This weekend, the Anaheim Convention Center will host WonderCon, a pop culture convention run by the people who run Comic-Con. It’s a lot of fun which food trucks on the walkway between the Convention Center to the Sheraton, lots of Cos-Play opps outside, and inside, many of the exhibitors you’d see at Comic-Con along with panels of upcoming movies and TV shows.
But I’ve buried the Lede here.
Actress Olivia Youngers, who plays Ensign Riggs on the “Picard” series (which, oddly, uses the Anaheim Convention Center at Starfleet Headquarters) has issued a warning about one of the exhibitors at the show – The Sci-Fi World Museum — on her social media feeds. That exhibitor has posted calls for volunteers to help run the booth, and Youngers reports that Huston Huddleston, who leads the Museum, is planning to attend the show. For real nerds, Riggs was the White Queen in the series “The Guild” starring Felicia Day.
Huddleston pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography in 2018. Youngers shared this detail with WonderCon management and offered this story in the LA Times about the Museum and Huddleston
For those going to the show, the booth number is 2049.
Here are Younger’s Facebook posts regarding WonderCon 2025:
Warning: the Sci-Fi World museum which was exposed by the LA times in 2024 to be run by Huston Huddleston (Also seen here recently promoting the museum) is planning attendance at WonderCon – Huston Huddleston is a convicted sex offender and the museum has lied to the public for years about his continued involvement. Please speak up and make folks aware. I’ve shared screenshots of the article for those without a subscription. The museum has also failed to ever open despite raising money from the public for over a decade. Their recent attempt in santa monica was only contracted to be a pop up, which is why it never successfully opened, despite them never admitting that to the public or their donors and selling annual passes they knew they wouldn’t be able to honor. Please raise your voices and share. Alert the con and fans.
Please tell WonderCon if you don’t want a convicted predator and his grift to be allowed at the convention. Officials have been directly contacted and they have not responded / are refusing to acknowledge that they sold space to this organization. “SCI-FI World” has booth 2049 despite the LA times revealing last year that Huston Huddleston is still running this project. Huddleston was convicted for possession of child porn, to which he plead no contest to avoid trial for more serious charges (see the video) in 2018. He was allegedly going to step away from Sci-Fi World.
He did not. The board consists of his mother as vice president and his best friend as secretary. John Purdy, who was supposed to have taken over after Huston left, confirmed to the LA Times that he was always working UNDER Huston. Purdy has also since resigned and no new leadership has ever been announced. It was always, and remains, Huston in charge.
There are additional details in the video.
As an update, the convention is definitely aware, and they’re not doing anything about it. They don’t want to refund the booth. The only option at this point is if more people start tagging them in their own posts and make it clear that this is unacceptable.
Folks keep thanking me for continuing to speak up about this, but my voice alone isn’t going to accomplish anything and I’m getting tired and broken down. If you care, then you have to speak up too.
From the LA Times 2024 article last summer:
Sci-Fi World, a new “museum” that promises fans real and replica props, costumes and sets from popular films and TV shows, hosted its opening “gala” on Memorial Day in the historic former Sears building just a couple of blocks from the Santa Monica Pier.
More than a decade in the making, the museum has drawn the interest of “Star Trek” fans worldwide thanks to its genesis story: Superfan Huston Huddleston said he salvaged a replica of the bridge from “Star Trek: The Next Generation” from a discard pile outside of a Long Beach warehouse in 2011. Huddleston, known for his fanatical devotion to science fiction and horror, launched Kickstarter campaigns to restore the prop and open a museum to house it, raising nearly $163,000 in less than two years.
But now Huddleston, 54, has emerged as the nexus of questions swirling around the museum, which, despite the recent gala, did not actually open as scheduled. Some of those same sci-fi fans who were enthralled by the museum’s origin story have since learned that in 2018, Huddleston was convicted of misdemeanor possession of child pornography. He was required to serve 126 days in jail and three years of summary probation, complete 52 weeks of sex offender counseling and pay fines.
In an interview with The Times, Huddleston said he knew that any association with the museum after his conviction would be toxic for an organization that hopes to attract young fans, so he gave up control of the nonprofit and its collection of film and TV ephemera to the museum’s chief executive.
But several Sci-Fi World volunteers past and present told The Times that Huddleston remains active — if not central — in museum operations and preparations for opening. Lee Grimwade, one of the museum’s lead volunteers who quit a day before the gala, said Huddleston is “definitely 100% involved.”
“He’s the idea-guy who is laying it all out. He’s telling you where he wants things, he’s telling you where the walls should go in the museum, he’s telling you where to set up the [security] cameras, he’s telling you all of this stuff,” said Grimwade, a “Star Trek” devotee who said he spent almost every day of the last month setting up the museum and who showed The Times photographs of Huddleston onsite. “He’s basically directing the entire thing.”
…
The Times has also confirmed that “Star Trek” producer Ronald D. Moore and writer Larry Nemecek — listed as board members on a 2022 tax filing for the Hollywood Science Fiction Foundation, the nonprofit behind the museum — were, in fact, not on the board.
A representative for Moore said the screenwriter has never been involved in the organization, and Nemecek said he resigned in 2015.
As if the museum’s leadership turmoil were not enough, CBS Studios, which produces multiple “Star Trek” series, said it has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Huddleston and Purdy, notifying them that they do not have the right to re-create elements from the “Star Trek” franchise and exhibit them for commercial use. A studio rep also said the “Next Generation” set pieces were believed to have been destroyed at the time of their disposal because they were extremely damaged.
…
Olivia Youngers, an actress who appeared in the CBS All Access series “Star Trek: Picard,” volunteered for the museum’s nonprofit in 2014. She said she withdrew her support after a few exchanges with Huddleston made her uncomfortable, and she later learned of his conviction.
“He would frequently comment on my age and how young I looked, and that unnerved me,” she said. When she heard the museum was opening, she discovered that Huddleston was still listed on its tax forms and decided to raise awareness about his involvement on Twitter.
Huddleston said he did not recall Youngers ever being a volunteer. If he made such a comment, it was meant to be a compliment, he added.
…
Huddleston said a hard drive that he gave to the FBI was found to have illegal images but that he had no idea how they got on the drive. He said he had just retrieved the drive after about two months during which time it had been in many people’s hands, including at various post-production houses that were editing and mixing trailers for the museum. (A representative for the FBI said the bureau does not comment on evidence given to it.) The disposition report said the loss of the computer that contained the hard drive could create reasonable doubt among a jury over who downloaded the child pornography onto the hard drive.
..
According to court documents, Huddleston was eventually charged with three counts, including “contact with minor for sexual offense,” “using minor for sex acts” and “possession of matter depicting minor engaging in sexual conduct.” He was convicted of the last count and accepted a plea deal that reduced it to a misdemeanor offense, so he did not have to register as a sex offender.
Should the July Comic-Con ever leave San Diego, Anaheim is always a worthy destination because of the concentration of Hotels near the Convention Center and their ability to pull off an event that 150,000 convention goers attend daily.
The best option for this year’s WonderCon show might be to allow the Sci-Fi Museum’s booth to stay, but for Huddleston not to attend even though he’s completed all of what his sentence required of him from the 2018 charges.
For what its worth, many co-play costumes are downright extraordinary when it comes to detail. Some can be risqué too. Both Comic-Con and WonderCon have policies regarding consent and harassment where violations not only get you kicked out of the show but banned from ever attending.
The details on the Sci-Fi Museum’s leadership are troubling but shouldn’t stop you from attending the show.
I thought you were going say, Anaheim perverts Vern and Donna Nelson were working the booth. But they are busy penning ananymous FAKE letters to Judge Holcomb (who knows ALL ABOUT SUCK MY C@CK and Verns history of sexual assault) So I thought you were warning about Bizzarro’s underwear fetish but realized he couldn’t afford the parking.
If I didn’t have a job, family or a life, I would love to watch the Federal Police deny the Nelson’s access to the Reagan courthouse as they too are aware of their criminal agitator reputations.
Well, the guy is looking for volunteers…….
and a quick update; the Sci-Fi Museum booth was empty; they decided not to come afterall.
Considering that Huston uses the project to find victims among his volunteers, the booth should not be allowed. Numerous women have come forward about his behavior for the last decade. The museum also lines his pockets. I don’t know how anyone could suggest that a project that a pedophile financially benefits from and uses to find victims should be allowed to be present at all
Thanks for replying; the booth was abandoned because of the work of activists. I still love the idea of such a museum just run by someone else.