Modern inventions have speeded up people's lives amazingly. Motor cars1 a hundred miles in more than an hour, aircraft cross the world within a day, 2 computers operate at lightning speed. Indeed, this love of 3 seems never-ending. Every year motor cars are produced which go even faster and each new computer boasts (吹嘘) of 4 precious seconds in handling tasks.
All this saves time, but5 a cost. When we lose or gain half a day in speeding across the world in an airplane, our bodies tell us so. We get the uncomfortable feeling known as jet-lag ( 时差). Our bodies feel that they have been 6 behind in another time zone. Again, spending too long at 7 results in painful wrists and fingers. Mobile phones also have their dangers, according to some scientists; too much use may transmit (传播) harmful 8 into our brains, a consequence we do not like to 9 about.
However, how do we handle the time we have saved? Certainly not relax, or so it seems. We are so used to constant activity that we find it 10 to sit down and do nothing or even just one thing at a time. Perhaps the days are long gone when we might listen 11 to a story on the radio, letting imagination take us into another world.
There was a time 12 some people's lives were devoted simply to the cultivation (耕作) of the 13 or the care of cattle. No multi-tasking (多重任务) there; their lives went on at a much gentler pace, and in a familiar pattern. There is much that we might envy about a way of life like this. Yet before we do so, we must think of the hard tasks our ancestors 14. Modern machines have 15 people from that primitive existence.
Perhaps no one knows the power of imagination better than Chinese writer Liu Cixin. Until four years ago, Liu worked full-time as a computer engineer at a power plant in Shanxi province. He only wrote science fiction in his spare time. But it was during this time that Liu's imagination took flight. He did what he might never have the chance to do in real life—wander in space, fight with aliens, and visit planets light-years away.
But even with such a powerful imagination, Liu, 55, probably hadn't expected that he would become the first Asian to win the Hugo Award, science fiction's highest prize, in 2015. Perhaps neither did he think that former US president Barack Obama would read his novel The Three-Body Problem, nor that on Nov. 9 in Washington DC, he would win the 2018 Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society. It's the first time a Chinese writer has ever won the award.
In his acceptance speech, Liu said that he owed his imagination to Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008), a famous UK sci-fi author. He said that reading Clarke's 1968 classic novel 2001: A Space Odyssey in the early 1980s had a great effect on him.
“My mind opened up like never before. I felt like a narrow river finally seeing the sea, " Liu said. "That night, in my eyes, the starry sky was completely different from the past. For the first time in my life, I was awed (使……敬畏) by the mystery of the universe. ”
But no matter how far away Liu's imagination takes him, somehow his novels always stay rational.
In The Three-Body Problem, for example, Liu tells a tale of aliens invading Earth. But unlike other alien stories, Liu talks more about relationships between civilizations, rules of survival, and the meanings of life. And in The Wandering Earth, Liu looks ahead to the day when our solar system comes to an end and humans have to look for a new place to live. However, all his visions and solutions are based on "hard science". Liu's works aren't simply daydreams.
|
more than one come up with in order to attach…to... die from be amazed at draw a conclusion contribute to on top of pour out |
内容包括：
1）俱乐部情况(名称、组建时间、活动频率等)；
2）俱乐部带来的好处(交友、放松、积极面对人生等)。
注意：
1）词数80左右；
2）开头和结尾均已给出(不计入总词数)；
3）可以适当增加细节, 以使行文连贯。
Dear David,
I am pleased to share with you some information about my music club.
……
Looking forward to your reply.
Yours,
Li Hua
