An excellent day in Rotterdam yesterday, ending with this appropriately Bladerunner-esque sunset shortly before a screening of Alien, which in turn was tied to the ongoing Science Fiction: a Journey Into the Unknown exhibition at the Kunsthal, which I recommend wholeheartedly. It’s rare to see an exhibition aimed at a general audience on your own field of interest that doesn’t make you angry, and this felt genuinely well conceptualised, if a little canted toward the rationalistic/”hard” formulation of the genre (wot no New Wave/New Weird?)

A lot of cinema props in the catalogue, but fewer than I expected, and some excellent paleofuturological material that serves to remind us just how long a flogging that some dead horses have been enduring. And of course these images made great bonus gimmicks for highly addictive products like cigarettes:

The Kunsthal is a fine and recent neo-brutalust edifice, and excellent value: €12 gets you into everything, and there’s lots to see. A fine addition to a very walkable city; set aside a full afternoon for it.

Bonus sfnal sublime: the new floodproof archive building currently under construction next to the New Institute, a vast concrete boat/bowl/spaceship dropped onto an empty plain.

And it wouldn’t be a proper trip to Rotterdam without a portrait of the notorious Buttplug Gnome, would it?