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It's a Brave New Museum ; Science Fiction Gets Its Due in a Novel Celebration of the Boundless Human Imagination

Posted on: Saturday, 19 June 2004, 06:00 CDT

A long time ago, in what now seems like a galaxy far, far away, a thesis adviser told James Gunn that science fiction was "sub- literary" and not worthy of study.

Kids laughed when a youngster named Ray Bradbury brought pulp magazines to school, with their pictures of bug-eyed monsters and stories of other worlds.

And a Seattle boy named Paul Allen, when he wasn't tinkering on computers with his buddy Bill Gates, was losing himself in speculative tales by master authors such as Robert Heinlein.

As the country's first Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame opens today, it's being hailed as a place to celebrate a relatively young art form; as a way to educate the public on science fact as well as fiction; as a fun appreciation of popular culture - and, to many, as a repudiation of geekdom for a genre that hasn't always gotten its due.

"To me it represents a kind of validation of the significance of science fiction in our culture, and another step in the ways of furthering the kind of values that science has to offer," said Gunn, a member of the museum's advisory board and director of the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas.

The 13,000 square feet of display space, initially bankrolled with a $20 million contribution from billionaire Allen, is in the Experience Music Project at Seattle Center. As with EMP, its artifacts are drawn in large part from the personal collection of Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, and its displays don't always fit the traditional image of a museum.

It has splashy interactive toys as well as archived artifacts, including a computerized "spacedock" where the ships from "Star Trek,""Star Wars" and other classics soar in the same starry universe.

"I think of it as a museum, but maybe it's a new-seum?" said Anne Adams, who is overseeing the project for Allen's company, Vulcan Inc. "This museum is as much about the ideas and the stories as it is about the things."

Part of its mission is to instruct people on so-called real science through the use of science fiction; part is to spread awareness of the genre. It has scattered items that make serious collectors smile, such as the original annotated manuscript of the first "space opera" (E.E. "Doc" Smith's "The Skylark of Space"). But cases also include recent paperbacks and common memorabilia along with rare first editions.

There's a purpose to that puzzlement, said senior curator Jacob McMurray. "It's really easy to kind of fetishize a lot of things, like, `We only have first-edition things, things that are rare,'" he said.

"But at the same time, you want to let people know it isn't this dead thing you're looking at. Science fiction is living and breathing, and you can go out to the bookstore and buy the same edition of something we have on exhibit."

Overall, the museum is at its best with exhibits such as an extensive display on Mars (no surprise, as director Donna Shirley once led NASA's Mars program). It chronicles how science fiction's vision of Mars evolved along with scientific knowledge about the planet.

The allure of water-filled canals and "Mars Attacks!" aliens faded in 1965, Shirley explains in an accompanying documentary, when spacecraft flew by that planet and "killed off all the Martians" by showing that it couldn't have supported the communities they imagined.

It took more than 15 years before science fiction authors began writing about Mars again, she said. And they gained fresh inspiration from innovations such as the first Mars Rover mission in the 1990s (represented at the museum with a half-scale model, on loan from Shirley's own collection).

Other displays are shallower, grouping items in categories without providing much insight on their significance. And it's jarring at times to see the way artifacts have been displayed. For example, the initial "Amazing Stories" pulp from 1926, considered by some as the start of the modern age of science fiction, is classified not by its landmark rarity but by the image of Saturn on its cover.

"You have to be kind of this ambassador," said McMurray. "You have to be able to do an exhibit that people that don't like science fiction are going to be able to relate to, but also imbue it with enough insights or material that the true fans will love it as well."

The museum may be non-traditional, but its approach generally sounds "all to the good," said Bruce Altshuler, director of the graduate program in museum studies at New York University. There's a grand history of museums beginning with private collections and later filling in their gaps, he noted.

Interactive displays can broaden the museum's audience and deepen their interest in the material. Including themed exhibits rather than chronologies, and new items as well as old, can have value in itself, depending on how well the items are curated.

"One thing that one finds is that museums seem more and more similar so I tend to see value in idiosyncrasy, eccentricity and the opportunity to see things that wouldn't otherwise be viewed," Altshuler said.

Plans for other science-fiction museums have been floated in the past, but they've never come to pass, said board member David G. Hartwell, a senior editor at Tor/Forge books and publisher of the New York Review of Science Fiction.

"This one was, to put it politely, well-funded," he said.

Allen provided space in EMP (where the failed "Artists Journey" exhibit used to be) and the start-up funds, which chiefly went toward renovations, Shirley said. Museum staff had full access to his personal collection, and the Allen name helped generate "wow"- factor loans of exhibit items such as the original E.T. (courtesy of George Lucas) and the Alien Queen from the "Aliens" movie (from director James Cameron).

Exhibits from TV and movie blockbusters such as "The Matrix" and "Star Wars" will attract the broadest audience, observers agree. That's a necessity for a non-profit museum that's supposed to become self-supporting over time, with a $12.95 admission fee and hopes for grants and gifts. The mandate for EMP to pay its own way has been problematic, with repeated layoffs and declining attendance since its initial exciting opening in 2000.

Those who love the field are hopeful that the science fiction museum's balancing act is going to work.

"I was really impressed by the depth," said Lisa Woodings, chair of the Northwest Science Fiction Society, after touring the museum Tuesday.

The audience of science fiction fandom won't be enough to keep the new museum afloat, but the general public can and will, predicted Hartwell.

"Frankly, I think every child in America, male and female, under the age of 12 is familiar with science-fiction imagery. They might not go there because they've read Arthur C. Clarke, but they'd like to go because they've read comics and seen movies and those images."

The museum's exhibits will be refined over time, staff said, based in part on audience feedback, on finances, and on what new material becomes available through collectors or the industry. The entire project was conceived and completed in a mere 18 months, in part to capture the larger audience it would draw with a summer opening. Some of the larger-scale relics take longer to arrange, such as getting loans from Lucasfilms, said Adams.

"They will definitely be making a loan to us but they make plans for a year or two in advance."

Science fiction expert Tom Whitmore, of The Other Change of Hobbit bookstore in Berkeley, Calif., said he likes what he's heard of the museum and hopes its depth will match the breadth. He's instinctively cynical about any museum capturing the essence of the field, especially in a way that would appeal to a broad audience - but that impulse is tempered by seeing the quality of the people behind the project, he said.

And the collection it starts with will be only part of the real issue, he said.

"What they'll accumulate, in the long run, through goodwill in the community and their own hard work, is much more important."

OPENING DAY EVENTS

The public dedication ceremony will begin at 10 a.m. today. People are invited to attend in "out of this world" costumes, with free gifts for the first 100 to do so.

National Public Radio's "Science Friday" will be broadcast live from the museum 11 a.m.-1 p.m., focusing on the relationship between science fiction and science fact.

Several noted science-fiction figures from the museum's advisory board will sign their works and meet with the public at 1 p.m., including authors Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, David Brin and Octavia Butler, and artist Michael Whelan.

Physicist Lawrence Krauss, author of "The Physics of Star Trek," will lead a presentation at 7 p.m. on the "Star Trek" universe and modern physics.

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