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Sneak Peek at Paul Allen's Sci-Fi Museum
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.
Took me a while to find them...
Here (without the annoying popup)
After seeing those... I'm disappointed to say the least.
Casual Games/Downloads
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A newcomer to Seattle arrives on a rainy day. She gets up the next day and it's raining. It also rains the day after that, and the day after that. She goes out to lunch and sees a young kid and, out of despair, asks, "Hey, kid, does it ever stop raining around here?" The kid says, "How do I know? I'm only 6."
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"I can't believe it," said the tourist. "I've been here an entire week and it's done nothing but rain. When do you have summer here?" "Well, that's hard to say," replied the local. "Last year, it was on a Wednesday." ----
A curious fellow died one day and found himself in limbo waiting in a long, long line for judgment. As he stood there, he noticed that some souls were allowed to march right through the gates of heaven. Others were led over to Satan, who threw them into a lake of fire. Every so often, instead of hurling a poor soul into the fire, Satan would toss him or her to one side.
After watching Satan do this several times, the fellow's curiosity got the better of him. He strolled over and tapped the devil on the shoulder.
"Excuse me, there, Your Darkness," he said. "I'm waiting in line for judgment, and I couldn't help wondering why you are tossing some people aside instead of flinging them into the fires of hell with the others?"
"Ah," Satan said with a grin. "Those are from Seattle. They're too wet to burn."
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A Californian, a Texan and a man from Seattle meet in a bar. They are good friends and are chatting away, when suddenly, the Californian grabs a bottle of fine chardonnay, throws it up in the air, and shoots it coming back down.
The Seattle guy and the Texan are naturally amazed! They say, "Now why the heck would you do a thing like that?" they ask. He replies, "Well, there's a lot of wine where I come from, so it's not really as important to me." The Texan says, "OK, whatever."
About 5 minutes later, the Texan grabs a bottle of fine tequilla, throws it up in the air, and shoots it coming back down. The Californian and the Seattle guy say, "Lemme guess. There's a lot of tequilla where you come from, so it does't mean that much to you." Tex says, "Correct."
About 3 minutes later, the Seattle guy finishes off his beer, throws the bottle up in the air, pulls out his gun and shoots the Californian, and finally catches the bottle coming back down. The Texan is totally stunned! "Now what in heck made you do that?!?!? You're probably going to be put in prison and executed!!!"
The Seattle guy says, "Well there's a lot of Californians where I come from, and I thought I would recycle the bottle."
Ira Flatow's "Science Friday" will broadcast from the museum on Friday 6/18.
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Paul Allen, David Brin, Octavia Butler and others will be interviewed in the first hour.
The second hour will be about Mars, factual and science fictional.
Here is NPR's information page:
http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/2004/Jun/hour1
Stefan Jones
They took the action figures out of their original packaging!?!?!?!
I notice that this new museum doesn't allow visitors to photograph the exhibits, much like Allen's Heritage Flight Museum or whatever the hell it's called that has a lot of vintage aircraft. This gives me the impression that Allen's being just a little vain with something he's ostenstibly putting on public display... and perhaps perpetuating the intellectual-property protection mantra of his old pals at Microsoft. Can anybody here give a valid reason for prohibiting photography?
In this MP3 clip on flash photography's effect on art, 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.
The Straight Dope also answers a question about flash photography's damage to art.
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I went to the grand opening sneak peak thing last night. I'll add a few comments.
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
Most media SF is 30-40 years behind written SF, both in topics and style. Few current SF movie or TV shows show concepts that weren't already old-hat in the 1970's SF literature. This museum doesn't seem to be afraid of gently pointing this out. As many board members are SF writers I could guess how they'd push giving credit where it is due. Of course the movies have had much more influence in terms of numbers of people seeing them (I read a calculation saying 23 of the top 25 movies by popularity have been SF/fantasy).
But for influence on science and technology- the books and stories have done quite a lot more. For one example, I like a quote that Cory Doctorow (who does fine post-singularity writing) has on Neuromancer:
I think Heinlein created more engineers than Sputnik did.(1) When talking about SF topics, pop writers can get away with a show of ignorance that wouldn't work for many other genres. How many reviewers compare a movie to anything more than other movies and/or "the Time Machine, F451, Ray Bradbury, Star Wars, the Matrix [and if they've done extra research] P.K.Dick"? That'd be like mystery reviewers starting with A.C. Doyle and ending with Agatha Christie. How many reviews of books like "Prey," "Oryx and Crake," "Children of Men" or "Fatherland" mention anything about similar SF books (books written in some cases decades before) and instead talk about how original the popular author's idea is? (For example CoM published in the early 90's, vs Greybeard published in the early 60's. Many reviews of the former didn't mention the latter.)