Sci-Fi & EMP
(No, not electromagnetic pulse... though that's useful for repelling Sentinels, one of which I saw today. In person, even.)
Short entry today; I've just returned to the hotel and haven't yet had dinner.
Today, we visited the Science Fiction Museum/Hall of Fame and the Experience Music Project. The Sci-Fi exhibits were very interesting, with lots of original TV/movie props and fascinating relics of early fandom (one favorite was a page from a 1930s convention program listing a Who's Who of fandom, including a young aspiring writer named Isaac Asimov, who had written twenty stories and had already sold six of them for publication!). There was even a small exhibit on fan conventions and costuming, and -- although they got the country of origin of the word cosplay wrong -- they correctly attributed the start of fan costuming to Ackerman at the 1939 WorldCon in New York. (Take that, anime cosplay elitists.) ^_^
I really enjoyed the Sci-Fi museum, but I thought it should have been larger, primarily to give more time to certain subjects that weren't covered in the exhibits. For example, virtually no credit was given to comic books or the role they played in popularizing science fiction in the mid-20th century. Also, the focus seemed to be largely on American science fiction, with occasional flashes of foreign literature and film. There were a few references to specific anime (a three-second clip of Evangelion in a montage; specs of the Bebop; robot models from Mobile Suit Gundam; a rather inexplicable scene from a harem show...), but it was spotty, with very little on Japan's influence on American sci-fi in the '80s. There were brief references to Hitchhiker's Guide and Doctor Who, but not much else out of Britain. Overall, the museum seemed less like a cohesive and educational exhibit, and more like a walk through Paul Allan's garage full of sci-fi collectibles.
Also, the gift shop was kind of pathetic. They weren't even selling books! After spending two hours looking at the work and influence of authors like H.G. Wells and Poul Anderson, you'd expect the museum to offer visitors a chance to pick up a few classic sci-fi paperbacks...
The Experience Music Project was wonderful -- if you're a Jimi Hendrix fan. There was a full room dedicated to his life, music and smashed guitars. For the rest of us who are not into orange-and-pink butterfly suits, there was an interesting history of the development of the modern guitar, a very brief walk-through of music from the 1960s-1990s (with an understandable focus on metal and grunge, which largely developed in Washington), and a section on Mexican- and Latin-American-influenced popular music. Much as with the Sci-Fi side, though, there were large holes in the timeline that weren't really dealt with (although the British invasion was referenced a few times, there wasn't much of it represented, and it seemed like we jumped through the 1970s and '80s within about ten feet of display space).
In short, what the museums have on display is, on the whole, done very well. The exhibits still need some expansion to be really balanced, though.
Short entry today; I've just returned to the hotel and haven't yet had dinner.
Today, we visited the Science Fiction Museum/Hall of Fame and the Experience Music Project. The Sci-Fi exhibits were very interesting, with lots of original TV/movie props and fascinating relics of early fandom (one favorite was a page from a 1930s convention program listing a Who's Who of fandom, including a young aspiring writer named Isaac Asimov, who had written twenty stories and had already sold six of them for publication!). There was even a small exhibit on fan conventions and costuming, and -- although they got the country of origin of the word cosplay wrong -- they correctly attributed the start of fan costuming to Ackerman at the 1939 WorldCon in New York. (Take that, anime cosplay elitists.) ^_^
I really enjoyed the Sci-Fi museum, but I thought it should have been larger, primarily to give more time to certain subjects that weren't covered in the exhibits. For example, virtually no credit was given to comic books or the role they played in popularizing science fiction in the mid-20th century. Also, the focus seemed to be largely on American science fiction, with occasional flashes of foreign literature and film. There were a few references to specific anime (a three-second clip of Evangelion in a montage; specs of the Bebop; robot models from Mobile Suit Gundam; a rather inexplicable scene from a harem show...), but it was spotty, with very little on Japan's influence on American sci-fi in the '80s. There were brief references to Hitchhiker's Guide and Doctor Who, but not much else out of Britain. Overall, the museum seemed less like a cohesive and educational exhibit, and more like a walk through Paul Allan's garage full of sci-fi collectibles.
Also, the gift shop was kind of pathetic. They weren't even selling books! After spending two hours looking at the work and influence of authors like H.G. Wells and Poul Anderson, you'd expect the museum to offer visitors a chance to pick up a few classic sci-fi paperbacks...
The Experience Music Project was wonderful -- if you're a Jimi Hendrix fan. There was a full room dedicated to his life, music and smashed guitars. For the rest of us who are not into orange-and-pink butterfly suits, there was an interesting history of the development of the modern guitar, a very brief walk-through of music from the 1960s-1990s (with an understandable focus on metal and grunge, which largely developed in Washington), and a section on Mexican- and Latin-American-influenced popular music. Much as with the Sci-Fi side, though, there were large holes in the timeline that weren't really dealt with (although the British invasion was referenced a few times, there wasn't much of it represented, and it seemed like we jumped through the 1970s and '80s within about ten feet of display space).
In short, what the museums have on display is, on the whole, done very well. The exhibits still need some expansion to be really balanced, though.
posted by **A*V*A** at 6:22 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home