爱因斯坦的梦 (1993)

《爱因斯坦的梦》（英语：Einstein's Dreams）是由物理学家及作家艾伦‧莱特曼于1992年发表的历史小说，为国际知名畅销书籍，并有三十种语言翻译本；台湾发行之中文本由童元方翻译。本书获得1994年L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award奖项第二名。

《爱因斯坦的梦》首先由David Gardiner与Ralf Remshardt改编为舞台剧，并在1996年于佛罗里达大学演出。2009年另有舞台剧于中国北京演出。

情节概述

本书背景为1905年4月中至6月底，主人翁为年轻科学家阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦，在建构狭义相对论研究的同时，缠困于多个接续上演的梦境中。书中有三十个章节，每个章节都是一个关于时间性质的梦；其中一些梦为相对论真正现象的夸饰呈现，一些则完全是狂想的表现。书中包含了序曲、三篇间奏曲及终曲。爱因斯坦在伯恩专利局的同事兼挚友米给雷·贝索多次出现在这些段落。在小说最后，爱因斯坦终于完成了相对论的文稿，在交付打字等待投稿时，望着瑞士的山景感到一种如释重负而空虚的惆怅。

Einstein's Dreams is a 1992 novel by Alan Lightman that was an international bestseller and has been translated into thirty languages. It was runner up for the 1994 L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award. Einstein's Dreams was also the March 1998 selection for National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation" Book Club. The novel has been used in numerous colleges and universities, in many cases for university-wide adoptions in "common-book" programs. New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani wrote about the book: "As in Calvino's work, the fantastical elements of the stories are grounded in precise, crystalline prose. As in Jorge Luis Borges's ficciones, carefully observed particulars open out, like doors in an advent calendar, to disclose a magical, metaphysical realm beyond."

Einstein's Dreams was first adapted for the stage by David Gardiner and Ralf Remshardt and performed at the University of Florida in 1996. An off-off-Broadway production of this stage version ran briefly at the New York Fringe Festival in 2001; it has also been performed in Beijing (2009).

A musical adaptation of Einstein's Dreams, with book and lyrics by Joanne Sydney Lessner and music and lyrics by Joshua Rosenblum had its international debut in Lisbon in 2005. A concert performance of the Lessner-Rosenblum adaptation took place at Symphony Space in New York in 2009, starring John Bolton and Kate Shindle. The performance was a benefit fundraiser for the Harpswell Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded by Lightman, whose mission is to advance a new generation of women leaders in southeast Asia.

The Lessner-Rosenblum musical had its Off-Broadway premiere at New York's 59E59 Theaters in November, 2019, produced by the Prospect Theater Company and directed by Cara Reichel.

Plot

The novel fictionalizes Albert Einstein as a young scientist who is troubled by dreams as he works on his theory of relativity in 1905. The book consists of 35 sections, each either devoted to one dream about time that Einstein had, or to a waking scene surrounding Einstein's behavior and health during the creation of his theory of relativity. These waking sections include a prelude, three interludes, and an epilogue. Einstein's friend, Michele Besso, appears in some of these sections. Each dream involves a conception of time. Some scenarios may involve exaggerations of true phenomena related to relativity, and some may be entirely fantastical. The book demonstrates the relationship each human being has to time, and thus spiritually affirms Einstein's theory of relativity.

The novel is sometimes cited as the source of the apocryphal urban legend, the 'universal force' (of love), purportedly elucidated in a letter from Einstein to his daughter, Lieserl, but the novel does not contain 'the letter'.