There have been several worthwhile news items since my last post on news of the fantastic. Below are some of the more notable items. Those interested in receiving these items as they become available can do so via my Twitter or Facebook posts.

Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum in Danger
Baltimore is where Poe is buried, the location of the “Poe Toaster,” and home to a museum that is located inside a rowhouse in which Poe used to live. But now, with the downward-spiraling economy, the Poe House and Museum is being threatened. Not by monsters or flocks of birds or ghosts, but by something far more insidious: budget cuts. For more than thirty years, the Poe House and Museum has been run by Baltimore’s Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation. But nagging budgetary problems led the city to declare that the museum must become self-sufficient or be closed down. Read that last part again. CLOSED DOWN. Current projections state that the museum will cease operations at the beginning of 2012, if not sooner, unless the city of Baltimore changes its mind.

Walking Dead Gets 6 Saturn Nods
The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror announced today the nominees for this year’s 37th annual Saturn Awards and one of the big winners is our favorite new AMC mini series The walking Dead. It got 6 nods in the Television category.

Director Behind Coraline Making Stop-Motion Horror Movie For Disney
It’s hard to imagine stop motion ever becoming the norm amongst non live action film releases, but the genre has seen almost unparalleled growth recently. Two separate 2009 films, Coraline and Fantastic Mr. Fox, dazzled audiences with their skewed takes on the animation game, and now Disney is getting into the act, hiring Henry Selick, the man behind Coraline and The Nightmare Before Christmas, to put something new together for the re-energized studio.

Walking Dead Season 2 Coming in July
The Walking Dead Season 2 was supposedly going to be arriving next October but it seems that AMC is preparing to unload the new season on us fans much sooner then we all expected. Emmy Award winning actor Bryan Cranston told New York Magazine ( via The Daily Blam ) that Walking Dead season 2 is coming in July, 3 months earlier then we all expected.

The 37th Annual Saturn Awards horror nominees
The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films has announced the nominations for the 37th Annual Saturn Awards, and leading the way on the horror film front are LET ME IN, BLACK SWAN and SHUTTER ISLAND, among others.

The British Name Alien as the Scariest Movie Ever
The monster from Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic Alien has been voted the scariest monster ever in a poll of British movie goers released on 24 February 2011.

Oscars: Why doesn’t sci-fi win best picture?
When it comes to the Oscars, science fiction films are rarely rewarded outside the technical categories. So what chance does British director Chris Nolan’s nominated film Inception have of being named best picture this year?

From the ‘X-Files’ Dept: Harry Truman -“UFO’s not constructed by any power on Earth.”
Retired Army Col. John Alexander, 74-year-old former Green Beret A-Team commander and developer of weapons at Los Alamos, N.M., says UFO disclosure has already occurred, and that the ultimate solution to UFOs is more complex than most people think. Alexander quotes President Harry Truman: “I can assure you the flying saucers, given that they exist, are not constructed by any power on Earth.”

Kayakers snap photo of England’s version of the ‘Loch Ness Monster’
Nothing puts a damper on a serene afternoon’s kayaking like the sight of a primeval sea monster. That was the rude lesson for Tom Pickles and Sarah Harrington, who’d taken their watercraft out on the foggy waters of Lake Windermere, only to encounter what appeared to be “an enormous snake” swimming by. “It was petrifying and we paddled back to the shore straight away. At first I thought it was a dog and then saw it was much bigger and moving really quickly at about 10 mph,” the 24-year-old Pickles told The Telegraph. “Each hump was moving in a rippling motion and it was swimming fast. Its skin was like a seal’s but its shape was completely abnormal—it’s not like any animal I’ve ever seen before.”