海外社团 | 西密歇根大学科幻协会介绍
2020年2月，高校科幻平台启动了『国际高校科幻社团交流计划』，我们希望通过线上采访的形式，结交国际科幻社团同好，向中国科幻圈介绍国际高校科幻的发展现状，促进彼此之间的深入了解。
我们委托日语翻译田田老师首先向13所日本高校科幻社团发出采访邀请函，并陆续收到了回信（相关回信可查看《海外社团》栏目）。2021年年末，河流向英语地区部分海外高校通过邮件取得联系，接下来，高校科幻平台将陆续刊登这些回信。
以下是回信的翻译内容
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Q：协会全称
A：西密歇根大学科幻协会（Science Fiction Society at WMU）
Q：成立时间
A：我觉得我们的社团是2013年或者是2014年以“时间之主协会”（the Time Lord Association）的名义建立的，那个时候主要是一名博士照看着协会
Q：现任社长（2020-2021）
A：我是现任社长，亚瑟·伍德沃斯（Arthur Woodworth）
Q：换届周期（例如：一年一次）
A：我们在每年春季学期的期末举行换届选举。一般来说都是某个积极分子无争议得赢得选举
Q：在校协会成员人数
A：成员的话有点不太好确定。在我们学校学生组织的注册表上我们有25名会员，但是他们有的人早就毕业了，然后大部分都从来没有出现过。我们的Discord服务器有42个成员，不过大部分人都在潜水不吱声。我们的Facebook群组有134个人，但是这个数字其实完全不可信，因为其中有一部分人根本就不是我们学校的。至于活跃分子，我只能说我们大概有5到10个人。
Q：2020/2021年几月/秋招/春招的招新人数
A：根据我上面说过的情况，我只能说我们上学期实际上只招新了5个新人
Q：下设部门有（例如：写作、管理、观影、宣传、活动、图书、财政、技术、策划等）
A：我们还没搞确切的部门划分（因为我们的规模还是不够大）。我们上个学期招的几个新人对组织一个写作会挺感兴趣的。一般来说都是会长组织所有事情。
Q：日常活动（例如：观影会、读书交流会、沙龙、面基、桌游、跑团、访问杂志社、社课、书籍借阅，辩论赛等）
A：我们的会员大会一般来说包括了观影会/读书会（不光是观影，我们还讨论它们，当然还包括其他一些东西）。我们曾经还在看完之后打过游戏（因为我们不想在剩下的时间干别的），但是我们今年没这么干过。
Q：特殊活动（幻想文化节，特色活动，作家讲座）
A：我们没有时间精力去搞一些特殊活动，但是我两年前组织过一个短篇小说比赛，然后我今年准备在整一次。我第一年入社的时候我们搞了一次剧本杀（我不知道你们那边有没有这个东西）。这可能是我们整过的最时髦的活儿。有的时候我们去电影院去看一下新上映的店应。我一直想请一些作家来做讲座，但是着看起来不太可行的样子……
Q：曾获奖项及遇到的困难
A：我们的主要困难，我估计你也能猜到，就是我们庞大但不活跃的成员。比如说我们现在只有一个会长和一个秘书，因为学校要求社团成员必须得是学生，然后这两个位置还是必需的。去年的话我们因为新冠疫情是在线上活动的，加入的新人大部分都是校友（还有一些来自我们的竞争对手）而不是在读学生，所以我们换届的时候就挺受限的。我们主要的招生原则就是我们社团没有任何社员义务，而且加入也是免费的。但是很多同学必须勤工俭学来交学费，而且课业压力也比大家想象中的要大（除了在刚开学的时候）。
另外一个我们遇到的困难就是如何让同学们去参与我们组织的比赛。在第一年的时候我们只有两个参赛的，然后我自己本人就是其中一个。去年更惨，我是唯一一个参赛的……然后我们最后评选的时候，这个“唯一的参赛同学”自动的成为了“唯一的获胜者”……我今年不想搞这个了，因为我兜儿里一分钱都没有了（我们也没有社团的资金……），我觉得有点绝望。但是曾经我们的成员中一度有过对这些活动的热情，所以我还得坚持下去。我上面说的这个资金的短缺限制了我们能做的东西，但它也意味着我们的会计没有那么多的工作。在新冠疫情之前，我们在观影会的时候会提供零食和苏打水，所以当时我们的会计就得负责去寻找可以提供零食的资金的同学。
Q：其他的一些想法
A：过去的两年其实非常有意思。其实我们社团在2020年的时候就快倒闭了，因为所有同学们都毕业了（包括我，但是我回来读研究生了现在）。我们已经有一两年没有新的成员了。线上活动差不多可以过渡一下，我们的住在州另一边甚至是我们国家的另一边的前社员们仍然可以参加我们的线上活动。但是我们只有一点点新成员加入，而且，隔着一个电脑屏幕可能并不是一种很好的社交方式，至少我自己是这么觉得的。所以今年我们在搞线下活动的时候我总感觉新成员们有点拘谨。
我们协会看上去同样对那些不擅长社交的同学们影响很大。其中一些人差不多一句话都不说（我现在也变成他们的一员了）；还有一些人不停地分享着他们生活中的日常；还有那么一两个人有一个坏毛病，就是讲了一个笑话然后发现大家都不笑，于是就开始生气，因为大家都不觉得那是一个笑话或者这个笑话有点过分了（这个臭毛病属实让我血压飙升）。总之，我们中的很多人都是社恐，而且我很确信我没啥办法去解决这个问题
希望我的回复对你有用，如果你希望更详细了解更多信息，请告诉我。另外，如果能讲讲你们协会是怎么组织的，我也很高兴去了解。我非常高兴能联系到其他的科幻社团，尽管不太清楚美国的其他的学校是不是有类似的社团（其实是我们没有一个类似的联盟或者组织），所以如果你和其他社团联系上了，尤其是密歇根州的，烦请告诉我一下！！
我还想说的就是，你们联系我们的时间真的很巧。最近中国科幻在我们国家越来越流行，比如说我现在在读郝景芳的《流浪苍穹》。我不知道这本小说是不是在中国也很流行，不过它真的很不错。刘慈欣的《三体》已经在我们这儿引发了轰动（如果我没记错的话，刚开始出来的时候在你们那里也是这样的）。真的，我太激动能接触到国外科幻了！
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.
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.
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!
Regards,
Arthur Woodworth
president, Sci-Fi Society
联络：河流
翻译：宇文
编辑：孟温煜
