(1) PEABODY AWARDS 2025 NOMINEES. This year’s nominees for the George Foster Peabody Awards program were released on April 17. The awards honor what are described as “the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in all of television, radio, and online media.”
Here are the nominees of genre interest.
Children/Youth
- Spirit Rangers (Netflix)
Spirit Rangers is an animated series on Netflix that follows three Chumash and Cowlitz siblings who transform into animal heroes to protect their California national park, blending Native stories, environmental themes, and adventure. As the first U.S. kids’ show created and showrun by a Native American, with an all-Native writers’ room and deep tribal collaboration, it offers authentic, joyful, and empowering representation for Indigenous communities.(Laughing Wild / Netflix)
Interactive & Immersive
- 1000xRESIST
This genre-blending narrative adventure game uses time, memory, and shifting gameplay styles to explore themes of identity, resistance, and intergenerational trauma, rooted in the emotional aftermath of the 2019 Hong Kong protests. Created by a majority Asian-Canadian team, the game sets players in a haunting future shaped by a global pandemic and alien occupation, challenging them to reckon with historical memory. (sunset visitor 斜陽過客 and Fellow Traveller)
- Tchia
In Tchia, players embark on a tropical open-world adventure to rescue the protagonist’s father from the tyrannical ruler Meavora, exploring a physics-driven sandbox across beautiful islands. Inspired by New Caledonia, the game features creative gameplay and immerses players in the culture and language of the island nation. (Awaceb)
Documentary
- The Space Race (National Geographic Channel)
The Space Race tells the powerful, long-overdue story of Black NASA astronauts who overcame systemic racism to claim their place in the U.S. space program. The films centers on Ed Dwight, the nation’s first Black astronaut trainee who was denied flight but paved the way for future generations. Decades later, Dwight finally reached space at age 90, turning his personal victory into a historic moment of justice. (National Geographic Documentary Films, The Kennedy/Marshall Company, Algeria Films & Cortés Filmworks)
- Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story (HBO | Max)
After a devastating accident left him paralyzed, Christopher Reeve became a powerful symbol of resilience, using his platform to inspire hope and advocate for disability rights. Throughout it all, he remained a passionate actor, filmmaker, and devoted family man, with his wife Dana as his unwavering support. (DC Studios / HBO Documentary Films / CNN Films)
(2) FUNDRAISING FOR FELIX FAMILY AND NEIGHBORS. “Propane gas leak caused home explosion in Northwest Austin” reports NPR station KUT.
The home explosion in Northwest Austin that injured six people and damaged two dozen homes was caused by a substantial propane gas leak inside the home, according to Travis County Fire Marshal Gary Howell.
In a statement, Howell said there are no suspicious or criminal circumstances surrounding the incident.
“While this investigation is entering its final stages, it is important to remember that there is still a long road of recovery ahead for those who were affected by this tragic event,” he said. “There are still two people in critical condition at area hospitals.”
The house on Double Spur Loop near U.S. Highway 183 and Spicewood Springs exploded the morning of April 13. The blast was heard more than 15 miles away in Georgetown, according to the Austin Fire Department.
Community members have raised more than $36,000 for the Felix family, who owned the home.
Samantha Leer, whose house was damaged by the explosion, started another fundraiser for her neighbors to help with the rebuilding process. She said many homes, especially those closest to the explosion, need thousands of dollars in repairs.
“As a neighborhood we’re all still wrapping our heads around what happened and where to start to begin putting our lives back together,” Leer said on the GoFundMe page. “We’re all in an insurance ‘hold’ while we wait for the investigation to be completed. Our houses are damaged, our lives are displaced, so I am hoping … we can start putting some of the pieces back together both physically and mentally.”
(3) COMPARING GENRE ARTISTS. Steven Heller calls “Frank Frazetta, the Norman Rockwell of Horror” at PRINT Magazine.
Frank Frazetta (1928–2010) was not just a horror magazine artist whose purpose was to create fantasies that scare the bejesus out of the average mortal. He was an artist first, and storyteller second. His art is reminiscent of late 19th-century European symbolism, notably that of the French Odilon Redon and the Austrian Alfred Kubin—but Frazetta’s paintings express an American essence similar to Norman Rockwell (had Rockwell decided to paint menace instead of tranquility).
Picture a Rockwell image of a typical country doctor examining a young lad … except instead of a calm, caring man in a white lab coat with a stethoscope, the same personage wears animal skin and a spiked helmet, brandishing a heavy steel sword with a sharp serrated blade, poised to carve the heart of his young, trusting patient. And rather than a benign, handsome white-clad nurse assisting the doctor, there’s a busty, muscular she-wolf bedecked with slithering serpents and a bloodied scythe. Frazetta and Rockwell share the same tools but see through different eyes. Each captured the affection of their respective loyal fans, but it’s doubtful there’s much crossover of those bases…
(4) CELEBRATE BOOKS. Witness History explains “The origin of World Book Day” at the BBC.
In November 1995, a proposal of having an annual day focused on celebrating books was put forward at the UNESCO conference in Paris.
The idea came from a long-established Spanish celebration ‘The Day of Books and Roses’.
The first World Book Day was on 23 April 1996.
Although some countries now celebrate World Book Day on different dates, it’s marked on 23 April in the majority of countries.
Pere Vicens is a book publisher from Barcelona in Spain and one of the creators of World Book Day. He tells Gill Kearsley the origins of this now annual event.
(5) IN PRAISE OF SINNERS. “Sinners Is a Sumptuous Southern Vampire Delight” – Paste Magazine’s Tara Bennett is a fan.
Give it to writer/director Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station, Black Panther) for coming at Sinners, his first horror feature, with the intentionality of a PhD student with something to prove. There’s no shortage of existing lazy or derivative vampire movies that he could have easily bested with modest effort. Instead, Coogler cracked the history books, collected his A-list family of collaborators, including composer Ludwig Göransson, production designer Hannah Beachler, director of photography Autumn Durald Arkapaw, costume designer Ruth E. Carter and ever-trusted leading man Michael B. Jordan, to cinematically (with a capital C) transport the audience to a 1930’s Jim Crow Mississippi ripe for all kinds of delicious trouble.
Coogler’s Sinners screenplay is original but it most certainly carries the baton for what Misha Green explored in her mashup of horror, the supernatural and Black oppression in her HBO series, Lovecraft Country (2020). Although that series was ultimately too broad with its ambitions, Coogler wisely stays hyper-focused on just two monsters – the vampire and bigoted Whites who wear hoods. Coogler weaves vampiric metaphors into the societal oppression of the Old South and asks the audience to consider, which is worse?
Sinners is told through the world-weary eyes of twin brothers, Smoke and Stack (a finely-tuned dual performance by Jordan), who return home to Mississippi after first surviving WWI, and then the organized crime gangs of Chicago….
(6) CORRECTION. Correcting yesterday’s Scroll, Andrew Porter now says, “Judy-Lynn del Rey piece ONLY available on broadcast versions of this, NOT at link!!!”
Through May 14 PBS is making available online “Art Spiegelman: Disaster is My Muse” part of the American Masters series.
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
April 18, 1971 — David Tennant, 54.
Very minor spoilers here if you’ve not been watching the recent series. You’ve been warned.
Of the modern Doctor Whos, the one performed by David Tennant is my favorite by far. (It won’t surprise you that Tom Baker is my classic Doctor.) I liked him from the very first time that he appeared, in “The Christmas Invasion”. (Spoiler alert from here out.) The fact that he won’t finish his transition until he inhales the fumes from a dropped flask of tea. Oh, what a truly British thing to have him do!
Christopher Eccleston was good but I thought that he didn’t have long enough to fully settle into the role so I felt his character was more of a sketch than a fully developed character. His certainly would have been a better Doctor if he’d decided to stay around, but he didn’t.
Tennant, on the other hand had three series plus some specials, he’d also be the Doctor in a two-part story in Doctor Who spin-off, Sarah Jane Adventures, “The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith”.
He got the proper time to settle into his character. And what a character it was — intelligent, full of humor, sympathetic and just alien enough in his quirkiness to believable that he wasn’t human.
Oh, and the stories. So, so great. Those along with his companions made for ever so great watching. My favorite companion? Not picking one as each had their own unique effect on the series and him — Rose Tyler, Donna Noble and Martha Jones, all made fine companions in very different ways.
If I could pick just one story from his run, it’d be “The Unicorn and The Wasp” with Agatha Christie as a character and Donna Noble as the companion. And it was a country manor house mystery!
Yes, I know he came back as the Fourteenth Doctor.
It’s certainly not his only genre role, and yes he played several Doctor Who roles before being the Tenth Doctor. He had a role in the BBC’s animated Scream of the Shalka and appeared in several Big Finish Productions. I think I read he played a Time Lord in one of them.
Now let’s see about his other genre roles… One of my favorite series, Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased), had him as Gordon Stylus in the “Drop Dead” episode. The Quatermass Experiment film had him as Dr. Gordon Briscoe.
He was in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire as Barty Crouch Jr., a fine performance he gave there. I like the films, found what I read of the first novel dreadfully boring.
In How to Train Your Dragon and How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, which I think has awesomely cute animation, he voices Spitelout Jorgenson, a warrior of the Hairy Hooligan Tribe. Need I say more? I think not. DreamWorks Dragons was another series in which he voiced this character.
In Star Wars: The Clone Wars, he had a short run there as Huyang. Huh. He even voiced a character in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, one called Fugitoid, a sort of android figure.
He’s the voice of Dangerous Beans in The Amazing Maurice off Terry Pratchett’s The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents.
The last role I’ll mention is his Jessica Jones one and one that honestly made me not watch the series. No, I’ll not say why as that’d be a major spoiler. He was called Kevin Thompson / Kilgrave.
(8) COMICS SECTION.
- Free Range brings us a writing horror story.
- Jerry King refuses the newest model
- Nancy finds the pattern.
- Non Sequitur is given a sign.
(9) FIONA MOORE’S BOOKSHELF. Shelfies, edited by Lavie Tidhar and Jared Shurin, “Takes a unique peek each week into one of our contributors’ weird and wonderful bookshelves.” A recent entry was “Shelfies #32: Fiona Moore”. Photo at the link.
…On the top shelf, there’s a BFI Guide to Metropolis, and on the lower one, McGilligan’s exhaustive biography of its director, Fritz Lang. Metropolis is my favourite movie, in part because no two versions are ever the same. The original was lost, meaning that only a cut-down 90-minute version made for the US market survived, but over the years people added in found footage, or reordered things to make more sense. And since it’s silent, you don’t have to just use the original soundtrack; Moroder famously did a techno version, and I’ve seen the movie with accompaniments by a free jazz band and by an Irish harp. It’s fitting because the movie itself is one with resonances all over the political spectrum. These days, I think one could read it as a warning of what happens when billionaires form alliances with vindictive tech-bros and try to “disrupt the workplace”, and how the intellectuals and the workers need to come together to fix the damage….
(10) DESERT ISLAND DISC. [Item by Steven French.] One from the margins… “Super spicy! Jack Black’s Minecraft song Steve’s Lava Chicken becomes shortest ever UK Top 40 hit” in the Guardian.
Actor and musician Jack Black has made UK chart history, with the shortest ever song to reach the Top 40: his novelty track Steve’s Lava Chicken is just 34 seconds long.
The spectacularly silly song reaches No 21 this week, and is taken from A Minecraft Movie, the video game spin-off film, which has earned $570m (£430m) so far at the global box office – and caused cinemas to be overrun by the game’s young and high-energy fanbase.
Black performs the song in the film as the character Steve, as he shows the other protagonists around the alternate universe, the Overworld, and hymns the virtues of chicken cooked in lava (“Crispy and juicy, now you’re havin’ a snack / Ooh, super spicy, it’s a lava attack”).
(11) WAYS TO SUPPORT NASA. The Planetary Society today wrote to members:
NASA science is facing a potential dark age.
News broke on April 11 confirming rumors that the White House Office of Management and Budget is working on a proposal that would cut the NASA science budget in half. If enacted, this budget would force the premature termination of dozens of active, productive spacecraft, and would halt the development of nearly every future science project at NASA.
In response to these proposed cuts, The Planetary Society has launched a campaign for citizens to write to their representatives and voice their concerns. We urge Americans who support space exploration to share their support of NASA science.
(12) QUANTUS INTERRUPTUS. [Item by Steven French.] A watched quantum pot never boils – how the quantum Zeno effect reveals just how weird the quantum world is: “The quantum Zeno effect: how the ‘measurement problem’ went from philosophers’ paradox to physicists’ toolbox” at Physics World.
Imagine, if you will, that you are a quantum system. Specifically, you are an unstable quantum system – one that would, if left to its own devices, rapidly decay from one state (let’s call it “awake”) into another (“asleep”). But whenever you start to drift into the “asleep” state, something gets in the way. Maybe it’s a message pinging on your phone. Maybe it’s a curious child peppering you with questions. Whatever it is, it jolts you out of your awake–asleep superposition and projects you back into wakefulness. And because it keeps happening faster than you can fall asleep, you remain awake, diverted from slumber by a stream of interruptions – or, in quantum terms, measurements.
This phenomenon of repeated measurements “freezing” an unstable quantum system into a particular state is known as the quantum Zeno effect (figure 1). Named after a paradox from ancient Greek philosophy, it was hinted at in the 1950s by the scientific polymaths Alan Turing and John von Neumann but only fully articulated in 1977 by the physicists Baidyanath Misra and George Sudarshan (J. Math. Phys. 18 756). Since then, researchers have observed it in dozens of quantum systems, including trapped ions, superconducting flux qubits and atoms in optical cavities. But the apparent ubiquitousness of the quantum Zeno effect cannot hide the strangeness at its heart. How does the simple act of measuring a quantum system have such a profound effect on its behaviour?
(13) BLACK MIRROR HIGHLIGHT. The Guardian’s Keith Stuart reminisces: “Plaything – how Black Mirror took on its scariest ever subject: a 1990s PC games magazine”.
Out of all the episodes in the excellent seventh season of Black Mirror, it’s Plaything that sticks out to me and I suspect to anyone else who played video games in the 1990s. It’s the story of socially awkward freelance games journalist, Cameron Walker, who steals the code to a new virtual pet sim named Thronglets from the developer he’s meant to be interviewing. When he gets the game home, he realises the cute, intelligent little critters he’s caring for on the screen have a darker ambition than simply to perform for his amusement – cue nightmarish exploration of AI and our complicity in its rise.
The episode is interesting to me because … well, I was a socially awkward games journalist in the mid-1990s. But more importantly, so was Charlie Brooker. He began his writing career penning satirical features and blistering reviews for PC Zone magazine, one of the two permanently warring PC mags of the era (I shared an office with the other, PC Gamer). In Plaything, it’s PC Zone that Cameron Walker writes for, and there are several scenes taking place in its office, which in the programme is depicted as a reasonably grownup office space with tidy computer workstations and huge windows. I do not think the production design team got this vision from Brooker….
[Thanks to Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Mark Roth-Whitworth for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
