Bould, Mark. Solaris. BFI Film Classics. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 96 pp, Paper. ISBN 978-1-84457-805-4. $17.95.

Butler, Andrew M. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. BFI Film Classics. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 102 pp, Paper. ISBN 978-1-84457-8351. $17.95.

Forshaw, Barry. The War of the Worlds. BFI Film Classics. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 86 pp, Paper. ISBN 978-1-84457-811-5. $17.95.

Kermode, Mark. Silent Running. BFI Film Classics. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 87 pp, Paper. ISBN 978-1-84457-832-0. $17.95.

Kramer, Peter. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. BFI Film Classics. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 114 pp, Paper. ISBN 978-1-84457-778-1. $17.95.

Le Blanc, Michelle and Colin Odell. Akira. BFI Film Classics. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 96 pp, Paper. ISBN 978-1-84457-808-5. $17.95.

Luckhurst, Roger. Alien. BFI Film Classics. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 96 pp, Paper. ISBN 978-1-84457-788-0. $17.95.

McAuley, Paul. Brazil. BFI Film Classics. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 96 pp, Paper. ISBN 978-1-84457-794-1. $17.95.

Newman, Kim. Quatermass and the Pit. BFI Film Classics. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 112 pp, Paper. ISBN 978-1-84457-791-0. $17.95.

Throughout the latter half of 2014, the British Film Institute (BFI) staged one of the largest sf film festivals I can recall. More than 1,000 films were shown at over 200 cinemas throughout the UK, with the films shown ranging from the earliest British sf film (A Message from Mars, 1913) to the latest blockbusters; alongside this there were talks and panel discussions, exhibitions and events, DVD releases, and books. Among the books were these nine additions to their ongoing BFI Film Classics series. Since that series already includes many of the more significant sf films, from Metropolis and Things to Come to 2001, A Space Odyssey and from Blade Runner to The Matrix and The Terminator, one is left to wonder if all of these titles should actually count as "classics," or even, to be honest, as science fiction (but I'll come to that later).

These short monographs all follow the same model. There is a text of 80-or-so pages, profusely illustrated with stills both from the film in question and from other films discussed along the way; there are often several pages of notes, which can be quite long and detailed; and there are full credits for the film, sometimes listing names not actually credited on the film itself. Within that rather tight framework, however, there is quite a difference in the approaches the various authors take, differences which may tell us more about their general view of film than they do about the individual movies under consideration.

For instance, Kim Newman clearly feels that the choice of actors, even in relatively small roles, plays a large part in the audience's response to a film. This may be a particular characteristic of low budget British films in general, of which Quatermass and the Pit (1967) was an archetypal example, which often relied on a small circle of well-known supporting actors to make up for inadequately characterized roles. But it means that Newman fills his...