I went to the Seattle Science Fiction Museum for the first time today (which is surprising considering the number of times I have been to Seattle).  Unfortunately we were not allowed to use cameras inside, so I only have exterior building shots and a floor plan (see below).

The museum is hosted over 2 floors and features props, books, quotes, videos and lots more interesting (to geeks) bits to browse from a variety of sci-fi spanning well over 150 years.

I have never actually read a sci-fi fiction book, but was fascinated to read some of the extracts from novels dating back to the mid 19th century.  Despite the fact that mind twisted realities and space time continuum defying storylines have only become mainstream thanks to television, the concepts and storylines have been around for hundreds of years!  Whilst Hollywood has done a great job of translating the concepts on to the big screen, I am in no doubt that the real pioneers of today’s science fiction plots lived way before television was even invented!

An interesting fact which I was surprised to learn (especially considering I have a Czech girlfriend), was that the word ‘robot’ was actually adapted from the Czech word ‘robota’ which actually translates as ‘hard work’ or ‘drudgery’ in Czech and Slovak.  Wikipedia provides some more information stating that ‘robota’ was a work period a serf had to give for his lord, typically 6 months or a year.  So in other words, robots literally are slaves!  Let’s hope that they never figure that one out for themselves when they get smarter! (Insert Terminator 2 theme music)

Some other highlights from the exhibition included…

1. A scale model of the Start Trek (Original series) film set which was apparantly used to plan how each scene would be filmed
2. A life size (I assume) model of Yoda
3. A giant cinema screen showing the world of the Jetsons, which eventually gets consumed by black smoke and turns in to the dark world of Blade Runner.
4. A model of the Death Star, which has a bass speaker mounted under the floor to rumble as you stand near it – subtle, but effective
5. The Pit Bull hover board from Back to the Future
6. Various phasers from Star Trek

Definitely a great hour or two for a sci-fi fan! My one recommendation for future expansion (just in case Paul Allen or a colleague happens to read this) is to have a section dedicated to time travel.