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我完全没有印象自己是怎样获得雨果奖的。我没有听到约翰·克卢(John Clute)提到我故事的名字或者我自己的名字。当时我正坐在朋友中间，依稀记得他们的欢呼声包围了我。我几乎不记得怎么走上颁奖台，手里拿着雨果奖杯。但是我真的完全不记得自己是如何接过雨果奖杯和把它放在演讲台旁的桌子上了。

我站起来准备上台的时候，我并没有发觉我的获奖致辞从我的口袋里掉了出来。当我意识到我的获奖致辞演讲稿没在我的口袋里时，我只得开始即兴发挥。我在脑海里重新组织了一下语言，说出了第一句话，之后斯蒂芬妮（Steph）就跑上了颁奖台，把讲稿递给了我。（谢谢你，斯蒂芬妮，是你让我避免当一个大傻瓜。）之后我只记得的是，当我读完我的讲稿之后，我拿起奖杯走下了颁奖台。

其实我是看了现场重播才知道究竟发生了什么事。《卫报》关于雨果奖的文章说，我是“明显不知所措的朱。”

值得一提的是，《卫报》援引了一半我的演讲！安·莱基（Ann Leckie）的获奖是毋庸置疑的，卡梅伦·赫尔利（Kameron Hurley）也提出了两个极好的倡议，艾登·莫赫（Aidan Moher）将他的演讲稿写在了他的妻子的照片的背后，因为她不能出席颁奖典礼，那真是一篇动人的演讲。其实我没想到《卫报》除了刊登出我的名字外还会援引我的演讲，而且所有人对我的获奖感言的反应同样令我受宠若惊，这就跟我听到自己获得雨果奖时的感受一样。（事实上，瑞秋·斯沃斯基（Rachel Swirsky）、索非亚·萨玛特（Sofia Samatar），还有托马斯·奥尔德·赫维尔特（Thomas Olde Heuvelt）都写出了卓越的故事。他们中的任何一位都有可能获奖。）

我很高兴地发现我的即兴演讲词和我之前准备的演讲词有相似之处。之后，我花了很长的时间调整自己，这使得我错过了最佳中篇小说的颁奖仪式。当然我也很开心，至少我有机会在重播中看到玛丽·罗比内特·科瓦尔（Mary Robinette Kowal）的《火星上的女宇航员（The Lady Astronaut of Mars）》赢得雨果奖最佳中篇小说奖。

(花絮1：玛丽·罗比内特·科瓦尔（Mary Robinette Kowal）和伊丽莎白·贝尔（Elizabeth Bear）都曾鼓励我把《落在你身上的无名之水（The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere）》寄给Tor.com。如果不是她们的鼓励，我可能就放弃了，毕竟这个故事已经被拒绝了14次。这将是给新生作家的经验教训。

花絮2：本来我计划在颁奖台上感谢玛丽（Mary）和贝尔（Bear）。但在那个热血沸腾的时刻，我忘记了。哎呀，请原谅我吧。另一方面，我在WorldCon上一直在感谢别人，包括玛丽和贝尔，按照我之前的理论，我似乎不太可能有机会在颁奖台这样做。至少我在私下里还是感谢了她们。）

无论如何，以下是我在颁奖台上脱口而出的内容（为了更清晰，我做了简单修改，因为正如《卫报》编辑所说，我是“明显不知所措的朱”）：

我无法形容这个奖项对我来说意味着什么。当我开始写作的时候，很多人告诉我，大概意思都是“我不是种族主义者，但是……”或者“我不歧视同性恋，但是……”尽管他们都是很有礼貌地说这些话，却有太多的“但是”，甚至有些人会明确表示，没有人会对我写的东西感兴趣或出版我的作品。所以，我现在获得了雨果奖这件事，这对我十分重要，让我真的无法言表。

特别是因为有这么多的人——太多太多以至于我无法一一点出名字——这样地支持和鼓励我。谢谢那些曾经鼓励过的人。你们简直无法想象这对我有多重要。我特别要感谢特德·蒋，以及我在Clarion培训班（科幻写作培训班，详情：http://clarion.ucsd.edu/译者注）的导师之一奇普·德拉尼（Chip Delany）。没有他们的出色工作，我也许会相信那些所有的“但是”。

我要感谢尼克·马马塔斯（Nick Mamatas）对写作的远见和凯瑟琳·瓦伦特（Catherynne Valente）对这个故事的洞察力。尤其是安妮（Ann）和杰夫·范德梅尔（Jeff VanderMeer），他们从来没有放弃过我。他们坚持认为我的作品能够发表。特别是安妮（Ann），当我写出这个令她无可挑剔的故事后，她将它润色得更好，然后发表在tor.com上。

我一直认为《落在你身上的无名之水（The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere）》是“有希望的小故事”。谢谢你们让它变得比我想象得更好。

谢谢！

顺便说一句，我必须指出，我走下颁奖台遇到的第一件事是被误认为是特德·蒋（Ted Chiang）。（注意：不是LonCon 3、雨果奖或者雨果颁奖典礼的组织者）我能获得雨果奖，但最终看来，一切都没有改变。我还要继续努力，而且要做得更好。我要写最好的、最吸引人的、最棒的故事。我需要在我的工具箱里不断加入新的工具，让我能达到想要的效果。对我来说，作品是最重要的。

原文：

So I won a Hugo

I have no memory of winning the Hugo. I never heard John Clute say the name of my story or my name. I was sitting among friends so I have this vague memory of people screaming around me. I barely remember walking on stage and hitting my mark with the Hugo in hand. However, I don’t remember actually receiving the Hugo or setting it on the table near the podium.

When I realized that my acceptance speech was not in my pocket, my improv training kicked in. I remember recreating the speech in my head, saying the first sentence, and Steph running to the stage to give me the speech that fell out of my pocket when I stood to go to the stage. (Thank you, Steph, for preventing me from making a major fool of myself.) Once I started reading the prepared speech, though, my next clear memory is walking behind the stage with the Hugo. At some point, I must have delivered my prepared speech then picked up the Hugo from the table.

I had to watch a replay of the live stream to see what actually happened. Asthe Guardian article about the Hugo Awards said, I was “a visibly overwhelmed Chu.”

Oh, yes, the Guardian quoted half my speech! Ann Leckie’s win was absolutely the story of the awards, Kameron Hurley sent two superb calls to action, and Aidan Moher gave a touching speech written on the back of a photograph of his wife, who couldn’t be there. However, I wasn’t expecting anything more than to be mentioned in the list of winners. I am flabbergasted by the response to my acceptance speech. That caught me off-guard as much as winning the Hugo in the first place. (Let’s face it. Rachel Swirsky, Sofia Samatar, and Thomas Olde Heuvelt all wrote brilliant stories. Any one of them could have won.)

I’m happy to find that the speech I gave bears some structural resemblance to the speech I wrote. It took me so long to gather myself afterward that I missed the Best Novelette category. So I’m also happy for the chance to see, in replay at least, Mary Robinette Kowal win a Hugo for “The Lady Astronaut of Mars.”

(Fun fact 1: Mary Robinette Kowal and Elizabeth Bear both encouraged me to send “The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere” to Tor.com. Were it not for that encouragement, given the story had already been rejected 14 times, I might have trunked it. There may be a Newbie Author Lesson in there somewhere.

Fun fact 2: Thanking Mary and Bear on stage may have been part of my plan. However, in the heat of the moment, that never happened. Oops. Please forgive me. On the plus side, I’d been spending WorldCon thanking people, including Mary and Bear, beforehand on the theory that it seemed unlikely I’d have the chance to do so from the stage. At least I’d managed to thank both of them in private.)

Anyway, for the record, this is what fell out of my mouth on stage (edited for clarity since, as the Guardian said, I was “a visibly overwhelmed Chu”):

I can’t begin to describe how much this award means to me. When I started writing, so many people told me, the words were literally “I’m not racist but…” or “I’m not homophobic but…” There were so many “buts” and they all told me in polite, civil, and sometimes these exact words that no one was interested in or would ever publish anything that I would ever write. So, to win a Hugo, and for this story, I literally cannot put into words how much that means to me.

Especially since there are so many people, too many to name, that have supported and encouraged me. Thank you to anyone who has ever said a kind word to me. You have no idea how much that means to me. In particular, I’d like to thank Ted Chiang and, one of my Clarion instructors, Chip Delany. Without their brilliant work, I might have believed all of the “buts.”

I would like to thank Nick Mamatas for his insight on writing and Catherynne Valente for her insight on this story. Especially Ann and Jeff VanderMeer who, among other things, never gave up on me. They kept insisting that my work was publishable. And especially Ann. When I wrote something that met her impeccably high standards, she took it and made it even better and published it at Tor.com.

I’ve always thought of “The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere” as sort of “the little story that could.” Thank you so much for making it so much more than I could have ever imagined.

Thank you.

BTW, I should point out that the first thing that happened to me after I stepped off stage was that I was mistaken for Ted Chiang. (Note: Not by anyone running LonCon 3, the Hugo Awards, or the Hugo Ceremony.) I can win a Hugo but, ultimately, nothing has changed. I need to keep doing what I do but better. I need to write the best, most mind-blowingly awesome stories I can. I need to keep adding tools to my toolbox so that there’s never any questions of whether I can achieve the effects that I want. The work is what is the most important.

科幻星云网翻译出品，转载请注明出处，原文链接：  http://blog.johnchu.net/so-i-won-a-hugo

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