Nigel Kneale, creator of the Quatermass series, The Stone Tape and Beasts, died this week.
3 thoughts on “Nigel Kneale, 1922–2006”
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A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Nigel Kneale, creator of the Quatermass series, The Stone Tape and Beasts, died this week.
Comments are closed.
Sad.Seeing him talk in the Cornerhouse a few years back I got the sense of a real TV man, the product (and creator) of a world of popular broadcasting-the kind of stuff that would spellbind the nation, empty the pubs, have all the kids talking in school the next day. In other words, another world entirely.
See the following post also… I nearly went to that Cornerhouse event myself; forget now why I didn’t but I obviously missed a rare opportunity.
I reviewed The Stone Tape for the Andre Deutsch horror book http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2006/08/16/hail-horrors-hail-infernal-world/ and in that mentioned my theory that Kneale was more of a British equivalent to HP Lovecraft than he perhaps realised, not for any lazy pastiching but for the way that both of them evolved their own genre hybrids that could encompass folklore, the supernatural and extraterrestrial contact all in the same work. Never quite sure with Kneale how much of this was instinctual and how much deliberate, he was so disparaging of genre he rarely discussed these things in much detail.
Just finished reading Andy Murray (slightly underwhelming) life of Kneale ‘Into the Unknown’, and apparently there was a serious proposal for him to write a Quatermass prequel set around the Berlin Olympics and Quatermass’ involvement with von Braun’s rocket research, specifically linking it in with the nazi obsession with the occult. It got as far as discussion with a TV company but was dropped due to expense.
I can only imagine what he would have done with all the Black Sun/ Thule/ Atlantis stuff…