Robby the Robot! Captain Kirk’s chair! The Dr. Zaius ape suit! Sci-fi obsessives, get ready to geek out: Paul Allen’s Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, the first US institution dedicated to the genre, opens June 18 in Seattle. The $20 million mecca occupies a wing of the Frank Gehry-designed Experience Music Project (shown at right) and will house one-of-a-kind film and TV artifacts, rare first-edition books, and out-of-this-world interactive exhibits. Former NASA big shot Donna Shirley’s appointment as director makes perfect sense: When you’re visiting giant killer robots from outer space, it’s nice have someone experienced on the bridge.
Geeking Out With Museum Director Donna Shirley
WIRED: How’d you manage to get your hands on so much cool stuff?
SHIRLEY: Paul Allen has donated a lot of wonderful things, including Captain Kirk’s chair. We have the alien queen from Aliens, loaned to us by Jim Cameron. And then we have a number of artifacts that we’ve purchased, like science fiction pulp magazine covers. We’ve got Robby the Robot, and Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still. We have R2-D2 and the Planet of the Apes costume of Dr. Zaius.
How will you show it all off?
Each exhibit is worked into a story. When you walk into Homeworld, which is the first gallery, you’ll see a 6-foot globe that’s going to have all kinds of information about science fiction projected on it. So it’s like a three-dimensional trailer for the whole museum. The armory, which holds all the ray guns, talks about a progression from the very earliest days of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon to the present. We talk about the fact that lasers are now real. So we’re linking everything as much as possible to real science and engineering.
What about sci-fi’s influence on people?
Well, I’m a very good example. I started reading science fiction when I was 11, and it was certainly one of the things that propelled me into my career. Arthur C. Clarke envisioned a communications satellite in geosynchronous orbit in 1945. And Wernher von Braun had American science fiction pulp magazines smuggled to him in Germany when he was building the V-2 rocket.
Are you worried you’ll only attract Klingons?
In this country we don’t have enough people who understand science and engineering, so all sorts of bad decisions are made that involve technology. So we’re using science fiction to encourage people to, first, be more literate. Second, we want to get them interested in science and engineering. Science fiction is actually a very powerful social phenomenon. It poses questions like: What kind of cities might there be in the future? What kind of organizations? We hope to get people interested in thinking about the nuts and bolts of what-if.
- Greta Lorge
credit Corbis
Seattle’s Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame
credit Courtesy Edelman for the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame
Dr. Who patrol pistol
credit Courtesy Edelman for the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame
Dr. Zaius costume from Planet of the Apes
credit Courtesy Edelman for the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame
Agridome model used in Silent Running
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The Sci-Fi Experience
