a writer's notebook
jotter
Nigel Kneale tended to start from contemporary events. The long rebuilding after the Second World War, giant pits being dug out of bombed ground as foundations for new structures. Race riots across the country in that period, the Notting Hill outrage of 1958, white people hunting black people.
Science fiction as social fiction: using the tools of speculation to study and contextualise the present moment from new angles.
Comments closedQUATERMASS AND THE PIT, in a shell: in 1958, holes in London were still being repaired after the Blitz. An excavation at Hobbs Lane digs up very old human bones. Their type and age is anomalous. Digging continues, until a small spacecraft is revealed. Hobbs Lane used to be Hob’s Lane, Hob being an old term for the devil. The area is haunted by psychic pressure from the vessel. The vessel is from Mars, and contained genetically altered early humans. Martian culture imposed purity pogroms. By the end of the story, humans without altered genes are being attacked by those who inherited them.
Comments closedThe QUATERMASS stories, like all Kneale’s most enduring works, is about the place where the ancient and the modern meet: the tension between the mythic and the future, the supernatural and science fiction, history and speculation. It got me at what was precisely the wrong time, curious and impressionable with no solidly formed sense of self or goal. I’ve spent the rest of my life in that place.
Comments closedBy 1901 light vessels with powerful sound signals were scattered all over the Thames and its approaches. They were often named for the channels they were anchored on, and their names are like poetry when read together, more magical than cartographic. A year into the new century, Sunk, Kentish Knock and Swin Middle all had fog sirens, and there were fog trumpets on Tongue, Black Deep, Girdler, Galloper, Nore, Long Sand and Mouse, along with the Princes and Edinburgh Channels. Bells sounded at the sea reach and on piers all the way to Southend.
THE FOGHORN’S LAMENT, Jennifer Lucy Allan
Comments closedHobbs Lane in London was the fictional location of QUATERMASS AND THE PIT, the 1958 British speculative fiction tv serial created and written by Nigel Kneale and directed by Rudolph Cartier. This was the third QUATERMASS serial.
In early 1979, a fourth QUATERMASS was announced. I was around ten or eleven years old. I was fascinated by the announcement and materials released – I’d never heard of this show but was very much interested in what I saw. In WH Smith, I saw a paperback entitled QUATERMASS AND THE PIT, and spent birthday money on it. It turned out to be a republication of all the scripts from the serial. So down a hole I went, to meet the ancient Martians. And my own future.
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I’ve been after a cheap field watch for ages, as a beater and as a simple watch for simple days. I’ve chased a few older ones on eBay, but they quickly price out of my comfort zone for a beater. So I ended up spending under forty quid on a Timex Expedition Scout in 40mm. (UK) (US+)
It’s battery powered – I would have rather had a manual wind – and the screen illuminates with a push of the crown, which doesn’t feel strictly necessary. It also has a loud tick! But nothing about it feels cheap, it’s solid and heavy and easy to read.
I’ve used smartwatches since the days of the Pebble, and they’ve become intrinsic to managing my working days. A smartwatch – and now I use Apple Watches – is a tool watch. But sometimes I want to leave my tools on the desk.
5 CommentsComments closedLights of ships moved in the fairway — a great stir of lights going up and going down. And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars. “And this also,” said Marlow suddenly, “has been one of the dark places of the earth.”
HEART OF DARKNESS, Joseph Conrad
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For sale, baby shoes, chewed, claw holes in toecaps, bloodstains, please help us
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Comments closedSpring light with a touch of that winter hardness in it, that bright steel edge that says “I could turn on you at any moment. Do not relax. The second you decide it’s going to be warm from now on, I will cut you.”
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