One year after Gov. Jerry Brown's father, Gov. Edmund G. "Pat" Brown, was inducted into the California Hall of Fame, Brown and first lady Anne Gust Brown have picked their first class of inductees – a lunar astronaut, a basketball star and a surf rock band among them.

Though hardly one for pomp and circumstance, the Democratic governor said in December that the annual Hall of Fame event, started by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and first lady Maria Shriver in 2006, served to remind Californians of the state's vitality in a difficult time.

"It's about the power of California," Brown said at the time. "It's an important reminder."

The selections, announced Friday, reflect eclectic tastes. In addition to Magic Johnson, Buzz Aldrin and the Beach Boys, the Browns chose novelist Amy Tan, guitarist Carlos Santana and Roger Traynor, the celebrated California Supreme Court justice Brown has mentioned recently when defending his own appointment to the court, UC Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu. Like Liu, Traynor was an academic with little courtroom experience.

The other inductees are:

• Elizabeth Blackburn, who shared a Nobel Prize in medicine for the discovery of an enzyme significant in cancer and aging research.

• The Rev. Gregory Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles and an advocate for gang intervention.

• Gap Inc. founders and philanthropists Doris and Donald Fisher. Gust Brown was general counsel at the Gap until 2005.

• Disability rights advocate Ed Roberts, known as the "father of independent living," who ran the state Department of Rehabilitation when Brown was governor before, from 1975 to 1983.

The inductees "exemplify the creative and pioneering spirit of California," Brown said in a prepared statement. "These men and women have enriched our lives and pointed the way to a future of unimagined quality."

Brown and Gust Brown will present the awards at a ceremony Dec. 8 at Sacramento's Memorial Auditorium.

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Call David Siders, Bee Capitol Bureau, (916) 321-1215. Follow him on Twitter, @davidsiders.

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