The House of Science Fiction

You've landed in a place where winged humanoids dart and robots roam about sprawling futuristic cities. Have you been teleported to another universe? No, Earthling. You've simply entered the Maison d'Ailleurs, or the House of Elsewhere.

In 1976, French sci-fi buff Pierre Versin donated his collection of tens of thousands of science-fiction books to the Swiss spa town of Yverdon-les-Bains, just north of Lausanne, on the condition that it be made available for public viewing. The result was the launch of Europe's only public science-fiction museum. Since then, the House of Elsewhere has held two or three temporary exhibits a year that explore such staples of the genre as space travel, parallel worlds and alien life forms.

On exhibit until Sept. 23 are Swiss sci-fi artist Christian Lorenz Scheurer's images of imaginary civilizations. His work"helps us discover new realms," says the museum's curator, Patrick Gyger. ...