The Magic Birthday Candles in Space
(An excerpt from a science fiction)
My birthday was going to be extra special for two reasons. For one thing, like Commander Park said, “Nobody’s ever turned nine in space before, David.” Mom, my sister Rebekah, and I were moving to Mars for a year. We’d spent almost two weeks in the spaceship so far.
I was trying to keep the other reason secret. But the day before my birthday, Rebekah caught me with my cheeks puffed (膨胀) way out. “What are you doing? Practicing to blow out all the candles this year?” She laughed. “This time I will,” I said. “Everybody on the ship will be watching, so...”
“Oh, David,” my sister interrupted.
“Your cake can’t have candles. Fire on a spaceship is too dangerous.”
When I turned away, she patted my shoulder. “At least you don’t have to worry about blowing them all out.”
Our mother has an important job, maintaining the ship’s electrical systems. Besides, I wanted to act mature about this. If I couldn’t blow out the candles like I wanted, at least I was old enough not to complain about it.
After dinner on my birthday, Mom floated into the cafeteria, carrying my birthday cake. I was amazed. “Candles!” I shouted, staring at the nine shining on top of the cake. “I thought fire wasn’t allowed on a spaceship.” “Look closer,” my mother said. The candles were really electrical lights, with tiny flame-shaped bulbs.
“Awesome,” I said. “But I wish I could blow them out.”
She laughed, then made a blow, and all nine went out. Another puff, and they lit up again.
“Everybody, sing!” ordered Commander Park. Once the passengers and crew were done, I took my deepest ever breath. I’m nine now. I can do this! I thought. Everyone watched the candles. Whoosh! I blew as hard as I could. All the ship’s lights went out! Everyone gasped (倒抽一口气).
“You didn’t have to blow that hard, David,” said Rebekah. I laughed, and so did Commander Park. Someone asked, “What’s wrong? When is the backup power coming on?”
“I’ll take a look. Does anyone have a flashlight on them?” said Mom.
No one would ever think of taking a flashlight to a birthday party.
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2 . Nostalgia (怀旧) has become increasingly common in the current accelerated, unexpected changes. More and more Americans are turning back with longing to what feels like simpler, sweeter times. They collect cassette tapes, manual typewriters, even decades-old video games.
Is it a mistake to miss the past? Some psychologists warn that too much devotion to the so-called good old days is an escape from reality; it suggests loneliness or that a person is having a difficult time coping in the present. Psychologist Stephanie Coontz argues that nostalgia distracts us from addressing the problems of modern life and contributes to anxiety, depression, sleeplessness, etc.
But new studies suggest that a modest amount of nostalgia is not only harmless, but actually beneficial. They suggest it helps strengthen our sense of identity and makes us feel more optimistic and inspired. It is also a tool for self-discovery and memories are a psychological response when you want to take a break from negativity. Recalling our childhood reminds us of “the times when we were accepted and loved unconditionally,” says Krystine Batcho, a psychologist. “That is such a powerful comfort, knowing that there was a time in life when we didn’t have to earn our love.” Nostalgia can turn even the most ordinary past into legends which warms the heart and the body. Let’s not forget that nostalgia has been a source of inspiration to countless American writers. Mark Twain recalled his boyhood, writing, “After all these years, I can picture that old time to myself now, just as it was then.”
So go ahead, daydream a little about your best childhood friend, a long-gone family pet, etc. As Dr. Sedikides says, “Nostalgia is absolutely central to human experience.” But at the same time, keep these words of wisdom from the great inventor Charles Kettering in mind as well: “You can’t have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time.”
1. How is nostalgia viewed by the psychologists in Paragraph 2?A.It might leave a person in low spirits. |
B.It suggests loneliness suffered in the past. |
C.It saves people from dull reality temporarily. |
D.It helps to solve the problems in modern life. |
A.Its reasons. | B.Its benefits. |
C.Its side effects. | D.Its working principles. |
A.He had a strong sense of identity. |
B.He took pictures of the good old days. |
C.He is an example of being obsessed with the past |
D.He drew inspiration from nostalgia for his works. |
A.Critical. | B.Doubtful. | C.Objective. | D.Indifferent, |
3 . It’s 2035. You have a job, a family and you’re about 40 years old! Welcome to your future life.
Getting ready for work, you pause in front of the mirror. “Turn red,” you say. Your shirt changes from sky blue to deep red. Tiny preprogrammed electronics (电子器件) are rearranged in your shirt to change its color. Looking into the mirror, you find it hard to believe you’re 40. You look much younger. With amazing advances in medicine, people in your generation may live to be 150 years old. You’re not even middleaged!
As you go into the kitchen and prepare to pour your breakfast cereal into a bowl, you hear, “To lose weight, you shouldn’t eat that,” from your shoes. They read the tiny electronic code (电子源码) on the cereal box to find out the nutrition details. You decide to listen to your shoes. “Kitchen, what can I have for breakfast?” A list of possible foods appears on the counter as the kitchen checks its food supplies.
“Ready for your trip to space?” you ask your son and daughter. In 2005 only specially trained astronauts went into space—and very few of them. Today anyone can go to space for day trips or longer vacations. Your best friend even works in space. Handing your children three strawberries each, you add, “The doctor said you need these for space travel.” Thanks to medical advances, vaccination shots (防疫针) are a thing of the past. Ordinary foods contain specific vaccines. With the berries in their mouths, the kids head for the front door.
It’s time for you to go to work. Your car checks your fingerprints and unlocks the doors. “My office. Autopilot,” you command. Your car drives itself down the road and moves smoothly into traffic on the highway. You sit back and unroll your enewspaper. The latest news downloads and fills the viewer. Looking through the pages, you watch the news as video film rather than read it.
1. What changes the color of your shirt?A.The mirror. | B.The shirt itself. |
C.The counter. | D.The medicine. |
A.By pouring the breakfast into a bowl. |
B.By listening to the doctor’s advice. |
C.By testing the food supplies in the kitchen. |
D.By checking the nutrition details of the food. |
A.breakfast | B.lunch |
C.vaccines | D.nutrition |
A.In order of time. | B.In order of frequency. |
C.In order of preference. | D.In order of importance. |
4 . There is a profound relationship between science fiction and science. It is often said that stories change the world, what is less often heard is that stories change science, and therefore the future.
The use of science fiction to explore our world is similar to scenario (剧情) planning in Futures Studies, which shapes our ideas about the future, and goes beyond predicting artifacts that once seemed impossible to us like Verne’s submarine or the satellites of 2001 Space Odyssey.
In the words of Dutch researcher Sofia Kaloterakis, “Science fiction narratives structure our imaginative models about technoscientific projects such as robotics or space exploration”. Have you ever wondered how science fiction novels have impacted the idea we have about Artificial Intelligence or how Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson’s novel, has impacted what we now call the Metaverse (元宇宙)?
Science fiction helps us define possible futures. It provides us with an understanding of the rules underlying fictional worlds. It also allows us to put technological prototypes (原型) in the context of their use by humans. But most importantly, it determines the way we structure scientific thought and intervene (干预) in the future.
Alex McDowell, Creator of the Minority Report worldbuilding in 2002, and Peter von Stackelberg explain what fictional narratives can bring to the table:
The richness of “storyworlds” — the “universes” within which stories take place — provides us with detailed rules of the context in which a larger reality unfolds that extends beyond a single story, and has the potential to provide us with deeper learning about the underlying systems that regulate those worlds.
Lastly, the relationship of futures narratives to theories such as Social Constructivism has been highlighted by several scholars. A central idea of this sociological theory is that whenever we use words or other symbols to refer to objects in our world we are constructing them. And, therefore, prediction is also a social construction. In narrating we intervene in the world. In narrating the world, we construct it. In writing science fiction we intervene in the science of the future.
1. What is the text mainly about?A.The storyworlds created by science fictions. |
B.Artifacts and technologies in science fictions. |
C.Science fiction narratives affecting future studies. |
D.The relation between science and science fictions. |
A.It provides us with technologies and tools. |
B.It allows us to establish reasonable future. |
C.It decides our thinking and affects the future. |
D.It helps us learn the rules of fictional world. |
A.There are general rules for a single story. |
B.They are the “universes” where stories happen. |
C.There are no regulations or guiding systems. |
D.They have a potential context within a story. |
A.Science fiction narratives can construct future worlds. |
B.The science of future intervenes in today’s science. |
C.Objects can’t be constructed by words or symbols. |
D.Scholars care little about narratives about future. |
5 . What will life in the future be like? Will it be much better than it is now? And what will we be able to do in 10, 20 or 30 years’ time?
Genetic engineering (基因工程) may help us make the perfect human. Babies may grow up to play basketball like Yao Ming or look like Cecilia Cheung. Also, we may be able to bring the dead back to life. Maybe people will be able to meet and talk with their dead family members.
Over the next 20 to 50 years, it will become harder to tell the difference between humans and machines. Perhaps we will be able to make copies of ourselves, so we will appear to be alive long after we are dead. People may be able to find ways of putting the life of a person into a new body.
Nanobots (纳米机器人) will be important. We will use them when we are sick. For example, when we have a stomachache, we will swallow (吞下) a nanobot and it will travel through our stomach, taking a video of what’s happening there. The video will help the doctor cure us.
In the future, computers may have their feelings. They may be able to think better than us. We may be more and more interested in computers and the internet, spending all our time in front of computers. Perhaps we will forget our real needs. Perhaps we will become super couch potatoes weighing 250 kg!
1. What is the main idea of the second paragraph?A.What genetic engineering is. | B.Why we use genetic engineering. |
C.How to bring the dead back to life. | D.How genetic engineering can help humans. |
A.a computer | B.a camera |
C.medicine | D.water |
A.talk like human beings | B.have feelings |
C.talk with dead people | D.cure sick people |
A.We will no longer be interested in our own lives in the future. |
B.Computers and robots will take the place of humans. |
C.Humans may get fatter in the future. |
D.We will no longer need doctors and teachers. |
6 . Given how valuable intelligence and automation are, we will continue to improve our technology if we are at all able to. At a certain point, we will build machines that are smarter than we are. Once we have machines that are smarter than we are, they will begin to improve themselves. The concern is really that we will build machines that are much more competent than we are. And the slightest divergence (分歧) between their goals and our own could destroy us.
Just think about how we relate to ants. We don’t hate them. We don’t go out of our way to harm them. In fact, sometimes we take pains not to harm them. We step over them on the sidewalk. But whenever their presence seriously conflicts with one of our goals, we will kill them without hesitation. The concern is that we will one day build machines that, whether they’re conscious or not, could treat us with similar disregard.
The bare fact is that we will continue to improve our intelligent machines. We have problems that we desperately need to solve. So we will do this, if we can. The train is already out of the station, and there’s no brake to pull. If we build machines that are more intelligent than we are, they will very likely develop in ways that we can’t imagine, and transcend us in ways that we can’t imagine.
So imagine we hit upon a design of super intelligent AI that has no safety concerns. This machine would be the perfect labor-saving device. It can design the machine that can build the machine which can do any physical work, powered by sunlight, more or less for the cost of raw materials. So we’re talking bout the end of human labour. We’re also talking about the end of most intellectual work. So what would apes like ourselves do in these circumstances?
But the moment we admit that information processing is the source of intelligence, we have to admit that we are in the process of building some sort of god. Now would be a good time to make sure it’s a god we can live with.
1. Why does the author mention ants in Paragraph 2?A.To compare intelligent machines to ants. |
B.To show improved machines will get away from us. |
C.To stress the presence of machines does conflict with our goals. |
D.To explain future intelligent machines could treat us without mercy |
A.Disable. | B.Inspire. | C.Disappoint. | D.Outpace. |
A.By making comparisons. |
B.By giving assumptions. |
C.By showing valid evidence. |
D.By analyzing statistics |
A.Human beings will no doubt be destroyed by AI in the future |
B.Super intelligent AI will put an end to human labour eventually. |
C.We should keep the development of AI within humans’ control. |
D.Human beings should stop the development of super intelligent AL. |
In the near future, we will be living in smart homes,
In the not too distant future, we will control just about everything
In the not-too-distant future, we
In a word, this smart technology is not a fantasy. Nevertheless, it will be some years
10 . Modern inventions have speeded up people’s lives amazingly. Motor cars
All these save time, but at a cost. When we lose or
However, how do we
There was a time when some people’s lives were devoted simply to the cultivation(耕作) of the
A.explore | B.get | C.cover | D.fly |
A.speed | B.time | C.product | D.distance |
A.wasting | B.losing | C.saving | D.spending |
A.earn | B.drop | C.miss | D.gain |
A.left | B.come | C.forgotten | D.felt |
A.ships | B.airplanes | C.computers | D.cars |
A.prevention | B.radiation | C.combination | D.damage |
A.control | B.handle | C.do | D.deal |
A.uncomfortable | B.easy | C.difficult | D.good |
A.second | B.day | C.year | D.time |
A.actively | B.quietly | C.quickly | D.curiously |
A.surface | B.water | C.land | D.island |
A.way | B.view | C.pathway | D.point |
A.expressed | B.charged | C.inspired | D.faced |
A.freed | B.remained | C.kept | D.cleared |