The trekkie confesses

Arrived in Seattle after a two-hour airport delay and six-hour flight (though in the leather-seat goodness of JetBlue--so it could have been much worse) at 2:30 local time (5:30 in our bodies). So we slept in this morning and woke to grey skies and rain. The Space Needle from the hotel window and from the base in person looks about the same. The Gehry-designed Experience Music experience is worth a gawk--styled, he says, after the curvaceous shapes of electric guitars. But we opted to do the Science Fiction Museum & Hall of Fame instead. We did see so what some rapper's custom camo, Kurt Cobain's thrift-store sweater, and more interesting to me as a lifelong fan one of M. Jackson's sequined gloves, along with the original costume from the TV series Superman. The fashion copywriter in me is required to note that Superman's garb was sweater knit, not jersey. The Batman & Robin costumes were jersey tho, with satin elastic-waist bloomers. They look even dorkier on the mannequins than on the shows, if that's possible.

The SFM exhibits were really pretty cool. The original costumes from some of our fave SF films (like Charleton Heston's sleeveless spacesuit from Planet of the Apes and a Fremen still suit (uh, from Dune!) were neat. A display of rayguns and space-age weapons from the Terminators to the Matrix, and several models of Klingon disrupters, etc. A whole section on helmets that included Darth Vader's visor (!) and a spread from Women's World magazine, circa 1953, with instructions for creating "space helmets" for your (male) children using colanders, kitchen utensils, foil and other household items. A display re: the evolution of the robot--from toys to life-size Danger Will Robinson models. (Sorry, I really wanted to take a pic, but no photos allowed.) The history of SF is covered pretty well, I guess, with a timeline hailing Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley as a precursor (among Poe, et. al) and a really interesting little section on feminism and gender-identity in SF. I could read that dissertation if not write it. Octavia Butler is not (yet) on the Wall of Fame, nor W. Gibson, but Samuel R. Delany is along with the usual big-dog suspects. First editions of SF classics throughout, including The Man in the High Castle, The Martian Chronicles, Slaughterhouse Five, 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, etc. And many of these were displayed next to their original cover paintings. The SF illustration exhibits were some of my faves--scantily clad space babes wrapped in the tentacles of alien creatures, tranquil spacescapes, the red sands of somebody's idea of Mars. (Charlie woulda loved the 40s stuff, particularly.) Neal Stephenson's entire handwritten MSS of all three books of his Baroque Cycle formed impressive twin towers nearly three-feet high! He used fountain pens and blue ink, so the empty cartridges and ink bottles were there too. My favorite part was the SF convention/SF fandom exhibit: some of the best known SF writers today began as fans and their own novels and stories grew out of their obsession with the genre. Ray Bradbury, for instance, began writing stories for a mimeographed fanzine, and published pretty awful illustrations there too. Several examples of zines and early pieces made me think of the po-biz equivalents of chapbooks and small mags. In an interview snippet Bradbury (large squarish lenses perched on his nose with wilder-than-Bly hair but minus Asimov chops) said he felt SF writers were the closest-knit group of literati; they are fans of each others' work, less competitive than mainstream novelists, and cultivate community. Well, that's a paraphrase. One early zine was The Star Trek Compendium, compiled by fans bent on convincing the network not to cancel their beloved program after its first two critically floppish seasons. Another was an alphabetic directory of SF fans--see fans are almost as important as writers in some circles, and the zines were a way for them to communicate with each other and then the conventions grew out the need to swap zines and memorabilia, etc. Like a SF AWP. Best of all, was the props and costumes from the original Star Trek series. I might sound like a dork, but the Lurex® sheen of Captain Kirk's mustard tunic and the captain's chair and control panels (inexpertly welded metal boxes with buttons and knobs affixed haphazardly, really) were cheap and gaudy and absolutely spellbinding.

Yep, I'm a nerd.

Friends waiting in the hotel bar. Gotta run.