Roger Luckhurst
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theprofrog.bsky.social
Roger Luckhurst
@theprofrog.bsky.social

academic/freelance writer, on Gothic, Science Fiction. Next up: Graveyards: A History of Living with the Dead (October 2025).

Roger Luckhurst is a British writer and academic and since 2020 the Geoffrey Tillotson Chair of Nineteenth Century Studies at Birkbeck College. He was appointed professor in modern and contemporary literature in the Department of English, Theatre, and Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London in 2008 and was distinguished visiting professor at Columbia University in 2016. He works on Victorian literature, contemporary literature, Gothic and weird fiction, trauma studies, and speculative/science fiction. Luckhurst is notable for his introductions and editorships to the Oxford World's Classics series volumes -- Late Victorian Gothic Tales, Dracula, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Portrait of a Lady, H.P. Lovecraft's Classic Horror Tales, King Solomon’s Mines, and The Time Machine -- and for his books on J. G. Ballard (1997), The Invention of Telepathy (2002), Science Fiction (2005) The Trauma Question (2008), The Mummy’s Curse: The True Story of a Dark Fantasy, and Zombies: A Cultural History. He has also written two books for the British Film Institute classic film series on The Shining and Alien. .. more

Philosophy 28%
Art 23%

Quintessential UK A&E exchange: ‘could you think about what your mobile number is sir?’ ‘As I’ve repeatedly explained to you, I was drinking alcohol all night with the express purpose of no longer thinking. That’s the whole point of drinking.’

A hematologist just said to me: ‘You look like the sort of person it would be difficult to get blood out of.’ #dry #dessicated #donnish

this pretty much balances out all the negative news, right?

If you’re looking for positive news, I can report that my freakishly swollen elbow has settled down a bit and I now have two elbows of roughly the same size and consistency for the first time in 2026

Today I did a spot of editing in the morning and then after lunch entered into the first bumpy foothills of the next world war. How about you?

That’s exactly what I did, with the Stan Laurel quote in my head “Life isn’t short enough”.

Alarming email for a professor to receive

I’ve only ever walked out of one cinema showing in my life and that was a Bela Tarr film. If violently not for me, this is a probably a measure of proper art, as I’m poorly educated and have no taste. RIP

Monday morning emergency fluffy kitten

‘In Paris with a bizarre elbow injury” was not a sentence I was expecting to write this early in the year. Still, it allowed a splendidly dismissive ‘Pffff!’ from a pharmacist early doors for 2026 too

email this morning from Keir Starmer, of all people, telling me that everything is going to be fine in 2026, so that's a relief because it was looking a bit dodgy back there for a while.

Nice pairing, just spotted in Daunt Books, Marylebone

Laura Poitras’s doc Cover-Up, about Seymour Hersh’s reporting from 1969 to the present, is oddly comforting: it’s not all getting worse, it’s always the same uniform shower of shits in power there always has been

Doesn’t J H Prynne do the New Year’s Day ocelot hurling competition on Grantchester Meadows?

Dr No: Academic Dissent from the Johnson era to Trump
make a Bond movie academic

Spectre: {Insert bacronym here}
make a Bond movie academic

No Time to Die: Techno-Fascism and Its Imaginaries of Immortality

Reposted by Roger Luckhurst

make a Bond movie academic

Spectre: {Insert bacronym here}
make a Bond movie academic

No Time to Die: Techno-Fascism and Its Imaginaries of Immortality
Make a Bond movie academic

Tomorrow Never Dies: Post-Modern Media and Neoliberal Futures in Late 20th Century Southeast Asia

Nearly time for the family to gather around the telly for the annual ritual rewatch of Satantango on Christmas Day eve

Always lovely to wake up on Christmas Day to a Daily Work Flow reminder from your employer

My annual reminder of the structural inequalities of capitalist modernity

Knives Out: Wake Up Script Editor (and cut at least 45 Minutes, for the Love of God)

Isn’t that Zizek’s agricultural business, Critical Theory Tractors?

Gotta Christmas light?

Well, Henry, what do you know?

Me: But how do I pay you? I just want to know how to give you some money.

Chatbot: I'm sorry, I don't understand this question, could you try a simpler question?

My book of the year (so far!)

Didn't C.S. Lewis argue that 1450 was about the time when it all went wrong in European Christianity?

Thank you!