In 1993, the Office of Residential Life approved an unorthodox but thoroughly debated application for a new interest house on campus — the Sci-Fi House. That first year, the interest house was located in Parr House, a tiny now-demolished building near the upper Arb. Michelle Herder ’97, who was a freshman that year, fondly remembers spending Saturday evenings with Carleton’s Science Fiction Alliance (SFA) in the cramped house.
“My first year [at Carleton] was the last year that “Star Trek: the Next Generation” was airing, so the big Saturday night event was watching the new episode in the TV lounge in Watson…. After that, roughly half of us would troop up the hill to the small house, and then we would watch whatever: sometimes it would be somebody saying, ‘Hey, I want to watch this old movie;’ or, ‘I brought my collection of anime, and I want to show it;’ or people who lived off campus were like, ‘Hey, there’s this new show called The X-Files that I think people would like,’” Herder said.
After that successful first year, Sci-Fi House was relocated to the larger (and also now-demolished) Berg House. Herder moved in.
In the 33 years since, Sci-Fi House was relocated once more to Benton House, and SFA officially expanded to be the “Science Fiction and Fantasy Alliance” rather than just the “Science Fiction Alliance.” But the spirit of the house (and the club acronym) has stayed the same.
In the Benton house living room, where SFA meets every Friday at 7:00 p.m, the club’s history is tangible: a diligently burned set of Star Trek DVDs fills a bookshelf underneath the TV; a now-graduated student’s chainmail art still hangs on a bulletin board; and posters, spanning generations of sci-fi and fantasy media, cover the room from wall to wall to ceiling.
SFA Captain Daniel O’Connor ’28, said that the “Wrath of Khan” (1982) poster — a massive retro-style print that keeps falling down — is his favorite.
“That’s definitely my favorite poster…. It makes me think of someone buying [the poster] when that movie came out, when that was the style. And now the poster is still here, and it’s still beautiful” O’Connor said.
According to Herder, that poster may have been in Sci-Fi House since she was at Carleton.
“I think I actually remember the ‘Wrath of Khan’ poster,” Herder said. “Yeah, I think it literally is 30 years old.”
Many of the stories behind the artifacts in Benton House are forgotten — no one knows which alum brought the portrait poster of Worf from “Star Trek: The Next Generation” (1987), and no one knows which alum stuck googly eyes onto the poster — but the space still has what SFA Vice President Ruby Nicholson ’27 described as a distinctive “historic vibe.”
Most of the house’s collected sci-fi/fantasy paraphernalia lives in the lending library, a dedicated room in Benton house for books that students can borrow.
“I don’t shut up about it, but I feel like more people should know about [the lending library], because there’s just all this stuff there… We want people to come and read the books,” said Clara Field ’28, SFA treasurer and Benton House librarian. “There are a lot of books. Also Nerf guns; I don’t know why those are there.”
Alongside the books and Nerf guns, the lending library also holds board games collected by Sci-Fi House residents over the past three decades. O’Connor specifically pointed out a complicated homemade “Star Trek Voyager” board game that some alumni had left in the lending library. Nicholson also mentioned that some of the board games and books in the lending library are rare and highly valued.
“There are some really old editions of Twilight Imperium, which is this aggressively complicated board game. They put the 2nd edition there! It’s just like, ‘Wow, this is crazy.’… Especially today, in our age, older media can just slip through the cracks so easily. It’s very nice that this place has an archival element,” Nicholson said.
Herder remembers the lending library’s early days, when the collection was conceived as a place for students to store and share books that wouldn’t fit in their dorm rooms. The permanent collection accumulated over the years as students decided to leave their books at the house after graduating.
“One of my favorite science fiction authors is Ursula K. Le Guin,” O’Connor said. “For my whole life, she’s been one of the most famous authors. She’s a classic. Everyone knows Ursula K. Le Guin. But there are first edition Ursula K. Le Guin books back there [in the lending library] that someone bought when those books first came out, when no one had ever heard of Ursula K. Le Guin before…. I feel camaraderie with whoever bought those books — we have the same interests.”
All of the interviewed Sci-Fi House residents, both present and past, mentioned the unique benefits of living in a community brought together by fandom.
“Everyone here really loves something — everyone is really passionate about something,” Nicholson said. “And they are willing to listen to you talk about your hyperfixation for hours.”
Herder said that some of her best memories center around the same mutual passion and curiosity mentioned by the current residents of Sci-Fi House.
“You would come downstairs in the morning, and sometimes you’d find several people either still awake or who had gotten up before you, and they would be like, ‘I have a really serious question about the Muppets for you,’” Herder said. “The eight of us who lived in the house are mostly still in pretty good communication with each other, even now.”
“When we manage to get together, at reunion or something else, it’s just like picking up where we left off,” Herder said. “We’ll get together, catch up on ‘How’s work?’ ‘What’s going on in your life generally?’ And pretty soon we get to ‘I read this really cool book,’ or ‘What shows are you watching?’ So we’re like having the same conversations we had 30 years ago.”
As fandom culture, Carleton’s housing rules and media formats have changed, SFA and Sci-Fi House have adapted.
“At the time, [in the 90s], we were really running off of a VCR and recording things off the television. We relied on people who lived off campus because you couldn’t record more than one show at the same time,… and then sometimes we got a power outage, so we would miss the show altogether,” Herder said. “People who lived off campus served as backups and made their own recordings. We were always like, bringing VHS tapes with the last three weeks of the X-Files on them. And people were sharing their bootleg tapes of Doctor Who episodes recorded off of somebody’s public television station and things like that. In the early internet pre-streaming world, just getting your hands on certain media could be hard.”
In 2026, SFA uses streaming services to watch contemporary and classic sci-fi/fantasy shows and movies. Two of the shows SFA voted to watch this term — “The X-Files” and “Star Trek” — are the same shows Herder watched at SFA three decades ago.
SFA holds meetings every Friday in the Benton House living room from 7:00 p.m. until midnight. The club is also holding a Star Wars event at Benton House on May 4 — ‘may the fourth’ day.