The SFX team was saddened to hear last night of the death of Nigel Kneale, one of Britain's greatest television writers. He passed away in hospital on Sunday, at the age of 84. He had been unwell for some time and had suffered several small strokes.
Kneale is best known for the The Quatermass Experiment, the BBC serial which emptied the streets in 1953 and made his name, and its follow-ups Quatermass II and Quatermass and the Pit. The influence of all three on subsequent British science fiction cannot be understated.
Kneale's CV is littered with other triumphs: his adaptation of Orwell's 1984 (transmitted by the BBC in 1954) shocked the nation. 1968's The Year of the Sex Olympics predicted developments in reality TV by decades. Then there's his script for First Men in the Moon, his technological ghost chiller The Stone Tape, and his ITV anthology series Beasts. We will be paying tribute to his career in a future issue.
