a writer's notebook
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 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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