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HEMISPHERESMAGAZINE.COM
•
JUNE 2012
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ILLUSTRATIONS BY PETER OUMANSKI
23
GLOBETROTTING
BACK TO THE FUTURE
Taking stock of sci-fi
predictions at a new exhibit
BY JONMARCUS
SEATTLE
IT’S PERHAPS THE
most iconic
piece of furniture in the galaxy:
Captain Kirk’s command chair. And
now the macho Naugahyde throne
of the
USS Enterprise
is beaming
back from the farthest reaches of
space to give us a glimpse of the
future—or at least, the future as we
used to imagine it.
“There’s a little bit of nostalgia
for the future that didn’t happen,”
says Brooks Peck, the curator of
“Icons of Science Fiction,” an exten-
sive permanent exhibition opening
this month at Seattle’s Frank
Gehry–designed EMP Museum.
“It’s strange that science fiction can
be nostalgic, but it is.”
Although the “Lost in Space”
robot and the
Star Wars
Death Star
haven’t arrived yet, Lieutenant
Uhura’s mod uniform from
“Star Trek” is already on display,
for the first time ever, along with
her uncomfortable-looking ear-
piece. There’s Yoda’s walking
stick, Darth Vader’s light saber,
a Dalek from “Doctor Who,”
Neo’s trench coat from
The Matrix
Reloaded
—even animation cels
from “The Powerpuff Girls”—all
organized around some of sci-fi’s
more popular “what if” questions:
What if we were enslaved by
robots? What if we could explore
the stars? What if we could design
our children?
The world might not have turned
out the way we thought, Peck says,
but that’s not to say that the reality
isn’t just as interesting. Many of
the items in the exhibit come from
the collection of EMP founder
Paul Allen, who as co-founder of
Microsoft is someone who obvi-
ously played a major role in how our
future ultimately
did
unfold.
“There are two computers in this
room that are more powerful than
anything on ‘Star Trek,’” Peck says,
nodding toward a pair of cell-
phones. “The future is just different
than we expected.”