NICK KNOWLES

THE TV PRESENTER AND FILM WRITER TALKS US THROUGH HIS FAVES

Favourite SF/fantasy film

It would have to be Blade Runner. It was revolutionary when it came out. Visually it was absolutely stunning and like nothing else anybody had ever seen. It was like taking film noir into sci-fi, and rutger Hauer is absolutely bloody fantastic in it.

Favourite SF/fantasy TV

Star Trek – it was groundbreaking. Gene roddenberry was so far ahead of his time with things like the communicator that flipped up – it was 30 years before we got mobile phones that open the same way. Even sliding doors didn’t exist at the time he was writing it, so it was all just extraordinary stuff.

Favourite SF/fantasy books

Anything by Neil Gaiman; there have been some fantastic ones. Anansi Boys is amazing. Smoke And Mirrors I think is an absolutely seminal work in learning how to write fantasy. Neverwhere I think is beautiful. the idea that there is an entire society living underground in london. Once you’ve read that, you never think of london in the same way again.

Favourite SF/fantasy game

When my son was younger I used to take him to the arcade and we used to love climbing into the Star Wars Racer machine. It had these vibrating seats and we used to sit next to each other and race against each other. Absolutely loved that. We used to play for hours.

Nick’s new series The Retreat is available on iPlayer now.