The 2010 class of inductees to the Science Fiction Hall Of Fame has been announced, and this year the inductees are Octavia E. Butler, Richard Matheson, Douglas Trumbull and Roger Zelazny.

Found these on Sci-Fi Wire: First, someone built Minas Tirith out of 420,000 matchsticks over the course of three years – and it looks awesome. And someone else built a foosball table out of Star Wars legos…Read our full article to see some images.
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As an unfortunate followup to a previous story, it appears that Andrew Koenig’s body has been found in a Vancouver park. A police conference is set for 5pm PT (8pm ET). Our condolences to the Koenig family. Update: Walter Koenig confirmed in a press conference. “My son took his own life,” he said.

The 2009 class of movies being preserved in the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry includes 1957’s The Incredible Shrinking Man, the only obviously SF film, although 1979’s The Muppet Movie and Michael Jackson’s Thriller are included in some broad lists…

I’d long heard of Horace L. Gold (and L. Sprague de Camp’s) “most terrifying story to ever appear in Unknown,” novella, None But Lucifer, but I hadn’t realized it was available to be read, not only in print but also online – for free, thanks to Galaxyezine.com

I share some infor about it at:
http://dailyspace.blogspot.com/2009/12/read-none-but-lucifer.html

This post was submitted by TheThunderChild.

Rocketry expert Willy Ley acted as science editor for Galaxy magazine for about ten years. Galaxy was published by Horace Gold. It folded in 1980. There is a webzine, galaxyezine.com, from which I found these two videos, uploaded to YouTube. In them, E.L. Gold tells a couple of amusing Willy Ley stories.

The Thunder Child is launching a couple of new blogs for the new year, one on space exploration and one on marine exploration.

For the stories on Willy Ley (and Gold does a good German accent) check out: http://spaceexplorationchronicles.blogspot.com/2009/12/willy-ley-and-galaxy-and-rockets.html

This post was submitted by TheThunderChild.

The Thunder Child webzine has begun experimenting with Hubpages, and to that end we’ve uploaded an article about Willy Ley there.

Willy Ley, one of the founders of the German Rocket Society and an acknowledged expert on the subject, left Germany as soon as Hitler came to power (out of conviction rather than fear, as he wasn’t Jewish) and eventually settled in the US, where he became friends with Isaac Asimov and a host of science fiction writers, wrote science essays for Galaxy, and so on.

Check the article out at http://hubpages.com/hub/Willy-Ley-Science-Popularizer-Extraordinaire.

This post was submitted by TheThunderChild.

Patrick Stewart is about to be addressed as “Sir” for real – he is to be knighted during this year’s New Years honors.

Dan O’Bannon, who wrote a number of genre screenplays including Alien and Total Recall, passed away Thursday at the age of 63 after battling Crohn’s Disease for over 30 years.

Lucasfilm has had another setback in its case against artist Andrew Ainsworth. An appeals court has ruled that the Stormtrooper’s helmet is not a copyrightable work of art, and therefore Lucasfilm cannot prevent Ainsworth from selling replicas. Ainsworth is the artist who sculpted the original helmet design.