This is a lively and stimulating look at representations, mutations and adaptations of 'the alien' in literature, film and television. Using notions of the alien and alienation in a broadly defined sense, the contributors cover early science fiction, from the gothic aliens of Dracula and H.G. Wells, to the classic fifties Cold War sci-fi movies, such as War of the Worlds, twentieth-century reworkings of various 'alien' metaphors, such as The Fly movies and the Alien series, and comic variations on the theme such as Mars Attacks. Moving beyond the conventional genre boundaries of the alien, particular essays look, too, at 'race' as an alien condition, and at the use of illness and disease as a metaphor for alienation in modern film and fiction.

The contributors to this volume negotiate the notion of a "classic" in film and fiction, exploring the growing interface and the blurring of boundaries between literature and film. Taking the problematic term "classic" as its focus, the contributors consider both canonical literary and film texts, questioning whether classic status in one domain transfer it to another. The book looks at a wide range of texts and their adaptations. Authors discussed are Shakespeare, Charlotte Bronte, Henry James, Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, Virginia Woolf, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Arthur Miller, Truman Capote, and Lewis Carroll. Book to film adaptations, analysed including a comparison of Joyce's "Ulysses" with Hitchcock's "Rear Window",. Throughout, the contributors challenge the dichotomy between high culture and pop culture.