Roger Luckhurst

A thorough overview of SF that's given me a lot of pointers about new (to me) authors that I'd like to read.

The contributors were clearly all very knowledgeable and demonstrated the links between SF and society, without simplistically pigeonholing writers and their works.

I found the later sections a little tedious in regards to the obsession with empire, capitalism and other social justice concerns. A lot of SF does indeed focus on these topics but it would have been good to have a more dispassionate survey of them, rather than analysis from within that mindset, and more space given to non-political works. These later sections were also more inclined towards the jargon of academia.

Overall, recommended for anyone who would like an overview of the evolution of SF.… (más)

This book sits comfortably between academic text and pop culture coffee table book and it was an absolute joy to read as a fan of the Gothic.
Instead of moving chronologically, Luckhurst picks themes and explores them with everything from 18th century rich British weirdos to 21st century Korean film. It’s fascinating and I’m absolutely going to buy a print copy.
The biggest draw is the collection of photos and illustrations Luckhurst gathered. (Pac-Man is beside a Greek labyrinth at one point.) I loved learning the different expressions of the Gothic and wondering at the parts of me that enjoy gothic literature and art considering the variety of prejudices and fears from which the Gothic springs.

The rare nonfiction book that I could read in one sitting and enjoy.


Disclosure: I reviewed this for Shelf Awareness and received a digital review copy from the publisher.



… (más)

An excellent, if slightly peculiar, volume of the series. It improves by leaps and bounds once Luckhurst gets beyond his initial few pages, which detail the literal development of the film and the inspiration for its story. After that, what seems like a straightforward narrative goes a little weird, breaking into segments to examine the Nostromo itself and each member of its crew (counting them down in order of their deaths). This results in a lopsided but remarkably interesting series of semi-tangents, from a look at the (potentially meaningless) references to Joseph Conrad, to the uselessness of the presumed masculine protagonist, to a theory that the film is really about Jonesy. Along the way, there are lashings of Kristeva, Freudian symbolism, "corridor anxiety," and a poem.

It's a heady brew, but it's worth it for a number of sideways looks at an already well-documented film.… (más)

If you are a male between the ages of 40 and 50 who was raised on movies, you have probably seen The Shining dozens of times. I’ve met so many people like me who have and can recite whole passages from it. As I said to my son a few weeks ago, I could probably watch it, start to finish, at any time. And yet it’s not one of my favorite movies. I love it, I’ve memorized it, but it’s not up there with Raging Bull and Notorious and The Searchers—and it can’t hit the heights hit by 2001. But it does exert some kind of strange compelling force on people who love it. As Luckhurst argues, we are pulled into the maze again and again.

The film Room 237 is a complete waste of time; the five conspiracy theorists aren’t crazy enough, and their ideas are as dull as that kid sophomore year who say in your dorm room and asked if the color green he was seeing as the same color green you were seeing. But this BFI essay about The Shining never steers into such boring territory. It’s readable, intelligent, and done with just the right touch. Like the film itself, however, it is never definitive: each section deals with a trope or theme but never goes all the way. For example, Luckhurst argues that the Room 237 sequence is the “navel” of the film and points put some interesting things about how it’s constructed—only to conclude by praising Kubrick for “detaching point of view from any secure ground of identity.” But perhaps this is as far as anyone can go when talking about a film as slippery as this one.

Luckhurst spends the early pages placing The Shining in the context of 1970s and early 1980s horror films. Figures such as the haunted house and the psychic child have a history of their own, a history that Luckhurst traces for the reader. This pays off when he later examines the ways in which the Room 237 sequence reflects the most famous horror scene of all: the shower in Psycho. Now that’s pretty interesting. He also treats the opening shots of the VW bug (followed as if by a demon), Shelly Duvall’s terrific performance (Jack Nicholson gets all the nods but she is just as incredible), and the film’s soundscape. He is very good on the film’s indeterminacies: the “fact” (which I’ve never quite understood) that there could be no window in Ullman’s office, the two Grady girls appearing as twins despite our being told they were two years apart, or that Ullman tells Jack about Charles Grady’s cabin fever but that Jack meets Delbert Grady in the bathroom scene. To Luckhurst, these items contribute the dream landscape of the film, just like the ending photograph of Jack on July 4, 1921. Luckhurst gives the ending its due and notes that it took a week (a week!) for Kubrick to complete that tracking shot into the photograph. Dream or not, the house always wins.… (más)