Journal of Digital Humanities and Science Fiction Studies
DHSFS, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2026, pp. 22-35.
Print ISSN: 3105-1278; Online ISSN: 3105-1286
Journal homepage: https://www.dhsfs.com
DOI: Https://doi.org/10.64058/DHSFS.26.1.02
渐变与坍缩：从拉巴图特到AI写作的叙事认识论转变
陈楸帆（Chen Qiufan）
摘要：智利作家拉巴图特在《当我们不再理解世界》致谢中声明全书虚构比例递增，这一自述揭示了一种可称为“渐进虚构化”的写作方法。本文首先在卡波特式“混合”、塞巴尔德式“模拟”的参照系中定位拉巴图特的“渐变”策略，继而通过对《当我们不再理解世界》和《理性的疯狂梦》的细读，识别出一种特殊的阅读动力学：读者在虚构模态与非虚构模态之间的非自愿位移。本文借助玻尔互补性原理的认识论结构来描述这一现象——两种阅读模态（各自在认知-规约层面完备的读者与文本关系）互相排斥，其间的位移一旦发生便不可逆，构成意义生产的场所——并论证该框架在描述模态完备性、激活互斥性与位移不可逆性三个维度上超越了接受美学对这类意义经验的解释力。随后，论文转向笔者创作的科幻小说《神笔，或一段虚构的控制论史》，论证当AI写作进入这一等式时，虚构与非虚构之间的关系在叙事层面从认识论模糊推向了本体论翻转与参照系坍缩：AI同时充当创作工具和叙事主题，叙事主权从单一主体转向分布式的人机系统，其归属变得真正不确定，而这一叙事设计在结构上映射了当代AI写作实践的元认识论处境。最后，在中国科幻或然历史传统的脉络中，本文厘清《神笔》与古典章回体元叙事传统的根本差异，指出“虚实相生”这一中国美学概念不只是命名此种不可裁决性，更提供了一个积极的分析姿态：虚与实之间的生产性张力本身是意义生成的方式，批评的任务不是还原边界，而是描述张力如何运作。
关键词：拉巴图特；渐进虚构化；虚构/非虚构边界；互补性；叙事主权；AI写作；或然历史；虚实相生
作者简介：陈楸帆，香港都会大学人文社会科学院助理教授，研究方向：科幻文学、AI写作与叙事理论。电邮：qfchen@hkmu.edu.hk。
Title: Gradient and Collapse: Narrative Epistemology Shift from Labatut to AI Writing
Abstract: In the acknowledgments of When We Cease to Understand the World, Chilean writer Benjamín Labatut declares that the proportion of fiction increases progressively—a statement revealing what this paper terms graduated fictionalization. Positioning Labatut’s gradient strategy against the reference frames of Capote’s hybridization and Sebald’s simulation, the paper identifies a distinctive reading dynamic: the reader’s involuntary displacement between fictional and nonfictional cognitive modes. Drawing on the epistemological structure of Bohr’s complementarity principle, the paper argues that this framework surpasses existing reception-aesthetics accounts (Iser’s gap-filling, Jauss’s horizon of expectation) by precisely capturing three features absent from those models: modal completeness, activation exclusivity, and the irreversibility of modal displacement. The paper then turns to the author’s own science fiction novel Divine Pen, or An Imaginary History of Cybernetics, arguing that when AI writing enters the equation, the fiction/nonfiction relationship shifts at the narrative level from epistemological blurring through ontological inversion to referential collapse: AI simultaneously serves as creative tool and narrative subject, shifting narrative sovereignty—a working concept proposed here to designate the control of fiction/nonfiction ratio in actual textual production—from a single author to a distributed human-machine system. This narrative design structurally maps onto the meta-epistemic predicament of contemporary AI writing practice. Situating the discussion within the tradition of Chinese science fiction’s alternate history imagination, the paper establishes that “Divine Pen” opens a new path distinguished from classical Chinese vernacular fiction’s meta-narrative tradition by the opacity of technological intervention. The Chinese aesthetic concept of xushi xiangsheng (the mutual generation of void and substance) functions not merely as a label for this undecidability but as an analytical tool: the productive tension between void and substance is itself a mode of meaning-making, and the task of criticism is to describe how this tension operates rather than to restore a boundary that has become structurally unstable.
Keywords: Labatut; graduated fictionalization; fiction/nonfiction boundary; complementarity; narrative sovereignty; AI writing; alternate history; xushi xiangsheng
Author Biography: Chen Qiufan, Assistant Professor at the School of Arts and Social Sciences, Hong Kong Metropolitan University. Research Areas: Science Fiction Literature, AI Writing, and Narrative Theory. E-mail: qfchen@hkmu.edu.hk.
Received: 16 Mar 2026 / Revised: 20 Mar 2026 / Accepted: 09 Apr 2026 / Published online: 30 Apr 2026 / Print published: 30 May 2026.
