There is no question that science-fiction writers have become more ambitious, stylistically and thematically, in recent years. (1) (But this may have less to do with the luring call of academic surroundings than with changing market conditions—a factor that academic critics rarely take into account.) Robert Silverberg, a former president of The Science Fiction Writers of America, is one of the most prolific professionals in a field dominated by people who actually write for a living. (Unlike mystery or Western writers, most science-fiction writers cannot expect to cash in on fat movie sales or TV tie-ins.) (2) (Still in his late thirties, Silverberg has published more than a hundred books, and he is disarmingly frank about the relationship between the quality of genuine prose and the quality of available outlet. )By his own account, he was “an annoyingly verbal young man” from Brooklyn who picked up his first science-fiction book at the age of ten, started writing seriously at the age of thirteen, and at seventeen nearly gave up in despair over his inability to break into the pulp magazines. (3)( At his parents’ urging, he enrolled in Columbia University, so that, if worst came to worst, he could always go to the School of Journalism and “get a nice steady job somewhere”.) During his sophomore year, he sold his first science-fiction story to a Scottish magazine named Nebula. By the end of his junior year, he had sold a novel and twenty more stories. (4) (By the end of his senior year, he was earning two hundred dollars a week writing science fiction, and his parents were reconciled to his pursuit of the literary life. )“I became very cynical very quickly,” he says. First I couldn’t sell anything, then I could sell everything. The market played to my worst characteristics. An editor of a schlock magazine would call up to tell me he had a ten-thousand-word hole to fill in his next issue. I’d fill it overnight for a hundred and fifty dollars. I found that rewriting made no difference. (5)( I knew I could not possibly write the kinds of things I admired as a reader—Joyce, Kafka, Mann—so I detached myself from my work.) I was a phenomenon among my friends in college, a published, selling author. But they always asked, “When are you going to do something serious?” —meaning something that wasn’t science fiction—and I kept telling them, “ When I’m financially secure.” QWQ!Ak
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参考答案 v/ eB
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1.但是这一点与其说是与学术环境具有诱惑力的召唤有关，还不如说是与变化的市场状况有关——一这是一个学术评论家很少考虑的因素。 vD_u[j]
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2.还不到四十岁，西尔弗伯格就已出版了一百多本书籍，而他对真正散文的质量与应时之作的质量之间的关系十分坦诚，毫无掩饰。 . byc;9M%
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3.在他双亲的敦促下，他报考了哥伦比亚大学，所以即便最糟他也能进入新闻学校，“将来总可以有一份稳定的好工作。” 4YBf ~Pp
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4.到大四结束的时候，他每星期写科幻小说已经可以赚两百美元了，而他的双亲也接受了他对于文学生涯的追求。 B U'Ki \
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5.我知道我写不出作为读者的我所喜欢的东西，就像乔伊斯、卡夫卡、曼恩的作品，所以我不再那么关注我所写的东西。 nhp)yW
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总体分析 9x4wk*z
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本文介绍了科幻小说家罗伯特·西尔弗伯格。文章先指出科幻小说的繁荣与市场需求关系紧密，接着通过介绍多产的科幻小说家西尔弗伯格的创作经历予以说明。 i_|h{JK)
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本文考查的知识点：后置定语、插入语、比较结构、同位语、上下文中词义的选择，等。 ;g&7*1E
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Economics, as we know it, is the social science concerned with the production, distribution, exchange, and consumption of goods and services. Economists focus on the way in which individuals, groups, business enterprises, and governments seek to achieve efficiently any economic objective they select. (1) Other fields of study also contribute to this knowledge: Psychology and ethics try to explain how objectives are formed, history records changes in human objectives, and sociology interprets human behavior in social contexts. ]aREQ?ma&z
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Standard economics can be divided into two major fields. (2) The first, price theory or microeconomics, explains how the interplay of supply and demand in competitive markets creates a multitude of individual prices, wage rates, profit margins, and rental changes. Microeconomics assumes that people behave rationally. Consumers try to spend their income in ways that give them as much pleasure as possible. As economists say, they maximize utility. For their part, entrepreneurs seek as much profit as they can extract from their operations. Y"r
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The second field, macroeconomics, deals with modern explanations of national income and employment. Macroeconomics dates from the book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1935), by the British economist John Maynard Keynes. His explanation of prosperity and depression centers on the total or aggregate demand for goods and services by consumers, business investors, and governments, (3) Because, according to Keynes, inadequate total demand increases unemployment, the indicated cure is either more investment by businesses or more spending and consequently larger budget deficits by government. 2Y9y5[K,F)
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Economic issues have occupied people’s minds throughout the ages. (4) Aristotle and Plato in ancient Greece wrote about problems of wealth, property, and trade, both of whom were prejudiced against commerce, feeling that to live by trade was undesirable. The Romans borrowed their economic ideas from the Greeks and showed the same contempt for trade. (5) During the Middle Ages the economic ideas of the Roman Catholic church were expressed in the law of the church, which condemned the taking of interest for money loaned and regarded commerce as inferior to agriculture. >+zAWK9
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Economics as a subject of modern study, distinguishable from moral philosophy and politics, dates from the work, Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), by the Scottish philosopher and economist Adam Smith. Mercantilism and physiocracy were precursors of the classical economics of Smith and his 19th-century successors. s4^[3|Zrr0
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答案解析 ~v O'p
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1.其他领域的研究也有助于对此的理解：心理学和伦理学试图解释目标是如何形成的，历史记录着人们所追求的目标的变化，社会学则从社会环境的角度来解释人们的行为。 a.5zdoH_
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2.第一个领域，价格理论或微观经济学，解释在竞争的市场中供需间的相互作用是怎样导致了大量的个别价格、工资率、利润空间和租金的变化。 qp luk!
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3.因为，按照凯恩斯的理论，不充分的总体需求会增加失业，建议的解决方式是企业扩大投资或政府增加开支，继而增加预算赤字。 ]9bh+
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4.古希腊的亚里士多德和柏图都在著作中谈到财富、财产和贸易问题，两人都对商业持有偏见，认为靠生意来谋生是不足取的。 i KP\/LR<n
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5.在中世纪，罗马天主教会的经济学思想表达在其教法中，教法谴责从借贷中获利的行为，并认为商业地位劣于农业。 )Mm;9UA
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总体分析 Om &{4a\
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本文主要介绍了经济学的研究发展历史。
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第一段：经济学的定义及研究对象。 ')Dp%"\?
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第二、三段：经济学的两大领域：微观经济学和宏观经济学。 N|j;=y!
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第四、五段：经济学研究的古代和现代理论。 a:(: :m
