarded the 5th Beijing Young and Middle-aged Artists’ De and Yi Shuangxin Award; in 2012, he was named the 5th National Outstanding Science and Technology Worker.
Write a song "The Wheat Wave is Like a Song"
The first time he saw Galaxy was at a gathering of the Old Popular Science Writers Association, and Galaxy was invited to participate as a young popular science writer. As he talked with the older generation of Chinese popular science writers, he was completely free from the troubles of age or era differences.
In addition to science fiction creation, Galaxy also created many popular science works. But in terms of writing the reportage of scientists, "Wheat Waves Like a Song" was an important turning point in Galaxy.
Galaxy did not hesitate to receive the invitation to write a report for Academician Li Zhensheng. Although he had never written similar works before, he knew that he needed the opportunity to deal directly with scientists like this.
The whole process of collecting and writing lasted for a long time. Academician Li Zhensheng himself, who was originally cautious about this, was very satisfied after reading the first draft. After reading this article, Wu Yan gave a very high evaluation: "I think that’Mai Lang Ruge Song ‘has achieved a breakthrough in language in Galaxy’s works. He already has the ability to accurately grasp the simplicity of language and operate different narrative speeds with this concise language."
In the reportage "Wheat Waves Are Like Songs", Galaxy made full use of a large number of literary techniques such as crossover, insertion, fragment cutting and even space-time inversion. Wu Yan commented: "All these techniques make the work tactfully ups and downs, constantly ups and downs."
"Literary" is a word he often mentions in his conversations with Galaxy. Whether it is science fiction or popular science, he has always insisted on this, specifically – "The beginning and end of popular science articles are very important, and there must be literary."
Galaxy’s text is short and romantic, and it has extended the skills of science fiction writing to different types of literature. Galaxy admits that it has had various anxieties in the past, but now it has completely forgotten the reason. Today’s Galaxy is more and more calm, perhaps as Robert Heinlein said – "There is enough time for you to love". (authorized reprint)
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