银河系漫游指南国语 经典科幻文学:《银河系漫游指南》第15章

经典科幻文学:《银河系漫游指南》第15章  

Far back in the mists of ancient time
in the great and glorious days of the former Galactic Empire
life was wild
rich and largely tax free. Mighty starships plied their way beeen exotic suns
seeking adventure and reward amongst the furthest reaches of Galactic space. In those days spirits were brave
the stakes were high
men were real men
women were real women
and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. And all dared to brave unknown terrors
to do mighty deeds
to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before — and thus was the Empire fed.
Many men of course became extremely rich
but this was perfectly natural and nothing to be ashamed of because no one was really poor — at least no one worth speaking of. And for all the richest and most successful merchants life inevitably became rather dull and niggly
and they began to imagine that this was therefore the fault of the worlds they'd settled on — none of them was entirely satisfactory: either the climate wasn't quite right in the later part of the afternoon
or the day was half an hour too long
or the sea was exactly the wrong shade of pink.
And thus were created the conditions for a staggering new form of specialist industry: custom-made luxury pla building. The home of this industry was the pla Magrathea
where hyperspatial engineers sucked matter through white holes in space to form it into dream plas — gold plas
platinum plas
soft rubber plas with lots of earthquakes — all lovingly made to meet the exacting standards that the Galaxy's richest men naturally came to expect.
But so successful was this venture that Magrathea itself soon became the richest pla of all time and the rest of the Galaxy was reduced to abject poverty. And so the system broke down
the Empire collapsed
and a long sullen silence settled over a billion worlds
disturbed only by the pen scratchings of scholars as they laboured into the night over smug little treaties on the value of a planned political economy.
Magrathea itself disappeared and its memory soon passed into the obscurity of legend.
In these enlightened days of course
no one believes a word of it.