Beyond the Air
Nigel Kneale died this week after a series of small strokes
In my small pantheon of writing heroes, Kneale has always had a place. His impact on television drama and English speculative fiction since the early 1950s should have made him one of the most revered scriptwriters in the country. It can only be the facts he was Manx, not part of the traditional establishment nor a regional literary mafia and used science-fiction as a vehicle for his dramas that prevented him from being lauded as one of England’s most visionary dramatists. He should have been bigger than Dennis bloody Potter. I do not use the phrase often, but Kneale was a literary genius.
Everything Kneale wrote married big ideas with believable human drama. His stories reflected some of the most frightening aspects of the second half of the 20th century through the eyes of characters in which we could see the best and worst parts of ourselves. None of his stories were cliché. He thrived on creating paradox, inverting forms, turning the conflict between science and superstition into the most gripping narrative. Few could hope to match his eloquence when expressing the fears and hopes of the times he lived in.
Given he often wrote about dystopian futures, it is a shame he got so much right. To see his 1968 work The Year of the Sex Olympics is to understand in the purest, most startling way, the concept of literary prescience. Yet he was also capable of creating the iconic hero of Professor Quatermass – a figure who at some levels represented the noblest qualities of the human spirit.
Kneale was the godfather of so much. Without him there would have been no Doctor Who and his The Quatermass Memoirs played a part in inspiring a book I am currently trying to develop. Generously, Mr. Kneale had agreed to let me interview him when his health allowed. Unfortunately, it never did.
‘One morning, two hours after dawn, the first manned rocket in the history of the world takes off from the Tarooma Range, Australia. The three occupants see on their scanning screens a quickly receding Earth. The rocket is guided from the ground by remote control as they rise through the ozone layer, the stratosphere, the ionosphere, beyond the air. They are to reach a height of fifteen hundred miles above the Earth and there learn what is to be learnt. For an experiment is an operation designed to discover some unknown truth. It is also ... a risk.’
– Opening narration from The Quatermass Experiment (1953)
In my small pantheon of writing heroes, Kneale has always had a place. His impact on television drama and English speculative fiction since the early 1950s should have made him one of the most revered scriptwriters in the country. It can only be the facts he was Manx, not part of the traditional establishment nor a regional literary mafia and used science-fiction as a vehicle for his dramas that prevented him from being lauded as one of England’s most visionary dramatists. He should have been bigger than Dennis bloody Potter. I do not use the phrase often, but Kneale was a literary genius.
Everything Kneale wrote married big ideas with believable human drama. His stories reflected some of the most frightening aspects of the second half of the 20th century through the eyes of characters in which we could see the best and worst parts of ourselves. None of his stories were cliché. He thrived on creating paradox, inverting forms, turning the conflict between science and superstition into the most gripping narrative. Few could hope to match his eloquence when expressing the fears and hopes of the times he lived in.
Given he often wrote about dystopian futures, it is a shame he got so much right. To see his 1968 work The Year of the Sex Olympics is to understand in the purest, most startling way, the concept of literary prescience. Yet he was also capable of creating the iconic hero of Professor Quatermass – a figure who at some levels represented the noblest qualities of the human spirit.
Kneale was the godfather of so much. Without him there would have been no Doctor Who and his The Quatermass Memoirs played a part in inspiring a book I am currently trying to develop. Generously, Mr. Kneale had agreed to let me interview him when his health allowed. Unfortunately, it never did.
‘One morning, two hours after dawn, the first manned rocket in the history of the world takes off from the Tarooma Range, Australia. The three occupants see on their scanning screens a quickly receding Earth. The rocket is guided from the ground by remote control as they rise through the ozone layer, the stratosphere, the ionosphere, beyond the air. They are to reach a height of fifteen hundred miles above the Earth and there learn what is to be learnt. For an experiment is an operation designed to discover some unknown truth. It is also ... a risk.’
– Opening narration from The Quatermass Experiment (1953)
posted by David at 12:00 AM
1 Comments:
Sorry to hear one of your heroes has passed on. I know that's a hard thing.
I remember many years ago watching "The Quatermass Experiment" and loving it, being a bit of a Sci-Fi nut.
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