阿兰.莱特曼（A.Lightman,1948－ ）出生在美国的田纳西州，先在加州理工学院和普林斯顿读书，后在哈佛和麻省理工学院教书。他是位科学家出身的小说家。
　　莱特曼本来就具文学才性，所从事的工作又是很形而上的理论物理。那个领域中的爱因斯坦，我们都知道，是喜欢把物理和哲学、艺术相提并论的。所以，舞文弄墨在他势有必至。莱特曼最初为一些杂志撰写科普文章。《宇宙起源》、《时间旅行》、《劈开原子》等等即是。需要指出的是，他的这些作品比一般的科普科幻作品有着更浓厚的人文色彩。
　　到了《爱因斯坦的梦》（Einstein’s Dreams），科学原理越发缩小为一种寓言的材料。在这篇小说中，莱特曼信手拈来一些物理学上的说法，搭起三十个时间世界。平日惯见不见的真实摆到这些不寻常的布景前，变得异样的清晰夺目，冻结在读者心中的各种尘世悲欢，也像遇到了春风，开始如诗如画地流淌。有些评论家舍弃不下莱特曼的科学家身份，称此书“探讨了相对论的潜意识温床”，而且还认真核对了有关的物理学假说。这种解梦，就像身世派或索隐派的读《红楼》，不仅拘泥而且穿凿。用莱特曼自己的话说，科学只提供了起跳点，他跃入的，仍是人海。
　　莱特曼生活在一个已磨合好的资本主义商业社会。我们是不好指望他笔下出现风云血火牛鬼蛇神的。学院的环境又为他提供了从口粮到功名几乎一切人生的必需和奢侈品，文学创作对他不过锦上添花。这倒使他在“玩票”或“兼业”时能享受到某种自由：他可以一仍本心，行所欲行，止所宜止，而不必汲汲戚戚地同职业作家们扭作一团。《爱因斯坦的梦》想象的高远，描绘的精微，在很大程度上得力于这种从容不迫的步调、悠闲自如的态度。此书行文简淡而蕴含感情，仿佛明月松间，清泉石上，那种自然而然的境界为一般争奇斗艳的文士所难达到。
　　《爱因斯坦的梦》为莱特曼头一部虚构性小说，一九九二年一问世便赢得评论界交口称赞，还荣登《纽约时报书评》畅销书榜。一九九四年他又出版了一部虚构性小说《好样的贝尼脱》，反响似乎不及《爱因斯坦的梦》。莱特曼年届知命，来日方长，以他的眼界、情怀和笔力，再写出一两部上乘的小说，是有可能的。
　　读其书而慕其人。可惜我们只知道莱特曼如今在大学里除了物理还教写作，并负责着一个人文项目；他谈吐诙谐而不动声色，大概属于美国人说的“英国式幽默”；爱抽烟。有回靠在椅上，用一只老辈子留下的烟斗吞云吐雾，有形无状，似是而非，使他恍惚不辨今世何世，此身谁身，于是发心弄起了文学。

PROLOGUE
　　　　
　　In some distant arcade, a clock tower callsout six times and then stops. The youngman slumps at his desk. He has come to the office at dawn, after another upheaval. His hair is uncombed and his trousers are too big. In his hand he holds twenty crumpled pages, his new theory of time, which he will mail today to the German journal of physics.
　　　　
　　Tiny sounds from the city drift through the room. A milk bottle clinks on a stone. An awning is cranked in a shop on Marktgasse. A vegetable cart moves slowly through a street. A man and woman talk in hushed tones in an apartment nearby.
　　　　
　　In the dim light that seeps through the room, the desks appear shadowy and soft, like large sleeping animals. Except for the young man's desk, which is cluttered with half-opened books, the twelve oak desks are all neatly covered with documents, left from the previous day. Upon arriving in two hours, each clerk will know precisely where to begin. But at this moment, in this dim light, the documents on the desks are no more visible than the clock in the corner or the secretary's stool near the door. All that can be seen at this moment are the shadowy shapes of the desks and the hunched form of the young man.
　　　　
　　Ten minutes past six, by the invisible clock on the wall. Minute by minute, new objects gain form. Here, a brass wastebasket appears. There, a calendar on a wall. Here, a family photograph, a box of paper-clips, an inkwell, a pen. There, a type-writer, a jacket folded on a chair. In time, the ubiquitous bookshelves emerge from the night mist that hangs on the walls. The bookshelves hold notebooks of patents. One patent concerns a new drilling gear with teeth curved in a pattern to minimize friction. Another proposes an electrical transformer that holds constant voltage when the power supply varies. Another describes a typewriter with a low-velocity typebar that eliminates noise. It is a room full of practical ideas.
　　　　
　　Outside, the tops of the Alps start to glow from the sun. It is late June. A boatman on the Aare unties his small skiff and pushes off, letting the current take him along Aar-strasse to Gerberngasse, where he will deliver his summer apples and berries. The baker arrives at his store on Marktgasse, fires his coal oven, begins mixing flour and yeast. Two lovers embrace on the Nydegg Bridge, gaze wistfully into the river below.
　　　　
　　A man stands on his balcony on Schifflaube, studies the pink sky. A woman who cannot sleep walks slowly down Kramgasse, peering into each dark arcade, reading the posters in half-light.
　　　　
　　In the long, narrow office on Speichergasse, the room full of practical ideas, the young patent clerk still sprawls in his chair, head down on his desk. For the past several months, since the middle of April, he has dreamed many dreams about time. His dreams have taken hold of his research. His dreams have worn him out, exhausted him so that he sometimes cannot tell whether he is awake or asleep. But the dreaming is finished. Out of many possible natures of time, imagined in as many nights, one seems compelling. Not that the others are impossible. The others might exist in other worlds.