Nigel Kneale - Richard's Room 101

Born on the Isle of Man, Nigel Kneale was a writer active in television, film, radio drama, and prose fiction. He wrote professionally for over fifty years and was, in many ways, the father of serious science-fiction drama on television. Kneale’s most famous creation is the legendary Professor Bernard Quatermass, a heroic rocket scientist who saved humanity from a range of very different alien menaces in a trilogy of stories written by the Manx writer in the 1950s. 

   

The trilogy began with The Quatermass Experiment, in which the first-ever manned space rocket returns to Earth with two of the three astronauts on board missing and the third possessed by some kind of hostile alien organism. In time, this organism consumes and changes the last astronaut into something horrific: a creature that threatens to possess and consume all other life on Earth. However, Quatermass confronts the monster and, with a moving speech, reaches what is left of his friend's humanity, persuading him to sacrifice himself to save the rest of mankind.

   

In the next story, Quatermass II, the professor is asked to examine strange meteorite showers falling in rural England. His investigations lead to him discovering a vast conspiracy involving alien infiltration at the highest levels of the British Government. Somehow these aliens, who have a group consciousness similar to the Borg in Star Trek, can control the minds of people exposed to an alien parasite concealed in their meteorite-like projectiles. The aliens plan to colonise the Earth, but Quatermass manages to stop them by destroying their asteroid base in orbit, very sadly losing his close friend and colleague Dr. Pugh in the process. 

    

Finally, in the best and last story of the 1950s trilogy, Quatermass and the Pit, Quatermass becomes involved in the discovery of a strange object near some apemen remains that are millions of years old, at an archaeological dig in Knightsbridge, London. The odd object is first thought to be an unexploded World War II bomb, but then more apemen remains are found mysteriously inside the back of the object and later, more disturbingly, the decaying bodies of dead insect-like creatures are found inside the front. The object turns out to be a nuclear-powered spaceship, five million years old, the creatures: Martians and the apemen: their creations … us … the human race.

  

In the story, we learn that when Mars was dying, the ancient Martians had tried to create a colony on Earth by proxy. They altered mankind’s early ancestors, giving them minds and abilities like their own, but with a body adapted to Earth. More worryingly, they also passed on to mankind their genocidal instincts to destroy anyone different from themselves. In effect, making us the Martians now. Fortunately, the Martians died out before completing their plan, and, as humankind bred and further evolved, most outgrew their darker Martian inheritance.

  

Unfortunately, somehow the spaceship reawakens the old Martian instincts, transforming more and more people into genocidal Martians on a race purge, destroying anyone unaffected by the ship’s evil influence. However, Quatermass finds a way to stop the ethnic cleansing before the Martians turn the Earth into a second dead planet. He also tragically loses another friend in doing so.

  

   

  

In each of the three Quatermass stories, Kneale managed to tap into the popular interests and, more importantly, anxieties of the time. In The Quatermass Experiment, he played on the mass interest in the early space race and the new threat of nuclear war. The UK conducted the earliest post-war tests of captured Nazi V-2 rockets in Operation Backfire, less than six months after the war in Europe ended, and the development of a British launch system to carry a nuclear device started in 1950. So there was a real fear that one of these rockets could come falling out of the sky bringing with it destruction, as one does in The Quatermass Experiment. Then, in Quatermass II, before Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Kneale exploited the popular paranoia about the threat of communist infiltration and subversion of the West. Like nuclear war, this was a real fear at the time. For instance, in 1951, two members of the British establishment, Burgess and Maclean, had made international headlines by very publicly defecting to the Soviet Union. And, finally, with the Notting Hill race riots of 1958 still very much fresh in peoples' minds, Kneale wrote Quatermass and the Pit admittedly as a fable about race hate.

  

Kneale’s Quatermass trilogy clearly had a huge impact that continues to be felt even today, influencing everyone from Chris Carter to Gene Roddenberry. The Quatermass Experiment (1953) was the very first science fiction production to be written especially for an adult television audience and cleared the way for the many others that followed it. Also, the three basic alien invasion storylines were first pioneered on television by Kneale in the Quatermass stories. In The Quatermass Experiment, we go to the aliens and bring them back, in Quatermass II the aliens come to us, and in Quatermass and the Pit, we discover that the aliens were here all along.

  

But it would be a mistake to think that Nigel Kneale only wrote stories involving alien possession and invasion. An excellent example of this is The Abominable Snowman, a 1957 Hammer horror film based on Kneale’s own BBC television play The Creature. Again tapping into popular interest at the time, the film follows the exploits of an English anthropologist with an American expedition as they search the Himalayas for the legendary Yeti, the apemen of Tibet. In the real world, speculation about the existence of an unidentified creature living in the Himalayas had been sparked off in November 1951, when Eric Shipton and Michael Ward of the Everest Reconnaissance Expedition found several large footprints as they traversed the Menlung Glacier, and, two years later, Edmund Hillary made a similar discovery during his historic conquest of Mount Everest.

   

In the film, Kneale turns perceptions on their head by suggesting that the so-called Abominable Snowman is not so abominable at all and, perhaps, even a great deal better than mankind who turn out to be the real monsters. The central idea being that the Yeti are our collateral descendants from the apes and are patiently and peacefully waiting for mankind to destroy himself, either quickly through war or slowly through pollution, before descending from the mountains to inherit the Earth. 

  

Another excellent example is The Stone Tape, a Christmas ghost story from 1972 and Kneale’s last major original work for the BBC. Like Quatermass and the Pit before it (which suggested that poltergeist activity could be explained by the psychic abilities left to us by the Martians), The Stone Tape combined science fiction with the supernatural. The television play revolves around a group of scientists who move into a new research facility: an allegedly haunted Victorian mansion. Curious, they investigate the alleged ghost but soon determine that it is really just some kind of recording of a past event somehow stored by stone in one of the rooms (the stone tape of the title). Believing that this discovery may lead to the development of a whole new recording medium, which they were originally brought together to find in the first place, they throw all their knowledge and high-tech equipment into trying to find a means of playing back the stone tape recording at will. However, their investigations only serve to unleash a far older and more malevolent force, with tragic consequences. Of course, The Stone Tape is where “the stone tape theory” familiar to many paranormal researchers today originates. 

   

Kneale also wrote three excellent dystopian texts, a fourth Quatermass story The Quatermass Conclusion, a 1954 television adaptation of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four for the BBC, and The Year of the Sex Olympics. It is the last of these that proved to be the most prophetic. Broadcast in 1968 The Year of the Sex Olympics seemed to accurately predict the creation of reality TV in the 1990s.

 

Set “sooner than you think” in the TV play society is divided between “low-drives” that receive no education and “hi-drives” who control the government and media. The low drives are controlled by a constant broadcast of pornography that the hi-drives believe will pacify them. But after the accidental death of a protester during the Sex Olympics gets a massive audience response, the authorities create a new TV programme, The Live Life Show. In the new show, a family is moved to a remote Scottish island while the low-drive audience watches. 

   

Hopefully, this goes some way to answering the question of who Nigel Kneale was. Of all the great science fiction writers to emerge from these islands since World War II, including the likes of Arthur C. Clarke, perhaps only Nigel Kneale comes anywhere close to matching H G. Wells in terms of lasting public impact and sheer brilliance. Both successfully tapped into the mass anxieties of their time and placed them at the centre of their stories, making science fiction accessible to the general public. In short, what Wells did for science fiction in print, Kneale did on television, clearing the way for intelligent science fiction drama on the small screen.

READ RICHARD'S ROOM 101 COLUMN FOR BINNALL OF AMERICA

The Stone Tape Theory - Richard's Room 101

This fortnight we're concluding our loose "pure paranormal" trilogy. In parts one and two we took a look at the time-slip experience and poltergeist phenomena, respectively. So, this time around, we're finally wrapping things up here with a short piece on what many people in paranormal circles often refer to as the "Stone Tape" theory.

   

For people who didn't read my Nigel Kneale piece just short of a year ago, the "Stone Tape" theory originates from a 1972 television play of the same name by the iconic sci-fi writer. Combining science fiction with the ghost story genre, in the BBC Christmas special a group of scientists investigate a supposed haunting in the hope of discovering a brand new recording medium. Their theory is that somehow limestone (and perhaps other materials) can retain moments of the past. That perhaps human memories or experiences (particularly ones involving intense emotions like the last moments before death) can be someway psychically recorded in the stonework of buildings.

  

The idea, of course, is that later someone psychic or sensitive enough could act as a kind of psychic video player. Hence the title of Kneale's original play "The Stone Tape."

  

As a credit to Nigel Kneale's genius as a writer, despite making its début in a fictional setting, his idea proved very popular with many of the more scientifically inclined paranormal researchers. Finally offering them a real, and perhaps almost equally engaging, alternative to the standard "life after death" explanation of the traditionalists. What's more, if true, the "Stone Tape" theory might also go some way to explaining some of the problems and inconsistencies often associated with paranormal encounters. 

  

For instance, why do people always seem to report "ghosts" from only a few centuries ago? Why never from pre-history?

  

Perhaps the answer to this peculiarity might be that, much like domestic VHS videotape, "Stone Tape" recordings have a limited lifespan too. Steadily degenerating over the ages until they are completely erased and forgotten forever.

  

This explanation might also provide the answer to another popular problem in the paranormal. Why is it that some people see full-blown solid apparitions whereas others only see transparent figures, shadows or, worse, nothing at all? Again like a conventional video tape perhaps the older a "Stone Tape" recording gets the more the sound and picture quality suffers.

  

Alternatively, of course, perhaps a better explanation opened up by the theory might be that some people may simply make better psychic video players than others. Maybe an important point to make here is that according to the theory, the "ghost" or recording is seen (perhaps "played" might be a better term) inside the mind rather than in the outside physical universe. Therefore, depending on the sensitivity of the witnesses, it's quite possible that several people might experience the same encounter very differently.

  

The idea that "ghosts" might really be some kind of psychic tape recording rather than the spirits of the dead might not be desirable to some die-hard researchers who believe "ghosts" offer us proof of life after death. (Though the two ideas are not mutually exclusive, it's possible that there could be more than one type of "ghost" each representing something very different.) However, if ever proven the theory would raise perhaps almost equally important questions about the true nature of consciousness and the human mind.

  

Think about it. The only way such a recording could be made and replayed would be if there was some kind of direct connection between the human mind and stone. It would have to be some form of telepathy between two "minds" (for lack of a better word) suggesting that inanimate matter might have some form of highly primitive consciousness or awareness. It is an exciting idea, be it somewhat crazy. However, as Richard Holland (editor of Paranormal magazine) noted in our interview last month the "Stone Tape" theory is still a very long way from being proven.

READ RICHARD'S ROOM 101 COLUMN FOR BINNALL OF AMERICA

Ghosts, Aliens, Yeti and the Late Great Nigel Kneale - Richard's Room 101

Who was Nigel Kneale?

This is the question that many readers are probably asking themselves right now, which is a real shame because, without the work of this great television pioneer, I highly doubt there would be much intelligent science fiction on television today. There probably would have never been a Doctor Who or X-Files and science fiction, on television at least, would in all likelihood still only be Saturday morning nonsense for little children and even littler minds.

So for those who are still wondering, who was Nigel Kneale?

  

Nigel Kneale (18 April 1922 – 29 October 2006) was a Manx (Isle of Man) writer, active in television, film, radio drama and prose fiction. He wrote professionally for over fifty years and was, in many ways, the father of serious science-fiction drama on television.

   

Kneale is best remembered today as the creator of his now-legendary character "Professor Bernard Quatermass." Quatermass was a heroic rocket scientist, kind of a prototype for Doctor Who, who saved humanity from a range of very different alien menaces in a trilogy of stories written by Kneale in the 1950s.

   

Kneale's Quatermass trilogy begins with The Quatermass Experiment, the first-ever manned space rocket returns to Earth with two of the three astronauts on board missing and the third possessed by some kind of hostile alien organism. In time, this organism consumes and changes the last astronaut into something horrific: a creature that threatens to possess and consume all other life on Earth. However, Quatermass confronts the monster and, with a moving speech, reaches what is left of his friend's humanity, persuading him to sacrifice himself to save the rest of mankind. 

  

In the next story, Quatermass II, Quatermass is asked to examine strange meteorite showers falling in rural England. His investigations lead to him discovering a vast conspiracy involving alien infiltration at the highest levels of the British and other major world governments. Somehow these aliens, who have a group consciousness similar to the "Borg" in Star Trek, can control the minds of people exposed to an alien parasite concealed in their meteorite-like projectiles. The aliens plan to colonise the Earth, but Quatermass manages to stop them by destroying their asteroid base in orbit, very sadly losing his close friend and colleague Dr Pugh in the process.

Finally, in the best and last story of the 1950s trilogy, Quatermass and the Pit, Quatermass becomes involved in the discovery of a strange object near some ape men remains millions of years old, at an archaeological dig in Knightsbridge, London. The odd object is first thought to be an unexploded World War II bomb, but then more ape men remain are found mysteriously inside the back of the object and later, more disturbingly, the decaying bodies of dead insect-like creatures are found inside the front. The object turns out to be a nuclear-powered spaceship, five million years old, the creatures: Martians and the ape-men: their creations ... us ... the human race.

  

It is revealed that when Mars was dying, the ancient Martians had tried to create a colony on Earth by proxy. They altered mankind's early ancestors, giving them minds and abilities like their own, but with a body adapted to Earth. More worrisome, they also passed on to mankind their genocidal instincts to destroy anyone different from themselves. In effect, making us the Martians now. Fortunately, the Martians died out before completing their plan and, as mankind bred and further evolved, most outgrew their darker Martian inheritance.

  

Unfortunately, somehow the spaceship reawakens the old Martian instincts, transforming more and more people into genocidal Martians on a race purge, destroying anyone unaffected by the ship's evil influence. However, Quatermass finds a way to stop the ethnic cleansing before the Martians turn the Earth into a second dead planet. He also tragically loses another friend in doing so. 

In each of the three Quatermass stories, Kneale managed to tap into the popular interests and, more importantly, anxieties of the time. In The Quatermass Experiment, he played on the mass interest in the early space race and the new threat of nuclear war. The UK conducted the earliest post-war tests of captured Nazi V-2 rockets in Operation Backfire, less than six months after the war in Europe ended, and the development of a British launch system to carry a nuclear device started in 1950. So there was a real fear that one of these rockets could come falling out of the sky bringing with it destruction, as one does in The Quatermass Experiment. Then, in Quatermass II, before Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Kneale exploited the popular paranoia about the threat of communist infiltration and subversion of the West. Like nuclear war, this was a real fear at the time. For instance, in 1951, two members of the British establishment, Burgess and Maclean, made international headlines by very publicly defecting to the Soviet Union. And, finally, with the Notting Hill race riots of 1958 still very much fresh in people's minds, Kneale wrote Quatermass and the Pit admittedly as a fable about race hate. 

  

Kneale's Quatermass trilogy clearly had a huge impact that continues to be felt even today, influencing everyone from Chris Carter to Stephen King. The Quatermass Experiment (1953) was the very first science fiction production to be written especially for an adult television audience and cleared the way for the many others that followed it. Also, the three basic alien invasion storylines were first pioneered on television by Kneale in the Quatermass stories. In The Quatermass Experiment, we go to the aliens and bring them back, in Quatermass II the aliens come to us, and in Quatermass and the Pit, we discover that the aliens were here all along.

  

But it would be a mistake to think that Nigel Kneale only wrote stories involving alien possession and invasion. An excellent example of this is The Abominable Snowman, a 1957 Hammer horror film based on Kneale's own BBC television play The Creature. Again tapping into popular interest at the time, the film follows the exploits of an English anthropologist with an American expedition as they search the Himalayas for the legendary Yeti, the ape-man of Tibet. In the real world, speculation about the existence of an unidentified creature living in the Himalayas had been sparked off in November 1951, when Eric Shipton and Michael Ward of the Everest Reconnaissance Expedition found several large footprints as they traversed the Menlung Glacier, and, two years later, Edmund Hillary made a similar discovery during his historic conquest of Mount Everest.

  

In the film, Kneale turns perceptions on their head by suggesting that the so-called Abominable Snowman is not so abominable at all and, perhaps, even a great deal better than mankind who turn out to be the real monsters. The central idea is that the Yeti are our collateral descendants from the apes and are patiently and peacefully waiting for mankind to destroy himself, either quickly through war or slowly through pollution, before descending from the mountains to inherit the Earth. 

  

Another excellent example is The Stone Tape, a Christmas ghost story from 1972 and Kneale's last major original work for the BBC. Like Quatermass and the Pit before it (which suggested that poltergeist activity could be explained by the psychic abilities left to us by the Martians), The Stone Tape combined science fiction with the supernatural. The television play revolves around a group of scientists who move into a new research facility: an allegedly haunted Victorian mansion. Curious, they investigate the alleged ghost but soon determine that it is really just some kind of recording of a past event somehow stored by stone in one of the rooms (the stone tape of the title). Believing that this discovery may lead to the development of a whole new recording medium, which they were originally brought together to find in the first place, they throw all their knowledge and high-tech equipment into trying to find a means of playing back the stone tape recording at will. However, their investigations only serve to unleash a far older and more malevolent force, with tragic consequences. Of course, The Stone Tape is where "the stone tape theory" familiar to many paranormal researchers today finds its origins.

  

Kneale also wrote three excellent dystopian texts, a fourth Quatermass story The Quatermass Conclusion, a 1954 television adaptation of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four for the BBC, and The Year of the Sex Olympics. However, we will have to discuss these in a future edition of Room 101. 

   

Hopefully, this goes some way to answering the question of who Nigel Kneale was. Of all the great science fiction writers to emerge from these islands since World War II, including the likes of Arthur C. Clarke, perhaps only Nigel Kneale comes anywhere close to matching H G. Wells in terms of lasting public impact and sheer brilliance. Both successfully tapped into the mass anxieties of their time and placed them at the centre of their stories, making science fiction accessible to the general public. In short, what Wells did for science fiction in print, Kneale did on television, clearing the way for intelligent science fiction drama on the small screen.

READ RICHARD'S ROOM 101 COLUMN FOR BINNALL OF AMERICA