He was currently reading a new book by Dorothy Sayers, The Mind of the Maker.
他现在正在读多罗西·塞耶斯写的《上帝之心》。
It was not his usual taste in reading,
这不是他通常的阅读爱好。
this being Sayers' attempt to interpret the Christian doctrine of divine creation through her own experience as a novelist,
这本书是塞耶斯的一次尝试，通过小说的形式来诠释基督教义。
but he would have enjoyed the challenge of her sophisticated attitude to free will, which she saw from God's point of view,
她从上帝的角度来看待自由意识，
in the light of her knowledge that fictional characters had to find their own integrity and unpredictability, and were not determined by a master plan at the outset.
小说里的角色必须依靠自己来摆脱命运的束缚。
One image which caught Alan's fancy was that of Laplacian determinism suggesting that 'God,
这让艾伦觉得十分有趣，他想到一个场景，拉普拉斯的决定论表明，
having created his Universe, has now screwed the cap on His pen, put His feet on the mantelpiece and left the work to get on with itself.'
上帝创造完宇宙之后，便拧上钢笔的盖子，把脚搭在壁炉上，看着他的杰作自生自灭。
This was not so new, but it must have made striking reading while the Bombes ticked away,
这并不是那么新鲜，但是当炸弹机咔咔运转的时候，。
getting on with the work by themselves—and while the Wrens did their appointed tasks, without knowing what any of it was for.
阅读一点小说，是一种愉快的调剂
He was fascinated by the fact that people could be taking part in something clever, in a quite mindless way.
艾伦感兴趣的是，人们有时可以不加思索地做出一些聪明的事情。