Not the Experience in Seattle, home of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, but a real live Museum of Science Fiction is being built in Washington, DC, and it is yet another project being built by crowdfunding. It will cover the history of the genre in all the various media, and examine its relationship to the real world. As they say on their You Tube page: Our mission is to create a center of gravity where art and science are powered by imagination. This effort is headed up by science fiction authors Greg Bear and David Brin, and their crowdfunding is centered at Indiegogo. They are starting by building a preview museum to open next year, and hoping to open the full scale facility by 2017. The preview museum will have exhibits including Star Trek, Star Wars, and Doctor Who artifacts, as both a warm up and an additional fund raising effort. Thanks to USA Today for the heads up on this one.
I actually took some time off the other week, and besides attending NADWCon I spent a bit of time at the National Aquarium while hanging out in Baltimore. One of the more interesting exhibits was the Jellyfish section, which had quite a selection of types. As I remembered from swimming in the ocean, Jellyfish are not real good at orienting to the local up and down, which should be a bit of a plus for surviving in space (or any other zero G environment).
If you didn’t make it to the Smithsonian’s Air And Space Museum a few weeks ago for the presentation of the Star Trek’s Continuing Relevance symposium, it is now posted to Ustream, and I have embedded it here for your edification.
Video streaming by Ustream
The original model used in filming the Star Trek series was donated to the Smithsonian, and now they have produced and published an X-Ray Analysis of the Starship Enterprise for everyone to enjoy. You can also see pictures there of where it now hangs in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. If you are in the neighborhood you can attend the Star Trek’s Continuing Relevance symposium at 1PM on Thursday May 16th at the Moving Beyond Earth exhibit in Gallery 113. I should probably also mention that they will not be showing Star Trek Into Darkness at the IMAX theater at the Air and Space Museum on the mall, but they will be showing it at the Udvar-Hazy Center Airbus IMAX Theater in Chantilly, VA. That is the Air and Space annex out by Dulles Airport, you should time your attendance to be able to wander through the Udvar-Hazy Center Museum and see their incredible collection of exhibits, which includes the Space Shuttle Discovery.
If you want to attend the Smithsonian’s Star Trek #SIBeamUp! on May 16th you probably want to get your applications in now, as attendance will be very limited. They will give the ten social media users who gain entry a closer look at the Star Trek goodies in the Air and Space Museum collection (including the Tribbles and the original Enterprise model), and the winners will be able to talk with the curators about the collection. If you want to attend you need to go to the #SIBeamUp! page and fill out and submit the form before noon tomorrow (Monday, May 6th). Winners will be informed by email on May 7th. The event will be held the morning of May 16th at the Air and Space Museum on the mall in DC, and even if you don’t win into the up-close-and-personal event, you can still attend the Star Trek’s Continuing Relevance symposium at 1PM at the Moving Beyond Earth exhibit in Gallery 113.
The Art of Video Games is a new exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, with a collection of 80 games, interviews with the creators, quite a bit of history and background, and a whole lot more. So I am sure not many will be surprised to learn that the folks from Think Geek are making a run to attend the event this weekend , and they are inviting everyone along for the fun. It works like this: meet up at the F Street lobby no later than 12 noon on Saturday, the 26th, to gather and be identified as part of the event. Of course, you might want to sign up ahead of time so if you are one of the winners they know where to send your prizes. At 12:30PM everyone will have been split up into teams of three and start cruising the exhibits, where you will want to pay plenty of attention. Finally, at 2PM, reconvene in the F street lobby to answer questions about the exhibit and the games for a shot at the prizes. This gathering should be a lot of fun, but if you already have plans this weekend the exhibit runs through September 30th, so you still have plenty of time to see it.