Current research

Contracted Books:

• The Shining

I am currently writing the BFI Classic for Kubrick’s classic horror film, The Shining. This is due out in autumn 2013, to coincide with the Gothic season at the BFI.

• Zombie

I am writing a short introduction to the figure of the zombie for Reaktion Press, scheduled to appear in 2014.

Longer Term/Speculative Projects:

• Book of essays, SFnal: Science Fiction in the Expanded Field

This is an ongoing project to pull together my interest in looking at different kinds of science fiction that emerge in spaces outside genre texts – mainly in museums, fine art, photography exhibits and found-footage film works – cultural forms that have largely been considered inimical to SF forms. It will include essays on J. G. Ballard & Bruce Conner, William Gibson & Joseph Cornell, on world exposition spaces, fun fairs, and future ruins, on the artists Ivan & Heather Morison, Suzanne Treister, Dolly Thompsett, Mike Kelley, the architect Rem Koolhaas, and the cinema of David Lynch, Chris Marker, Patrick Keiller and Werner Herzog.

• The Undead Project: Taxonomies and Thanatographies

I am collecting curious histories of lives lived on in deathly states, from the mummified aristocracy of Egypt, via the Mesmerised, prematurely buried, catatonic and cryogenically frozen, to the embalmed bodies of twentieth century’s key Communist leaders. This will lead towards a large project to recategorise modernity’s continuing obsession with the undead.

• The Political Economy of the London Gothic

This long-term project will try to establish the key contextual conditions for the Gothic in London texts, from the eighteenth century to the present day.