Andy Murrary — Into the Unknown: The Fantastic Life of Nigel Knea

I have been a huge fan of the work of Nigel Kneale for as long as I can remember. I was a child of the 1970s and his work was everywhere, the one that sticks most in my mind from the period was his Quatermass TV series from 1979. Duing the years since I have revisited most, if not all of the available work of Mr Kneale and fallen in love with his writing. The Quatermass stories are obviously the pinnacle of his success, but The Stone Tape, Murrain and Beasts remain among my personal favourites. I have always wondered just how different Halloween III: Season of the Witch would have been had his original script been followed? There is enough of Kneale in the film for me to love it, but it pains me to imagine just how good it could have been. 

Anyway, when this book arrived in the post I was delighted, it had been out of print for some time and I had never managed to pick up a copy. The fact that this is a revised and expanded edition cheered me even more. I dug in with joy, the story of a man whose has so affected me over my lifetime and yet who I know so very little about. It is fascinating to read about his childhood and family life and the amazing life that his wife Judith had led. Her family were German/ Jewish and had literally escaped the Nazis by the skin of their teeth, moving eventually to England to start a new life. Judith’s Mother was a songwriter, and her second opera featured a libretto written by her husband about a time machine built by family friend Albert Einstein. Scientific pioneers, time machines and she hadn’t even met Kneale at this point.

Into the Unknown is a comprehensive and adept retelling of the story of Nigel Kneale, as a man, husband to Judith, father to Tacy and Matthew, actor, writer, and all-round sci-fi/ horror legend. The book covers in detail his entire life from his childhood in the North West and the Isle of Mann, to his time working with both the BBC and Hammer, through to his brief flirtation with Hollywood, and ultimately his death from multiple organ failure in 2006. It is such a pleasure to read about the debt owed to Kneale by the likes of Steven Spielberg, and of course reading about the troubled genesis of Halloween III, and the fact he rejected the opportunity to write for Doctor Who, on more than one occasion, however, the best stuff is about the works we all know and love, his masterpieces, the stories that will continue to inspire and excite thus of us of a certain age.

The book flows well and tells the Kneale story in great depth. Large chunks of it through interviews with the man himself, his family, his contemporaries, and those who form a large, global appreciation society of Kneale’s work, people like Kim Newman, Jeremy Dyson, John Carpenter and Reece Sheersmith. This is not merely the story of a man who wrote scripts for TV, this is the story of one of sci-fi/ horror’s greatest creative talents.