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Paul Allen Plans Sci-Fi Shrine in Seattle
ctar writes "You couldn't ask for a more appropriate or schizophrenic slashdot story...The NYTimes online was the only one carrying the story according to Google News, so this is all you get."
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Confused Philospher thinks this is a strange place to do so.
Wouldn't San Fransico make more sense since it is at the heart of the Federation of Planets?
Why slashdot? Why not?
Sci-Fi Shrine for Seattle, Complete With Aliens
By STEPHEN KINZER
n the nearly two centuries between Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" and "The Matrix," science fiction has captivated countless millions of readers, listeners and viewers. Now one of them is taking his obsession to a higher level, investing $10 million to $20 million to build a temple to the genre.
Paul G. Allen, a billionaire businessman and co-founder of Microsoft, is planning to build a "cultural project" in Seattle that will seek to draw visitors into the science-fiction experience.
Details of the project are to be announced today. Preliminary plans suggest that if it comes to fruition, it would be part museum, part amusement park and part little boy's fantasy.
The project will extend Mr. Allen's influence over entertainment in the Northwest. He has backed a number of films, including "Far From Heaven," and owns the Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League and the Portland Trailblazers of the National Basketball Association.
His new venture, tentatively called SFX ? The Science Fiction Experience, is to fill 13,000 square feet of exhibit space that has been part of the Experience Music Project, a multimedia museum devoted to American popular music, especially rock 'n' roll. (The museum was also conceived by Mr. Allen, along with his sister, Jody Patton.) Mr. Allen owns the building, which was designed by Frank Gehry and is a Seattle landmark. The science-fiction project is scheduled to open in the summer of 2004.
According to promotional material, SFX "will explore our culture through the broad, historic and compelling lens of science fiction." The material promises models of "bug-eyed monsters" and exhibits that illustrate "science fiction's alternate realities."
In an interview, Mr. Allen said the enterprise would be incorporated as a nonprofit enterprise but might eventually become a business. He called it "a hybrid project" that would have "a multimedia component" but would "not be a theme park or a ride."
The announcement of this project comes as museums in several cities are postponing or scaling down new building projects. Some arts organizations are reeling from large cuts in public and corporate giving. But Mr. Allen said he would bear all the costs of SFX himself.
"I see it as a jumping-off project for examining the future."
Plans call for a hall of fame for science-fiction heroes, another hall shaped like the interior of a spaceship and a third that would commemorate terrifying aliens and other evil creatures. SFX's advisory board includes the science-fiction writers Greg Bear, Ray Bradbury, Octavia Butler and Arthur C. Clarke.
Writers like those transfixed Mr. Allen when he was young. He said he was a small child when he stumbled on a book called "Spaceship Galileo" and has been "a huge fan" of science fiction ever since.
Are his teeth going to be on display?
Isn't it weird all the stuff rich guys do with their money?
I mean, If i'd made billions of bucks from starting a software concern in the early eighties, I PROBABLY wouldn't be starting a shrine to science fiction.
Don't get me wrong, I love SF as much as the next geek (and constantly have to upgrade my bookshelves,) but.... a shrine? That's a little macabre.
The guy should do something worthwhile with his bucks, like sponsor literary awards for young SF authors to help ensure the genre doesn't stagnate. Or donate a few hundred mil to Seti.
Shrine? Bah.
You're doing it wrong.
Holy bajesus, check out the grimey, yellow choppers. You'd think with $10 mil to spend on a geek temple, he'd have some left over for some white strips.
I really hate Dan Patrick.
I heard a rumor (which I never bothered to check) that the Wizards-of-the-Coatse plaza in Seattle's University district went out of business. If that's true, then I suspect I know where Paul Allen's 3-floor-sci-fi shrine will be located at.
Would be a neat location!
Next time warn me that face was going to be staring at me if I clicked the link. God block images from server Mozilla, BLOCK, BLOCK NOW!
WARNING Link NOT safe!
we have a Microsoft Security Whitepaper.
This is 21st century science fiction at its finest!
On your way out, board the flying car on the left.
Cheers, Joel
Of course because of the proximity of Microsoft, none of the companies here have any Linux or Open Source friendly positions. A job would be another nice thing to have. Maybe the Sci-Fi museum is hiring for a Linux Administrator exhibit.
The Holy Land Experience, a theme park in Orlando, based off the bible that was designed to convert Jews to Christianity by belitting their entire existence to the role of having producing Christ, and thus having fulfilled their function.
When I read about this project, I thought, "He's establishing a perpetual Con!" Then I saw the irony, and I was Enlightened.
The guy goes and does something vaguely positive, and the most "enlightened" comments on SlashDot are "Look at his teeth, haw haw haw!".
I think its a fantastic idea. A lot of people will go there to be inspired by past scifi works.
Certainly better than going to an amusement park dedicated to a giant fucken mouse.
http://jesus.everdense.com/
you can be certain this is another way to tax the locals just like his 'emp' and his 'allen' *cough* 'seahawks' stadium (300 million in sales taxes diverted to fund it). what a cheezeface.
The guy should do something worthwhile with his bucks
Like maybe donate money to save forests? or to "sustain" the Seti Project? and severl other things.
I'm not a big Paul Allen fan, but hell, he's rich, he's allready been a bit of philanthropy - let him build a Sci-Fi shrine if he wants toSeeing as people don't seem interested in posting links to archive.nytimes.com, you can always fix the reg. required problem using your hosts file.
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Hey, don't blame Allen he left Microsoft years ago. His new company is called "Seattle" I think.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
Oh yeah, and a trash compacter like the one on the Death Star...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
We don't know what's going on in there... (cue spooky music)
There is plenty of Science Fiction in real life. Just take a look around you.
Genetic engineering, laptop computers, handheld computers, speech recognition, MRI, flatscreen TVs, MP3 players, human genome project, digital cameras, CNC machines, 3D "printers", cloning, the internet, and countless other items of everyday technology all would seem like something out of science fiction 20 or 30 years ago.
The future truly is now! It is only going to get more so, if anything the rate of change is accelerating. Some say we may see the singularity as postulated by Vernor Vinge by 2035. After that? Well, things are going to get weird.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
But what about the anal probes, damn you!! :-)
evil adrian
...is that Paul Allen, himself, is an alien. Check out the picture in the top-right hand of the corner of the article, then tell me I'm wrong.
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
Paul Allen... is expected to announce today his plans to build a Seattle facility to celebrate science-fiction literature in the same way his Experience Music Project honors popular music....
Jason Hunke, a spokesman for Allen's project management and investment firm Vulcan Inc., declined to identify the author or confirm any specific plans for the project beyond its location. But he did say the goal of SFX would be to entertain and educate the public about the place of science fiction in our culture.
"As a genre, it's much broader than just 'Star Wars' or 'Star Trek,' " he said.
"The "Science Fiction Experience," or SFX, will "celebrate the broadest and most dynamic genre of our time, capture our imagination, offer new perspectives on society and culture, and invite us to ponder the universe's infinite possibilities," according to a statement from Allen's projects and investments company, Vulcan Inc... Details will be provided at a morning news conference with Allen, Seattle Center director Virginia Anderson, EMP's CEO Robert Santelli and a surprise 'award-winning, best-selling' science-fiction writer. Seattle Center spokeswoman Beau Fong said the new facility will be in the space that formerly housed the EMP's Artist's Journey, a virtual-reality amusement-park-style ride. It featured a computer-generated James Brown hosting a block party titled Funk Blast. It was supposed to be one of the museum's hallmark features but quietly closed in January."
I think Mr. Allen should include the following displays in the museum:
1. The origins of science fiction, including homages to Mary Shelley (the author of Frankenstein, considered by many to be the first science fiction novel ever written), Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs.
2. The rise and heyday of science fiction pulp magazines from the late 1920's to circa 1950. Many of the truly great names of science fiction started writing stories for these magazines.
3. The rapid ascendency of science fiction book popularity from the 1960's on.
4. The influence of radio plays, movies and television on science fiction.
5. The influence of science fiction fandom. Allen should pay close attention to how conventions such as Worldcon spread the popularity of science fiction. He needs to mention groups such as the the pioneering Futurians in the US Northeast during the 1930's, plus long-running groups like the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society (LASFS) and Northeast Science Fiction Association (NESFA).
(The F-bomb in the middle is silent.)
The board that Paul Allen has assembled sounds excellent, but one name was missing from the article. He has *got* to get Harlan on board. The man is not only entertaining as hell, but has a real passion for the history of SF. (Just don't let him hear you call it "sci-fi", or he'll rail at you about "skiffy".)
Come on, guys, there's no reason to register when you use the correct links into NYT!!
Is there really this much gender bias in SciFi? I mean, c'mon, we were brought up on the same stuff. There are girl trekkies, there are girl star wars fans, there are girl just about everything these days, and don't even get me started on the chick whom I used to live with, the one who actually made a peacekeepers (i think) coat, and wore it every day. Something with the Farscape stuff, that's not my scifi theme so I'm not familiar. Me, I'm more of a Stanislaw Lem and early Asimov girl. We're out here. We will go to the 'part museum, part theme park' but it won't be because it's a little boy's wonderland. (although, with all of us showing up, it might be more of a grownup scifiboy's dream house)
Seriously, it's 2003. Can we get a little gender bias LEFT OUT of the major media for a change? Especially on the Scifi thing? Now i gotta go find my chrome miniskirt and my disintregration pistol and hunt him down, with my cohorts in their coverall-type armour from some other show (Later star trek, i think) and my neighbour in her Jedi gear, and that's just so not what i needed to be doing this morning...
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
Remember the episode where Fry wants to watch Star Trek but he can't because it's been banned after it became the laregest religion ever and almost destryoed the world? If this thing gets made we are all soooooooo screwed. The battle between the old testament and the new testament will now be between Kirk vs. Picard, old Trek vs. new.
Everybody denies I am a genius--but nobody ever called me one!
As a former resident of Seattle, all I have to say is please dear god, Seattle doesn't need another Experience Music Project (One of Mr. Allen's other attempts at a "shrine" in Seattle). That thing is the ugliest eyesore there ever was.
a -building-its-not-ugly-its-art look of the thing.
Hey maybe they should put all of the music stuff in a better looking building, and turn the EMP into the Sci-Fi shrine? At least then he could justify the hideous, cat-just-coughed-up-this-technicolor-hairball-of-
Like a huge SF library. Or he could buy a small publisher and reprint some of the really good books that are mouldering (figuratively speaking) on various authors backlists. Or bring back some authors that were writing really good original SF that were submerged in the glut of media-based offerings (not that media-based SF is inherently bad, but much of it is ironically pedestrian and repetitive, given that it is (in name) science fiction). Daniel Keyes Moran, anyone?
What this museum project on "literary science fiction" says to me is: "Not clear on the concept".
Floating face-down in a river of regret...and thoughts of you...