A new exhibition exploring how scientists and science fiction creators have inspired one another will open at the Science Museum next month.
Science Fiction: Voyage to the Edge of Imagination will place visitors at the heart of an interactive science fiction story in which they’ll board an extra-terrestrial spaceship accompanied by an AI guide, touch down on an unexplored world and gaze over planet Earth.
The immersive experience, featuring a specially-developed alien language, has been designed by award-winning creative studio, Framestore, and curated by the Science Museum Group.
Exhibits on display will include classic literature such as a first edition of Jules Verne’s From the Earth, a model of the USS Enterprise signed by Nichelle Nicols and George Takei, a hypersleep chamber from Prometheus, a gold spacesuit from Sunshine and a Pan African Flag and Traveller Suit from artist Larry Achiampong’s Relic Traveller series.
Other highlights include Daleks, an alien from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a scale model of a radio telescope used by scientists at SETI in their attempts to detect intelligent life, a model of a Saturn V rocket and a replica of the Apollo 17 Space Suit worn by Gene Cernan, the last man on the moon.
Sir Ian Blatchford, Director and Chief Executive of the Science Museum Group, said: “Science fiction invites us all to be explorers, venturing across time and space while reflecting on the deepest existential question there is – what makes us human?
“Our ambitious exhibition is unlike any other and I cannot wait for visitors to join us on this immersive and interactive journey through the extraordinary worlds of science fiction and scientific discovery.”
Dr Glyn Morgan, Lead Curator for the exhibition, said: ‘Science fiction offers us the chance to observe our own planet and consider our impact upon it.
“Visitors will see bright futures the genre has imagined and be confronted by some of the biggest threats to our existence – climate change, ecological devastation and nuclear war – as we invite them to consider how often-dystopian imaginings could give us the intellectual and emotional tools to imagine and create more utopian futures.”
Science Fiction: Voyage to the Edge of Imagination
6 October 2022 – 4 May 2023
Tickets: sciencemuseum.org.uk/science-fiction