DOWNTOWN — When protagonists in sci-fi stories discover alternate realities, incredibly high stakes are often involved.
From the Flash in “Crisis on Infinite Earths” to Miles Morales in “Across the Spider-Verse” and Evelyn Wang in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” time travel and parallel earths spell potential doom for our heroes.
But in the Adler Planetarium’s new animated presentation, “Niyah and the Multiverse,” opening Saturday, encountering one’s future self doesn’t portend the End of All Things. Instead, it’s an excuse to get excited about art and science.
The 30-minute movie takes Niyah, serving as a proxy for the audience, on a visually dazzling tour of theoretical other worlds, all with an Afrofuturist flavor. Our titular protagonist is a Chicago adolescent who reads comic books, dabbles in music and embraces STEM studies. When she meets her future adult self, they explore concepts of theoretical physics, discussing three ideas about our unseen universe.
The homegrown animated short is Adler’s new Sky Show screened in the Planetarium’s state-of-the-art, dome-shaped Grainger Sky Theater.
Museum officials commissioned the film, hiring local Black creators to write the script, compose the music and provide the voices. One of their goals was to combine concepts of the multiverse with principles of multiculturalism.
“We want to engage all the science, but we also want to engage the way this young girl relates to identity and culture,” screenwriter Ytasha L. Womack said. “In thinking and talking about Afrofuturism, we wanted to express that our cultural relationship to space and time helps inform people as much as hard science does. Imagination, liberation, technology, mysticism — they’re all a part of it.”
Womack should know. The Chatham author and filmmaker literally wrote the book: “Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci Fi & Fantasy Culture,” published in 2013. A scholar of how culture, art and science intersect, she also wrote “Black Panther: A Cultural Exploration,” released last year.
Along with co-writer and co-producer Taylor Witten, Womack interviewed Adler astronomers regarding theories about the cosmos. They balanced that input with artistic considerations to narrow the film’s focus to three particular ideas: Many Worlds, Bubble Universe and Shadow Matter.
Geza Gyuk, Adler’s senior director of Astronomy, said if he had to choose from the three, “I’d go with the Many Worlds theory. Quantum theory tells us that our version of reality is only one of an uncountable number of possible realities existing in parallel. Quantum mechanics is very well tested, and so this interpretation, with the constant splitting of the universe — our own world, we ourselves, splitting constantly in a very physical but ineffable way — is pretty rock solid.”
While theoretical physics and Afrofuturist culture might not be everyday fare at most science-focused museums, the new Sky Show fits right into the planetarium’s mission, Gyuk said.
“The Adler has always been interested in more than simply sharing facts with our audiences. We really want to share our enthusiasm about astronomy and space,” he said. “‘Niyah and the Multiverse’ is very much aligned with this.”
The film accomplishes its goals with panache, sharing mind-boggling information with storytelling verve and eye-popping visual flair. A sequence in which Niyah visits ancient Egypt highlights the screenwriters’ witty choices: She meets a black cat named Bast, named after the ancient feline deity, who helps explain the concept of Schrödinger’s cat.
“Working on this show was a blast,” Gyuk said. “The whole production team was invested in getting the concepts right, and of course we were also invested in making the show engaging and beautiful. There is a sort of duality between art and science … so to be on a team that really understood that we could have both in this show was a fantastic experience.”
That duality is “something we hope to really bridge with this story: Niyah is a DJ who likes comics, and she also really likes science,” Womack said. “There’s a natural relationship between these ideas, because they’re all ways of helping us understand who we are in the world.”
“Niyah and the Multiverse” opens Saturday and will run daily. General admission to the Adler is $19, $8 for kids 3-11. Tickets to Sky Shows, including “Niyah,” cost an additional $9. Chicago residents get a $2 discount.
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