Nigel Kneale
Nigel Kneale (1922 - 2006) was a popular and influential British screenwriter whose work had a lasting effect on television drama. Many of his works contain SF and horror elements, though he fiercely resisted being labelled as "a science fiction writer". (Considering some of the company his work would keeping in the annals of TV sci-fi writing, one can understand his reluctance.)
His television works include:
- The Quatermass Experiment and sequels
- A popular adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four starring Peter Cushing
- The Creature, later adapted as the Hammer Horror film The Abominable Snowman (both also starring Peter Cushing)
- The Year of the Sex Olympics, prescient drama set in a dystopian future where the population is kept docile with a diet of low-brow reality shows
- The Stone Tape, in which scientists bite off more than they can chew while attempting to figure out the scientific basis of a haunting
His film screenplays include:
- The 1964 film version of First Men in The Moon
- Halloween III: Season of the Witch (the one with no Michael Myers) -- wrote the original screenplay, but left in protest of Executive Meddling
Works by Nigel Kneale with their own trope pages:
- Quatermass series
Other works by Nigel Kneale provide examples of:
- Bread and Circuses: The Year of the Sex Olympics
- Computer Equals Tapedrive: Averted in The Stone Tape -- the computer has a tape drive, but it would in that day and age, and the rest of the computer is also present and depicted accurately.
- Deadly Game: What the reality show in The Year of the Sex Olympics becomes in order to boost audience interest.
- Living Memory: The premise of The Stone Tape
- Non-Indicative Name: The Year of the Sex Olympics
- Reality TV: The Show Within a Show in The Year of the Sex Olympics, prefiguring Big Brother by thirty years
- Sci Fi Ghetto
- Truman Show Plot: The Year of the Sex Olympics