Tomato Cain and Other Stories, from Manchester’s independent publisher Comma Press, is a reissue of Nigel Kneale’s fiction debut. It brings together the 31 tales that appeared in the original UK and US collections plus two stories not previously included in any collection, and previously thought lost.

Kneale is better known for his television and film scriptwriting than his fiction, and was responsible for the creation of the Quatermass series of films and television programmes, as well as a group of six eerie tales shown on ATV in the 1970s, collectively known as Beasts. He is associated with the genres of science fiction and horror, something that did not sit well with him in his own lifetime.

The first edition of Tomato Cain and Other Stories was published in 1949 and the stories have an otherworldly feel to them as much for that reason as for their subject matter. There’s a certain tone to them, a sense that the old world hasn’t quite been shaken off yet, or the modernism of the mid-century fully embraced. Kneale conjures a world where chapel on Sunday is still part of the fabric of life, but for some has begun to represent an unwanted ritual without meaning. For others, the old ways are more important than the Bible. There are morality tales that fix on human weakness, stories that are science fiction in their fascination with engineering and strange technologies, and yarns that play on a sense of dread wrapped up in the peculiarity of a situation.

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