Sneak Peek at Paul Allen's Sci-Fi Museum 164
The Museum, incorporated into Allen's "Experience Music Project" in the Frank Gehry-designed "Blob" at the foot of the Space Needle is divided into several sections, with "Homeworld" taking up the bulk of the mid-level. This exhibit includes "The Sci-Fi Hall Of Fame," along with a nifty timeline of s/f related events from history; a display system that projects stunning 3-D representations of planets onto a globular surface; "Not So Weird Science," focusing on how fiction has influenced scientific and technological innovation; and my personal favorite, "The Science Fiction Community," displaying examples of fan-fic, 'zines, and memorabilia that will have the most rabid s/f geek drooling in admiration: the legendary Forrest J. Ackerman's first published letter to Amazing Stories back in the 1930's (Ackerman is listed as a member of SFM's Advisary Board, along with other notables such as Arthur C. Clarke, Harlan Ellison, Ray Bradbury & Greg Bear, just to name a few), a first-draft manuscript by Theodore Sturgeon, Ellison's Smith Corona manual typewriter, a signed, first-edition copy of Aldus Huxley's "Brave New World," the first Hugo Award presented to Ackerman in 1953, and other juicy items (many of which presumably come from Ackerman's personal collection).
One floor down are the other exhibits. "Fantastic Voyages" includes the much anticipated "Space Dock," a virtual representation of famous sci-fi spaceships (although a number of notable examples are missing: there's no TV Jupiter II, none of the ships from the "Alien" series, only one example from the "Star Trek" franchise, and no "Liberator," Eagles or TARDIS -- the Brits being generally underrepresented throughout the Museum), as well as the bulk of the prop and costume displays. Although this area tends to be rather heavy on TV/film memorabilia, there are still some choice items here: a model of the U.S. Capital dome used by Ray Harryhausen in "Earth Versus The Flying Saucers," original models from "Land Of The Giants," "Alien," "Close Encounters," the TV "Buck Rogers," "ET," and "Trek," along with a literal arsenal of weapons, including original phasers, a LIS blaster from Season One, a crossbow used by Jane Fonda in "Barbarella," and an original 1930's-era raygun from the Buck Rogers serials, among many others.
This is followed by perhaps the most disappointing section, "Brave New Worlds," encompassing the "Cities of Tomorrow" display, a CGI-driven exhibit similar to "Space Dock," but which only shows environments from three sources: a rather whimsical view of life in the 4th millenium courtesy of "The Jetson's," Ridley Scott's 21st-Century Los Angeles from "Blade Runner" (look for Dolly The Sheep on one of the rooftops!), and depictions from "The Matrix." This is followed by "Experimental Societies," basically just a display of the usual genre literature, and "Out Of The Ashes," currently limited to a few costume pieces from the 1968 "Planet Of The Apes."
The final section: "Them!" is pretty much what you'd expect -- a representation of aliens exclusively from TV/film media. The Queen Alien is pretty impressive up close, and there's a funny interplay set up between "Robbie The Robot" and "LIS's" B-9 using cleverly interspliced voice clips. At the end is a small gallery of sci-fi artwork, mostly inconsequential book-cover art, but with several pieces from acknowledged masters such as Chesley Bonestell, Frank R. Paul, and the real treat -- practically the entire collection of artwork produced by Fred Freeman and Rolf Klep for Werner von Braun's 1953 "Colliers" magazine series.
Overall, I'd say if you're interested in seeing a pretty good collection of items that encompasses more than just a "Planet Hollywood" style display of film memorabilia, then this is probably worth the $12.95 admission if you're in the neighborhood, particularly if you have at least two hours to spend going through the interactive exhibits. I'm not totally convinced it's worth the $40 to cough up for the annual membership, however, in speaking with one of the Museum staff, I was informed that some of the exhibits will change over time, with new items from Allen's extensive collection being swapped in and out. Otherwise, most of the displays are considered "permanent," although it seems pretty clear at least some of them can be replaced -- and in the case of "Brave New Worlds," probably should.
Photography is prohibited in the Museum (and the lighting level was too low for me to sneak any decent shots with my Zire 71), but if you want to take a gander at some press snaps of the exhibits, check out the Seattle Times "Inside" section.
Thanks to comte for the report.
Pictures (Score:5, Informative)
Here [nwsource.com] (without the annoying popup)
After seeing those... I'm disappointed to say the least.
Re:No. 9? (Score:2, Informative)
If you're refering to the pics in the seattlepi.com site, number nine is the car from the film Blade Runner (as it clearly states in the caption to the right).
Re:Trek Models in Drydock? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Allen is a Lucas hater! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Where's the Kzinti (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why no photography? (Score:1, Informative)
And as another poster pointed out, too many cameras have stupid users and will flash whenever photographs are taken in dim light. Disposable cams don't even have a switch to disable the flash. It's easier to just prohibit photography altogether.
[S]
Re:Getting it over with- Seattle jokes (Score:3, Informative)
Seattle does have a lot of precipitation days: 158 per year, but Buffalo has more (169) and Cleveland has 156.
A lot of the cities with more rain than Seattle (some up to 50% more) only have about 100 precipitation days a year, so they rain is much more intense. So why is Seattle the city with the rain reputation?
My guess is that because rain is about the worst thing that happens here. Sure, Buffalo gets more rain, but they also got a ton of snow and crap like that, so they problaby don't notice that they also live in a rainy place.
Re:Trek Models in Drydock? (Score:3, Informative)
Kubrick was fine with 2010, it was crap he wanted to avoid.
Re:As someone who lives NEAR Seattle (Score:2, Informative)
None of which have any connection to Paul Allen, BTW.
The scientific case for prohibiting photography (Score:5, Informative)
In this MP3 clip on flash photography's effect on art [radio.cbc.ca], CBC Radio's Quirks & Quarks interviews Dr. Tito Scaiano, professor of chemistry at the University of Ottawa.
Artefacts absorb light, and thus molecules. The molecules convert the energy to heat, but sometimes a molecule changes chemical structure, resulting in a visible change. When a photo is absorbed, it pushes the molecule to a higher energy state that breaks the bond. In other cases, it promotes oxidization. Organic pigments are more sensitive than inorganic pigments (which are already fairly oxidized). In other words, flash photography can lead to deterioration of an artefact, not to mention changes to the pigment.
Although aircraft may not be as sensitive as the Mona Lisa, it's still possible that flash photography could damage the artefact. An art student told me that his professor confided that one flash was equivalent to three days of natural light. I don't know if that's entirely true, but I've heard the warning repeated.
Although some people might not use flashes, even a small percentage of wrong-doers could eventually ruin an artefact. For example, when I saw the Mona Lisa, about 30% of the crowd was taking flash photos. The Mona Lisa is behind 3 inches of plexiglass, but the flashes do take their toll [globeandmail.com].
The Straight Dope also answers a question about flash photography's damage to art [straightdope.com].
Re:Getting it over with- Seattle jokes (Score:2, Informative)
Vancouver has a reputation for rain but that's not because it rains more over the year than anywhere else. Instead, it's because when winter comes around, there's one kind of weather: dreary, miserable and cloudy. It rains during that time (not always), but what really sticks with people is the entire lack-of-sunshine.
So, yea, it isn't really the rain, it's the simple fact that winter is 4 months of shitty overcast skies with a fair amount of light rain. People just sum that up as 'rainy'.
Re:Where's the Kzinti (Score:1, Informative)
i went there (Score:5, Informative)
First of all, like the Experience Music Project next door, there was a ton of memorabilia. It had everything from one of Darth Vader's mask (one used by a stunt man), to the Cricket from Men in Black, to a gun from Galaxy Quest, to original Star Trek stories (written on by Nichelle Nichols), to a poster about the Babel fish.
The museum was linear and seemed to flow well from one section to the other. However, that means there doesn't seem like much room for expansion, as the musuem is sort of small. At EMP next door, they have lots of different sections where they can have permanent exhibits (like Northwest passage which has never changed), semi-permanent exhibits (ones that last for years at a time), and traveling exhibits (ones that last for a few months, like the recent Disco exhibit). At the SciFi museum, there didn't appear to be any room for traveling exhibits, which is unfortunate. Upstairs they had had a stage area with refreshments. I guess this will be used for guest speakers and presentations later on.
The tech was really neat, however. In the first section, as the poster mentioned, there is a large globe with video on it. It goes through a rotation of clips from movies, to quotes over a starry background, to a projection of planets. It was impressive how seemless it was, considering the video came from four projectors surrounding it.
The space dock was interesting. In front of you is a huge screen with the different ships flying around (like the Planet Express from Futurama). There are touch screens for individuals to use where you can look up ships stats and watch a video clip about it. If I remember correctly, the screen was sort of 3D. It had a background video screen layer and then another clear layer in front of that. It wasn't quite 3D, because it only had two layers. I didn't flip through all the ships, so I can't comment on the size of the catalog.
The next cool tech thing was a small globe with touch screen in front of it. You click on one of the six planets you want to see (Hoth, the one from Dune, Solaris, and some others). It plays videos on the screen, then turns the globe in front of you into that planet using projectors. It was pretty neat, but the voice talking about the planet was a little hard to hear.
Finally was the cityscape thing, which was disappointing. Like the poster mentioned, it only contained three cityscapes. It has a lot of potential if they add more, but it is just isn't there yet. The ones they did do turned out pretty well, though. There a lot of little details to look at and it gives you an idea of the city.
Overall it was pretty neat, but didn't seem to have that much of a 'replay' value. I wish they had room for temporary exhibits, because those would increase the value of a membership. However, this provides a good place for guest speakers. I believe this friday there is going to be a talk on the physics of Star Trek.
Oh, something I forgot to mention, in the first section they had a history of fandom, which was interesting. They showed a lot of original fanzines and letters exchanged between fans. A lot of the original fans later turned into writers themselves.
Overall, I think it had a good range of SciFi from the beginning (Frankenstein) to the present. It was a little small, though. The tech parts of the show were impressive, but could probably use some more content.
Well, that is my review. I didn't proofread, so don't be a grammar Nazi.
Andrew
tps interview (Score:3, Informative)
Devon