【推荐1】Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White is a children’s book.

As the story opens,eight-year-old farm girl Fern Arable stops her father from killing a baby pig who is weaker than his brothers and sisters. The little pig, Wilbur, becomes one of the main characters in the story. Later he will be treated as a friend by Charlotte, a wise and loving spider living on the same farm. Wilbur slowly realizes that the farmer will kill him for his meat in a few months, and Charlotte decides to help him out. She tries many things to keep Wilbur alive. She writes words in her web describing how wonderful Wilbur is and this makes the farm famous.

White creates a sort of modern animal fable(寓言), in which animals can speak both with each other and with Fern. Also there are many great characters in this book.

The society of animals has many lessons to teach children and adults: friendship, sacrifice(牺牲), hope, determination, love, duty, fairness, respect, and many more.

Part of this novel’s success is the fact that the author makes a heroine(女主角) out of a spider, a creature that many people probably dislike. Unlike a lovely little pig or other creatures, a spider is a creature greatly different from humans. White’s Charlotte is a truly wonderful character. He tells the story of Charlotte and her friends in a special way. This is a book that no one could ever dislike. It has much to offer to children as well as to older teens and adult readers.

【推荐1】Swimming in an ocean of stars

It’s my great honor to receive the Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society. Thank you.

I started writing sci-fi because I looked for a way to escape the dull life, and to reach out, with imagination, to the mysterious time and space that I could never truly reach. But then I realized that the world around me became more and more like science fiction, and this process is speeding up. Future is like pouring rain. It reaches us even before we have time to open the umbrella. Meanwhile, when sci-fi becomes reality, it loses all its magic, and that frustrates me. Sci-fi will soon become part of our lives. The only thing I can do, is to push my imagination further to even more distant time and space to hunt for the mysteries of sci-fi. As a sci-fi author, I think my job is to write things down before they get really boring.

This being said, the world is moving in the direction opposite to Clarke’s predictions. In 2001, A Space Odyssey, in the year of 2001, which has already passed, human beings have built magnificent cities in space, and established permanent colonies on the moon, and huge nuclear-powered spacecraft have sailed to Saturn. However, today, in 2018, the walk on the moon has become a distant memory. And the furthest reach of our manned space flights is just as long as the two-hour mileage of a high-speed train passing through my city.

As a sci-fi writer, I have been striving to continue Arthur Clarke’s imagination. I believe that the boundless space is still the best direction and destination for human imagination. I have always written about the magnitude and mysteries of the universe, interstellar expeditions, and the lives and civilizations happening in distant worlds. This remains today, although this may seem childish or even outdated. It says on Arthur Clarke’s epitaph,“He never grew up, but he never stopped growing.”

Many people misunderstand sci-fi as trying to predict the future, but this is not true. It just makes a list of possibilities of what may happen in the future, like displaying a pile of cobblestones for people to see and play with. Science fiction can never tell which scenario of the future will actually become the real future. This is not its job. It’s also beyond its capabilities. But one thing is certain: in the long run, for all these countless possible futures, any future without space travel is gloomy, no matter how prosperous our own planet becomes.

Sci-fi was writing about the age of digital information and it eventually became true. I now look forward to the time when space travel finally becomes the ordinary. By then, Mars and the asteroid belts will be boring places and countless people are building a home over there. Jupiter and its many satellites will be tourist attractions. The only obstacle preventing people from going there for good, will be the crazy price.

But even at that time, the universe is still unimaginably big that even our wildest imagination fails to catch its edge. And even the closest star remains out of reach. The vast ocean of stars can always carry our infinite imagination.

Thank you all.

【推荐3】To help new students, the International Business Institute (IBI) plans to set up a buddy (伙伴) peer support project. The project will help new students meet current students at IBI who can provide them with some friendly company during their first months in Newcastle and help them with any small problems that they may have.

What’s in it for you?

We believe that being a buddy will be rewarding in several ways. As a volunteer, it will be personally satisfying to know that you are able to help new students. It will also help you make contacts that may be valuable in your future academic and professional lives. If you are an overseas student, it will give you another opportunity to practise speaking English.

Responsibilities of buddies

• Telephone and arrange to make contact with the new student.

• Meet the student and show him/her around the campus and the local area Answer questions about living in Newcastle and administration procedures at IBI.

• Arrange to meet the new student on morning or afternoon one weekend early in the semester,

• Be prepared to take phone call from the new student to answer further questions that he/she may have from time to time. Meet to explain information to the new student in person, if required.

• You will be matched to an individual new student. However, if you have friends who are also buddies, you might prefer to form a support group together. This would mean that you meet the new students as a group rather than one-on-one.

• Being a buddy is voluntary. There is no “requirement” to provide assistance beyond the help outlined above.

Please note that if you agree to become a peer support buddy, you will be expected to fulfill your role conscientiously and cheerfully. It will be important to be considerate and reliable so that the student can feel confident in your support.