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February 11, 2006
My Favorite Nerdy Thing In The Nerd Museum
What You Need To Know About The Sci-Fi Hall Of Fame and Museum
After six months of living in C@L, I finally took the plunge last weekend and made the long-awaited and inevitable pilgrimmage to what might be the nerdiest place in an admittedly nerdy town. That is, I finally went to the Science Fiction Museum and Hall Of Fame.
A bit of full disclosure before I proceed: I'm a gigantic sci-fi dork. I grew up reading science fiction, and although I don't tear through it like I once did, I'm certainly not above the occasional schlocky sci-fi epic. (That's right. I said sci-fi epic. And I'm not above it!) So the trip to the sci-fi museum is something I've been thinking about for a while. I mean, I'm familiar with the subject area; I wanted to see what this museum thing was all about.
Right. So if I had to summarize, I'll say that the Sci-Fi Museum and Hall Of Fame is pretty dorky, even by my dorkiest standards. It's pretty brutal. I mean, sure, I'd read or seen pretty much all of the fictions referenced by said museum, and I still thought it was pretty rough.
About half the exhibition space is devoted to the history of sci-fi literature. Mostly, that means first editions of sci-fi books behind glass. But we're not really talking about a Gutenberg Bible here. We're talking about genre fiction that was written (in some cases) 20 years ago. Hmmm.
The other half of the exhibition space holds a collection of, for lack of a better term, leftovers from the prop department. Cylon outfits from the 70s TV series, Klingon weapons, Darth Vader masks -- stuff like that. This must be what Bi-Mon-Sci-Fi-Con feels like. And, if you weren't yet snickering enough, you get the added thrill of noting that almost all of the Hollywood props are from the "Paul Allen Family Collection." So let me get this straight. Paul Allen bought all of this crap and then built a museum to show it all off? Is that really what this is all about?
All that said, I'll admit that there was at least one item in the Sci-Fi museum that led me to legitimately marvel/ ooh-and-ahh. That would be the handwritten manuscript of The Baroque Cycle. Apparently C@L resident and Sci-Fi Hall Of Fame Board member Neal Stephenson wrote the whole thing by hand, using a fountain pen. They have both the gigantic stack of handwritten pages and the fountain pen -- along with the lineup of empty ink cartridges. It's bad enough that Neal Stephenson wrote a 3,000-page trilogy, but to do it by hand? Wow. Pretty cool! Well worth the price of admission!
(See above in re: being a big dork. Guilty as charged.)
Posted by thatkid at February 11, 2006 10:47 PM under
C@L
, Stuff To Buy
Comments
Here's my big takeaway from the SciFi Museum: Paul Allen IS the 40 Year Old Virgin. Figurines and all.
Posted by: The Dilettante at February 12, 2006 2:21 PM
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