美国国家公共电台 NPR Lies Are Illegal In The 'Golden State' Of Ben Winters（在线收听）

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

Imagine a world where lying is against the law. That's the reality writer Ben Winters has created in his new novel "Golden State." It reads like a detective story, and it's set in the future. But, as NPR's Lynn Neary tells us, it was born straight out of the current political moment.

LYNN NEARY, BYLINE: Ben Winters knows exactly when he started writing "Golden State."

BEN WINTERS: The day after President Trump's inauguration. And you'll remember the infamous incident of the inauguration crowd size debate.

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SEAN SPICER: This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe.

NEARY: That definitive statement by then-Press Secretary Sean Spicer sparked this heated exchange between White House counselor Kellyanne Conway and NBC's Chuck Todd.

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KELLYANNE CONWAY: You're saying it's a falsehood. And they're giving - Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that. But the point remains that there's...

CHUCK TODD: Wait a minute. Alternative facts? Alternative facts? Four of the 5 facts he uttered...

CONWAY: Hey, Chuck, why - hey, Chuck...

TODD: The one thing he got right was Zeke Miller. Four of the 5 facts he uttered were just not true. Look. Alternative facts are not facts. They're falsehoods.

NEARY: All that talk about facts versus alternative facts, real news versus fake news got Winters thinking about what life might be like if facts were indisputable and there was no question about the truth.

WINTERS: For me, this book was about, OK, let's say we can solve this problem. Let's say there really is a way where we could build a world where everybody knows the truth. What are the problems with that? Where does that take us?

NEARY: Where it takes us in Winters' novel is a place called the Golden State, which bears a strong resemblance to California. The world as we know it has been destroyed. And though we never find out exactly how, it appears it had something to do with a pandemic of lies. In the Golden State, lies are against the law, and the main enforcers of the truth are known as Speculators.

WINTERS: In a world where it is against the law to lie, it is against the law, then, to hypothesize, to imagine versions of what might have happened. But when you are trying to solve, for example, a suspicious death, sometimes, it is necessary to hypothesize, so we can try to follow the leads and try to crack this case. So to do that, there are individuals within the Golden State, a special sort of law enforcement officer who has license to speculate.

NEARY: Some Speculators seem to have an almost mystical ability to detect untruth, but that does not preclude the need for good, old-fashioned, gumshoe detective work. And that requires a good, old-fashioned detective. Laszlo Ratesic fits the bill. He's a big guy with an unruly, red beard, a loner still mourning the end of his marriage. And he's always yearning for enough time to stop for a meal or a snack at his favorite haunts.

UNIDENTIFIED READER: (Reading) Somebody's telling lies in here, and it's making it hard to eat.

NEARY: Ratesic is a self-conscious man, embarrassed by his size and rumpled appearance and acutely aware of the effect his official status has on others.

UNIDENTIFIED READER: (Reading) People see us, people like Renner, I mean, and even people like Elena Tester, people who want to know better and get weird, wary. They talk slow or fast, fidget from side to side or stand statue-still, arms crossed, protecting the midsection as if from a blow, afraid of lying but also afraid of being thought to be lying, afraid of the rules we enforce and the punishments we are empowered to dole out.

NEARY: In the Golden State, people greet each other with indisputable facts, like 2 plus 2 is 4 or the Earth is in orbit around the sun. An elaborate system of tracking and archiving the minute details of everyone's lives has been set up. Laszlo Ratesic is dedicated to upholding this order. But when he starts working a possible murder case with a new, young partner, he uncovers some uncomfortable truths about the power structure that underpins his world.

WINTERS: There's a constant collective effort in the Golden State to reinforce the truth in small ways and large. It is a place that is not only dedicated to the preservation of reality. It is worshipful of the truth, which is why, when Laszlo starts to realize that there is, perhaps, something else going on underneath all of this - why it is such a dangerous thing for him to discover.

NEARY: With its classic detective figure and its futuristic world, "Golden State" is a cross between a mystery novel and dystopian fiction. But Ben Winters doesn't really care how you define it.

WINTERS: If you want to think about it as a mystery, awesome. Like, dig it. It's a cool mystery I hope twists and turns in a satisfying solution. If you want to think about it as dystopian, and it's about the sort of world that I built and the ways that world is a kind of funhouse version of our world, fantastic. I love that, too. And I'm very proud of the world-building in the book. But at the end of the day, I just hope it's good.

NEARY: In creating the Golden State, Winters says he wanted to build a world just different enough that readers would have to look at our own reality in a new way. Lynn Neary, NPR News. Washington.

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