2020年2月，高校科幻平臺啟動了『國際高?？苹蒙鐖F(tuán)交流計劃』，我們希望通過線上采訪的形式，結(jié)交國際科幻社團(tuán)同好，向中國科幻圈介紹國際高校科幻的發(fā)展現(xiàn)狀，促進(jìn)彼此之間的深入了解。

我們委托日語翻譯田田老師首先向13所日本高?？苹蒙鐖F(tuán)發(fā)出采訪邀請函，并陸續(xù)收到了回信（相關(guān)回信可查看《海外社團(tuán)》欄目）。2021年年末，河流向英語地區(qū)部分海外高校通過郵件取得聯(lián)系，接下來，高?？苹闷脚_將陸續(xù)刊登這些回信。

以下是回信的翻譯內(nèi)容

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Q：協(xié)會全稱

A：西密歇根大學(xué)科幻協(xié)會（Science Fiction Society at WMU）

Q：成立時間

A：我覺得我們的社團(tuán)是2013年或者是2014年以“時間之主協(xié)會”（the Time Lord Association）的名義建立的，那個時候主要是一名博士照看著協(xié)會

Q：現(xiàn)任社長（2020-2021）

A：我是現(xiàn)任社長，亞瑟·伍德沃斯（Arthur Woodworth）

Q：換屆周期（例如：一年一次）

A：我們在每年春季學(xué)期的期末舉行換屆選舉。一般來說都是某個積極分子無爭議得贏得選舉

Q：在校協(xié)會成員人數(shù)

A：成員的話有點不太好確定。在我們學(xué)校學(xué)生組織的注冊表上我們有25名會員，但是他們有的人早就畢業(yè)了，然后大部分都從來沒有出現(xiàn)過。我們的Discord服務(wù)器有42個成員，不過大部分人都在潛水不吱聲。我們的Facebook群組有134個人，但是這個數(shù)字其實完全不可信，因為其中有一部分人根本就不是我們學(xué)校的。至于活躍分子，我只能說我們大概有5到10個人。

Q：2020/2021年幾月/秋招/春招的招新人數(shù)

A：根據(jù)我上面說過的情況，我只能說我們上學(xué)期實際上只招新了5個新人

Q：下設(shè)部門有（例如：寫作、管理、觀影、宣傳、活動、圖書、財政、技術(shù)、策劃等）

A：我們還沒搞確切的部門劃分（因為我們的規(guī)模還是不夠大）。我們上個學(xué)期招的幾個新人對組織一個寫作會挺感興趣的。一般來說都是會長組織所有事情。

Q：日?；顒樱ɡ纾河^影會、讀書交流會、沙龍、面基、桌游、跑團(tuán)、訪問雜志社、社課、書籍借閱，辯論賽等）

A：我們的會員大會一般來說包括了觀影會/讀書會（不光是觀影，我們還討論它們，當(dāng)然還包括其他一些東西）。我們曾經(jīng)還在看完之后打過游戲（因為我們不想在剩下的時間干別的），但是我們今年沒這么干過。

Q：特殊活動（幻想文化節(jié)，特色活動，作家講座）

A：我們沒有時間精力去搞一些特殊活動，但是我兩年前組織過一個短篇小說比賽，然后我今年準(zhǔn)備在整一次。我第一年入社的時候我們搞了一次劇本殺（我不知道你們那邊有沒有這個東西）。這可能是我們整過的最時髦的活兒。有的時候我們?nèi)ル娪霸喝タ匆幌滦律嫌车牡陸?yīng)。我一直想請一些作家來做講座，但是著看起來不太可行的樣子……

Q：曾獲獎項及遇到的困難

A：我們的主要困難，我估計你也能猜到，就是我們龐大但不活躍的成員。比如說我們現(xiàn)在只有一個會長和一個秘書，因為學(xué)校要求社團(tuán)成員必須得是學(xué)生，然后這兩個位置還是必需的。去年的話我們因為新冠疫情是在線上活動的，加入的新人大部分都是校友（還有一些來自我們的競爭對手）而不是在讀學(xué)生，所以我們換屆的時候就挺受限的。我們主要的招生原則就是我們社團(tuán)沒有任何社員義務(wù)，而且加入也是免費的。但是很多同學(xué)必須勤工儉學(xué)來交學(xué)費，而且課業(yè)壓力也比大家想象中的要大（除了在剛開學(xué)的時候）。

另外一個我們遇到的困難就是如何讓同學(xué)們?nèi)⑴c我們組織的比賽。在第一年的時候我們只有兩個參賽的，然后我自己本人就是其中一個。去年更慘，我是唯一一個參賽的……然后我們最后評選的時候，這個“唯一的參賽同學(xué)”自動的成為了“唯一的獲勝者”……我今年不想搞這個了，因為我兜兒里一分錢都沒有了（我們也沒有社團(tuán)的資金……），我覺得有點絕望。但是曾經(jīng)我們的成員中一度有過對這些活動的熱情，所以我還得堅持下去。我上面說的這個資金的短缺限制了我們能做的東西，但它也意味著我們的會計沒有那么多的工作。在新冠疫情之前，我們在觀影會的時候會提供零食和蘇打水，所以當(dāng)時我們的會計就得負(fù)責(zé)去尋找可以提供零食的資金的同學(xué)。

Q：其他的一些想法

A：過去的兩年其實非常有意思。其實我們社團(tuán)在2020年的時候就快倒閉了，因為所有同學(xué)們都畢業(yè)了（包括我，但是我回來讀研究生了現(xiàn)在）。我們已經(jīng)有一兩年沒有新的成員了。線上活動差不多可以過渡一下，我們的住在州另一邊甚至是我們國家的另一邊的前社員們?nèi)匀豢梢詤⒓游覀兊木€上活動。但是我們只有一點點新成員加入，而且，隔著一個電腦屏幕可能并不是一種很好的社交方式，至少我自己是這么覺得的。所以今年我們在搞線下活動的時候我總感覺新成員們有點拘謹(jǐn)。

我們協(xié)會看上去同樣對那些不擅長社交的同學(xué)們影響很大。其中一些人差不多一句話都不說（我現(xiàn)在也變成他們的一員了）；還有一些人不停地分享著他們生活中的日常；還有那么一兩個人有一個壞毛病，就是講了一個笑話然后發(fā)現(xiàn)大家都不笑，于是就開始生氣，因為大家都不覺得那是一個笑話或者這個笑話有點過分了（這個臭毛病屬實讓我血壓飆升）?？傊?，我們中的很多人都是社恐，而且我很確信我沒啥辦法去解決這個問題

希望我的回復(fù)對你有用，如果你希望更詳細(xì)了解更多信息，請告訴我。另外，如果能講講你們協(xié)會是怎么組織的，我也很高興去了解。我非常高興能聯(lián)系到其他的科幻社團(tuán)，盡管不太清楚美國的其他的學(xué)校是不是有類似的社團(tuán)（其實是我們沒有一個類似的聯(lián)盟或者組織），所以如果你和其他社團(tuán)聯(lián)系上了，尤其是密歇根州的，煩請告訴我一下?。?/p>

我還想說的就是，你們聯(lián)系我們的時間真的很巧。最近中國科幻在我們國家越來越流行，比如說我現(xiàn)在在讀郝景芳的《流浪蒼穹》。我不知道這本小說是不是在中國也很流行，不過它真的很不錯。劉慈欣的《三體》已經(jīng)在我們這兒引發(fā)了轟動（如果我沒記錯的話，剛開始出來的時候在你們那里也是這樣的）。真的，我太激動能接觸到國外科幻了！

以下是回信原文

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Hello!

I am very excited by this opportunity for discussionas most emails to this address are marketing emails of various sorts. I'd loveto know what kind of things your club does as well, as it might provide someideas for us.

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1. Science Fiction Society at WMU

2. I believe the club was originally established in2013 or2014, as the Time Lord Association (it was primarily a Doctor Whowatching club back then).

3. The incumbent president is me, Arthur Woodworth.

4. We have elections at the end of spring semesterevery year. Generally whoever volunteers for the board position wins unopposed.

5. Membership is a little hard to determine. Theroster on our university student organization page has 25 members, but some ofthem have graduated and most never show up. Our Discord server has 42 members,but most don't even contribute to discussion. Our Facebook group has 134 members, but that number is completely unreliable, as some members have nevereven been students at out university. In terms of active members, I would saywe have somewhere between 5 and 10.

6. With the same caveats as above, I would say we gotmaybe 5 new actual members last semester.

7. We don't have clearly defined departments (ourclub's not nearly big enough). Some of our freshman members who joined lastsemester have, however, expressed interest in organizing a writer's guild ofsorts. Generally the president organizes everything.

8. Our club meetings generally consist of watchingmovies/series and discussing them (and other stuff). We used to play gamesafterward if we didn't want to watch something else and there was still time,but that hasn't been happening this year.

9. We generally don't have the time or energy toorganize special events, but I have organized a short fiction contest for thepast two years and will be organizing another this year. The first year Ijoined, we had a murder mystery dinner (I don't know if that's a thingoverseas). That's probably the fanciest we've ever gotten. Sometimes we go tothe theatre to watch new movies. I've always wanted to bring writers in to givelectures, but that doesn't seem feasible for our club.

10. Our main difficulty, which it sounds like you canrelate to, is our largely inactive membership. For instance, we currently onlyhave a Treasurer and president since the university requires all club officersto be students and those are the only positions the university requires. Lastyear, we met virtually as a pandemic caution and most people in attendance werealumni (and some students from our supposed sports rival), not currentstudents, so the people qualified to be officers were quite limited. Our mainapproach to recruitment has been to point out that our club has almost noobligations and is free to join, but many students have to work to pay tuitionand the course-load often seems to be higher than people expect at thebeginning of the semester.

Another difficulty has been getting people toparticipate in the contests. The first year, we had two entries and Ipersonally convinced one of them to enter. Last year, we had a single entry. Aswith our elections, the contest winners ended up winning by default. I wasn'tplanning to organize one this year, since the budget comes directly out of mywallet (we have no actual club budget) and it felt kind of pointless, but therewas actual interest among the members for once, so I'm going ahead with it. Theaforementioned lack of budget does limit the things we can do, but it alsomeans the Treasurer has no actual duties. Before the pandemic, we would have snacks and soda during the movie, so the Treasurer could be in charge of collecting snack funds anyone would want to contribute.

11.These past two years have been very interesting.The club basically collapsed in 2020 when everyone graduated (including me, butI came back for a graduate degree). We'd gotten no new members for a year ortwo. Meeting virtually sort of served as a transition, since our former memberswho live on the other side of the state and the other side of the country couldstill attend, but we only had a few new members join and it was all on oppositesides of a computer screen, which isn't the best way to socialize, at least inmy opinion. So, this year, we've basically been building the club up from itsformer foundation and I feel a certain alienation from the new members.

The club also seems to largely attract the type ofpeople who are not good at social interactions. Some of us are practicallysilent (I fall into that category), some of us share endless details about ourpersonal lives, one or two of our members have a bad habit of telling jokesthat don't come off as jokes and then getting angry because people didn'trealize it was a joke or because people respond with jokes of their own (thishabit really gets on my nerves). Ultimately, many of our members seem to besocially incompatible with each other at the moment and I'm pretty sure I can'tfix that.

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I hope my response is informative for you. Please let me know if you want clarification on anything. Again, if you'd like to tell me how your club is organized, I'd be interested to know. I really appreciate theopportunity to connect with other sci-fi clubs. I'm not really aware of similarclubs at other American universities (certainly we don't have any sort of allianceor federation), so if you're in contact with other clubs, especially in Michigan, let me know about them as well!

I also would like to say that this is quite acoincidental time for you to reach out, as Chinese science fiction is becoming more accessible and mainstream in this country. For instance, I'm currently reading Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang. I don't know how popular it is in China, butit's pretty good. Liu Cixin's Three-Body Problem has really become quite asensation over here (as it did in your country when it originally came out, if my details are correct). It's definitely an exciting time for international science fiction!

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Regards,

Arthur Woodworth

president, Sci-Fi Society

聯(lián)絡(luò)：河流

翻譯：宇文

編輯：孟溫煜