Concept
: In order to represent and allow further exploration of ideas embedded in The Spaceship, ideas to do with science fiction, outer space, the universe, theories of future technologies, of dystopias and utopias; and both current and historical debates about advanced technological societies embedded in The Well and narratives of possible futures, I had the idea for a third part of the work, to make a physical triangle, a triptych, across the city and on both sides of the river, to embody these ideas and discussions.
This
would be a second pavilion, higher up in the city and on the other
side of the Garonne, which would be a library of science fiction.
It would include both current and historical works from a diverse
range of science fiction writers, some of whom were/are also political
thinkers. It seemed perfect to have at the centre of this pavilion
a telescope, so that audiences can physically see into outer space
at the same time as reading from the books. This was the idea for The Observatory/Science-Fiction Library.
Instead
of building a new pavilion from scratch it is proposed to use an
existing observatory, the Grand Equatorial de l'observatoire de
Floirac.
The Observatory Library will contain books by Mary Shelley, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Jules Verne, Jerome K. Jerome, H. G. Wells, Jack London, Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, John Wyndham, Clifford D. Simak, Ayn Rand, Robert A. Heinlein, A. E. van Vogt, Pierre Boulle, Anthony Burgess, Arthur C. Clarke, Stephen Baxter, Doris Lessing, Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert, Ray Bradbury, Stanislaw Lem, Kurt Vonnegut, Philip K. Dick, Philippe Curval, Ursula le Guin, Joanna Russ, Larry Niven, Margaret Atwood, Samuel R. Delany, William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Neal Stephenson, Ann Leckie, David Mitchell, Ada Palmer and Malka Older.
