Queen of Angels is a major novel by Greg Bear, first published in 1990; the Chinese edition, translated by Liu Yutao, was included in the "World Science Fiction Masters Series" in 2015. The story is set in 2047, on the eve of the so-called "Binary Millennium" of 2048: nanotechnology has permeated every corner of American society, and advances in brain science and neural nanomedicine have made "personality therapy" the norm—those who undergo it possess a certified, acceptable personality, are regarded as beneficial to social stability, and can obtain the best jobs; a small number of "high naturals" born with sound psychological structures and in need of no therapy form a class of their own; while the "untherapied," who refuse or cannot receive therapy, are pushed step by step to the margins. The novel's central event is a horrifying series of mass murders in the wealthy "Nest" district, where all the victims are celebrities and the killer is none other than the celebrated untherapied poet Emmanuel Goldsmith—in an era when violent crime has been almost eliminated, the case itself becomes an inexplicable mystery. Three narrative threads unfold from this: Mary Choy, a high-natural police officer who is herself a "shifter" who voluntarily had her body modified with nanotechnology, accepts the task of hunting him down; the poet's closest old friend Richard Fettle seeks out another side of his friend in the bohemian shadows of the city; and the disgraced pioneer of psychotherapy Martin Burke is permitted to use technology that directly enters the "country of the mind" to infiltrate the killer's consciousness. A fourth thread takes place in Centaurus: an autonomous artificial-intelligence probe discovers life there and truly "wakes" for the first time. Bear stitches criminal investigation and the philosophy of consciousness together with hard-SF worldbuilding, asking where the boundaries lie between technology, identity, justice, and the soul. The novel was nominated for the Hugo Award, the Locus Award, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and was followed by a sequel, Slant.
在硬科幻谱系里，格雷格·贝尔是把“想法”写到极致的作家之一，而《天使女王》是他结构野心最大的一部：它同时是一部未来都市犯罪小说、一部心理学思辨录、一部人工智能觉醒记，也是一部关于社会分层的寓言。 贝尔的厉害之处在于，他并不把纳米人格治疗写成简单的反乌托邦道具，而是让它变成一整套社会秩序：谁被治疗、谁不需要治疗、谁被排斥在外，直接决定了职业、居所与话语权。谋杀案因此不只是谜题，而是一道裂口，让人看见“正常”本身的暴力。三条地面线索与一条半人马座线索交错推进，读来既像侦探小说，又像一场对意识的漫长叩问。 必须提醒的是，这不是一本轻快的书。贝尔信息密度高，术语与设定密集，叙事节奏偏缓，中文版厚达五百余页，需要读者有一定耐心。但撑过前段设定铺垫之后，那种“未来已经到来、只是分布不均”的凉意会久久不散。《芝加哥太阳报》称它“构造了一个鲜活的未来世界”，《图书馆杂志》则强调贝尔把高科技与对人性的犀利洞察融在一起——这两句话，恰好说中了它的两面。
Sichuan Science and Technology Press features science and technology, popular science, and science fiction publishing, while also covering agricultural technology and medical and health books. In science fiction, the press has continued to release works by Liu Cixin, including The Wandering Earth: Selected Short Stories of Liu Cixin, boxed sets of Arthur C. Clarke's science fiction classics, and masterworks such as Ringworld, Snow Crash, and Minus Zero, organized into series including the Chinese Science Fiction Cornerstone Series and the World Science Fiction Masters Series. In popular science, classics such as George Gamow's One Two Three... Infinity reflect its orientation toward public science communication. Its author resources in the library include Liu Cixin, Yao Haijun, and Cheng Xi, among other science fiction and popular science editors and translators; the library contains 190 titles, classified mainly as popular science, science fiction, quality fiction, and foreign literature. Public information is limited, and the above is summarized only from the library's titles and existing profile.
