Nigel Kneale: 1922 - 2006

Everyone eventually dies. Except me, of course. I mean, I'm only gauging by my own personal experience, but it seems pretty obvious to me that the fact that I haven't died yet (that I know of) is pretty solid proof that I'm actually immortal.

Still, death occurs, and it's especially sad when the person who has died is extremely gifted and has entertained millions of people. Nigel Kneale was such a guy, if only by dint of his having wrote the Quatermass series for the BBC, in which a lone British rocket science wrestled with alien menace and ancient, inconceivable cosmic evil.

Warren Ellis (of Transmetropolitan fame) has posted an obituary on his blog which sums up a lot of the feelings people (not just sci-fi geeks) have had for Kneale:

Kneale was one of my great influences; as a kid in the 1970s, before the fourth and final QUATERMASS starring Sir John Mills, my father bought me the paperback scriptbooks of the original three QUATERMASS serials (which you can still find on eBay). I was obsessed with those things for years, and have them still. They taught me untold amounts about dialogue, pacing, and the grounding of the unreal in the real.

It’s hard to imagine, now, the impact that the first three QUATERMASS stories had. For six weeks, the country would go home on QUATERMASS night. Pubs would empty out. In those early days of television, an unapologetically adult, complex and weird piece of speculative fiction was common culture. When tv people in the States tell me that the masses “just don’t get” science fiction, this is what I tell them: that before the cast of THE X-FILES was even born, Britain used to shut down on QUATERMASS night, and it’s all people would talk about the next day.

Weirdly, this phenomenon doesn't seem to have been limited to the UK. My father describes having breathlessly read the Quatermass screenplay novels as a kid.

R.I.P. Nigel! You'll be missed.

Nigel Kneale [Warren Ellis]