Highlights of Downtown Seattle: Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame

The other day I had to take an early bus to Seattle for the Penny Arcade Expo and ended up having a few hours to kill. I had seen on a bus billboard that Seattle was home to a Science Fiction museum, and so I did a quick search online to find out where it was. Fortunately, I had a little window of time to visit it, and I found that it was quite worth it.

I made it in at the opening hour at ten, and even on a workday Friday, there was still a small line to get in. Not only that, the museum is conjoined with the Experience Music Project, which I will certainly write about in another article. This is a building that housed both the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame is an architectural marvel of quite odd proportions.

The opening room consisted of a TV screen that was somehow in the shape of a globe. I'd never seen anything of its like, but it showed a lot of clips from old sci-fi shows.

There was also a lot of praise given to the original writers of science fiction. There was an entire wall with portraits of the famed in the science fiction community. Even though others would have probably not been impressed by first editions of books they had, I thought it was good to show who actually inspired science fiction. After all, it wasn't the films of George Lucas or Steven Spielberg that made science fiction great, but writers like Jules Verne, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke.

The museum is collection of odd things from other science fiction shows and films. The first room I entered has all sorts of costumes from old shows like Star Trek. There were uniforms, and even scripts with hand annotations on them. There were models from E.T. and the classic Earth vs. the Flying Saucers. And what would science fiction movies be without the cool weapons? Well, this had all sorts including Harrison Ford's from the classic Blade Runner.

I have to admit that it was cool seeing these props close up, knowing that they had been used for a sci-fi movies that I liked. For example, I saw the Pit Bull skateboard used in Back to the Future II, and the costume from Rocketeer. However, I must admit that several of these props did not look as cool in real life as they did on screen. For example, I saw a costume that Matt Le Blanc wore in Lost in Space, and in the film it looked cool with little lights. However, behind glass it looked kind of fake looking.

The exception to this rule was the alien from Aliens. They had Sirgourney Weaver's big loader costume there, and the alien was as fearsome off screen as he is on. I tried to take a picture with my camera phone, and it didn't do it justice. I mean, if there was someone in the background pulling a lever to make that alien move, I would have jumped in fright.

Most of the exhibits were not very hands on, which might bore younger visitors. There was a three-dimensional computer where you could look up information about different starships from television and movies. They also had a model of the Death Star that would light up and play the "Imperial March/Darth Vader's Theme" from Star Wars.

If you wanted a hands-on museum experience, you should try the one next door at the Experience Music Project. However, the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame is for those who really appreciate science fiction, and would totally enjoy the experience.