Tomato Cain and Other Stories

Nigel Kneale

Description

Originally published in 1949, Tomato Cain and Other Stories is the sole collection of short fiction by Nigel Kneale. Drawing on his experiences of growing up on the Isle of Man, many of Kneale's tales conjure up a remote, old-fashioned community where mythology and superstition are part of everyday life. Several stories go further, making imaginative leaps into the kind of weird, eerie territory with which Kneale would go on to make his name, as the writer of TV's Quatermass, The Road, Beasts and The Stone Tape. Though garlanded with praise on publication - it won its author the 1950 Somerset Maugham Award - Tomato Cain has long since been out of print. In the face of a steady groundswell of interest, this new edition, published by Comma Press to mark the centenary of Kneale's birth, makes the collection available again at last, uniting the stories from both the original UK and US editions for the first time ever. It's sure to delight Kneale's legions of fans and indeed all admirers of skilfully-crafted short stories.

Sujets

• Fantasy (canción de Mariah Carey)
• Short story
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: Comma Press
• Date de parution: 18 août 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781912697724
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

Contents
Introduction
Mark Gatiss


Foreword
Elizabeth Bowen


Tomato Cain
Enderby and the Sleeping Beauty
Minuke
Clog-Dance for a Dead Farce
Essence of Strawberry
Lotus for Jamie
Oh, Mirror, Mirror
God and Daphne
Jeremy in the Wind
The Excursion
Flo
The Putting Away of Uncle Quaggin
The Photograph
Chains
The Tarroo-Ushtey
Mrs. Mancini
Curphey’s Follower
The Terrible Thing I Have Done
Quiet Mr. Evans
Tootie and the Cat Licences
Peg
Zachary Crebbin’s Angel
Bini and Bettine
The Stocking
Who – Me, Signor?
The Pond
They’re Scared, Mr. Bradlaugh
The Calculation of N’Bambwe
Nature Study
The Patter of Tiny Feet

Charlie Peace and the King

Previously Uncollected Billy Halloran
It Doesn’t Matter Now



Note on this Edition
Andy Murray


Special Thanks
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM COMMA PRESS

Born in 1922, Nigel Kneale is one of the most important and radical British screenwriters of the last century. Predominantly a writer of thrillers that used science-fiction and horror elements, he was best known for the creation of the character Professor Bernard Quatermass, who appeared in various television, film and radio productions written by Kneale for the BBC, Hammer Film Productions and Thames Television between 1953 and 1996. He wrote original scripts and successfully adapted works by writers such as George Orwell, John Osborne, H. G. Wells among others, and was twice nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best British Screenplay.
Praise for Nigel Kneale
‘ Tomato Cain is a feast of the inventiveness that made Nigel Kneale one of the leading British writers in his field – his talent for the succinct macabre image worthy of M. R. James, his Lovecraftian bonding of the supernatural and scientific that would lead to masterworks such as the Quatermass serials and The Stone Tape . It remains a seminal and crucial collection.’
– Ramsey Campbell
‘Kneale’s stories unnerve, like his TV work, through their tense balancing of superstition with scientific reality. “Enderby and the Sleeping Beauty” is a mini Kneale masterpiece.’
– Matthew Holness
‘Nigel Kneale was a writer of foresight, character, terror and wonder… his best work is as fresh now as when set on paper, or transmitted on television. And it all begins with these stories, which still delight, frighten, amuse and surprise. Welcome back, Tomato Cain. ’
– Kim Newman
‘ Tomato Cain remains a boldly original collection; Nigel’s undeniable early talent lifting him easily out of the “regional writers” pool that so many of his contemporaries were trapped in and into a stratospheric league of his own. A vital reprint of a must-own collection, it’s worth it for “Oh, Mirror, Mirror” and “Minuke” alone.’
– Johnny Mains


Nigel Kneale

Tomato Cain and Other Stories




To My Parents
Tomato Cain and Other Stories first published in Great Britain in 1949 by Collins. ‘Essence of Strawberry’, ‘Mrs Mancini’, and ‘The Patter of Tiny Feet’ first published in Tomato Cain and Other Stories published in the US in 1950 by Knopf. ‘Billy Halloran’ first published in Tattoo , August 1946. ‘It Doesn’t Matter Now’ first published in Britannia and Eve , August 1946.
Foreword to the Original Edition copyright © Elizabeth Bowen, reprinted with permission.
Copyright © remains with the authors 2022.
This collection copyright © Comma Press 2022.
All rights reserved.
The moral rights of Nigel Kneale, Elizabeth Bowen and Mark Gatiss to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-10 1912697653
ISBN-13 9781912697656
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of Arts Council England

Printed and bound in England by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A






Introduction
If the Quatermass serials of the 1950s have anything approaching a catchphrase it’s the description of the troubled titular character as ‘the rocket man’. After his brave space experiment ‘brings something back’ with horrifying consequences, the British public (perhaps helped by seeing the monstrous alien creature in Westminster Abbey) know very well who Bernard Quatermass is and the particular brand of slightly detached scientist he represents. But ‘the rocket man’ could equally well apply to Quatermass’ creator, the brilliant, visionary, uniquely unsettling Nigel Kneale.
I first became aware of Kneale via the TV screening of the film version of his Quatermass and the Pit – the legendary and hugely influential tale of an ancient Martian invasion uncovered by excavation in modern day Knightsbridge. It’s become something of a cliché to talk of pubs emptying upon its first transmission but the original serials had gripped the nation like nothing else and my parents had long memories. They knew how scary it was and allowed me to stay up to watch the film only under strict supervision. It was the talk of school the next day. Then, in short order, I saw the other two Quatermass films which, though bowdlerised for the American market, still held an extraordinary power. Then, at last, came Kneale’s ITV series Beasts . Aged 10 (and completely hooked on any kind of supernatural TV), this series of one-off plays all centring, in one way or another, around animals, promised to be just what I craved. I can remember watching the first play ‘During Barty’s Party’ ( a superb exercise in mounting dread and terror) in a sheen of cold sweat, and the ghastly effect of ‘Baby’ has never quite left me even after all these years. In 1979, there came the epic final Quatermass story with John Mills, by which time I was completely besotted with Kneale’s work and seeking out everything I could. I found the privately printed edition of ‘The Year of the Sex Olympics’ (Kneale’s infamous and incredibly prescient depiction of a TV-obsessed future), ‘The Road’ (a now-lost period ghost story with an extraordinary, chilling twist) and ‘The Stone Tape’ (Kneale’s own searingly clever, terrifying modern day ‘ghost story for Christmas’). Then the reissued Quatermass scripts and, after something of a (wild) hunt, ‘Tomato Cain’, his book of short stories which you happily hold between your hands now. Kneale’s book won the prestigious Somerset Maugham Prize and brought him to the attention of the BBC and thence to Rudolph Cartier and thus to Quatermass . A hugely successful career in television and film sprang from this but Kneale was not to return to prose – except for the novelisation of the fourth and final Quatermass in 1979. This is a great shame because the stories contained here (some only featured in the American edition and two never previously collected) not only show an amazing imagination at work but the seeds of so much that was to come.
What’s fascinating and revealing, reading these terrific tales again is that they fall into distinct strands. There are the ones we might say exist in ‘Quatermass-land’, a greyish, post-war world of housing estates and milk bars and nascent youth culture, of suspicion and a certain type of domestic unhappiness. This strand embraces everything from the startling poltergeist of ‘Minuke’ to the grim suburban despair of ‘Essence of Strawberry’, from the thumbnail of broken dreams which is ‘Bini and Bettine’ to the superbly chilling ghost story ‘The Patter of Tiny Feet’ (one of my favourites). This is Kneale as the cynic he was so often characterised as, casting a jaundiced eye on the human condition and human relationships. Yet even here, there are signs of the big heart we know him to have had. He is quite forgiving of his domestic tyrants, his disappointed lovers, his cuckolded shop-keepers.
Then there are experiments. ‘Chains’ is a revenge story shot through with a sense of proper anger. There’s a World War Two story which reads like something from the Arabian Nights and a brilliantly grumpy depiction of being in a terrible matinee of a terrible play (no doubt inspired by Kneale’s short career as a RADA-trained actor). And there are a couple of first person narratives, one from Ancient Egypt, one from post-war Italy which perhaps point more towards script writing and the superb ear for dialogue which became Kneale’s trademark.
Then, of course, there are the island stories. Kneale, though born in Barrow-in-Furness, was a Manxman and the curious strain of superstition, isolation and magic imbued in him from birth was to stay with him throughout his long career. The Manx stories are dense with carefully observed detail and evocative names (Quilliam, Dicky-Dan, Gob Kelly). But the island also feels full of wonder. Angelic visitations and booming-voiced sea monsters vie with beautifully observed vignettes of long-forgotten outings, of Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee and family feuding. The title story is a little comic gem, effortlessly transporting us back to a time when a new fruit could be looked upon with suspicion and fear. And there are wonderful and touching little stories like ‘Tootie and the Cat Licenses’ and ‘Curphey’s Follower’ which could almost, you might think, have been conceived by no one else but Nigel Kneale. It’s interesting to note too, in light of the later ‘Beasts’ just how many animals are featured here too. There are lots of dogs, cats (with tails and without), ducks, frogs, rats… Oh yes, there are rats…
Which brings us, of course, to horror. Though Kneale very much disliked being labelled as a horror writer (and a science-fiction writer for that matter) there is a strong thread of genuine ghastliness which acts as a sort of background hum to all his work. So much so that, reading the stories as a whole, one tends to suspect the worst is going to happen even when it doesn’t