This volume in the Constellations series explores in detail what made the TV series Lost a popular hit with critics and viewers, while also accruing intense fan scrutiny. Lost is discussed in terms of its generic hybridity, and in particular how it incorporates and reframes familiar tropes of science fiction in the context of a Survivor reality TV-style plot on the one hand and as a ‘mystery box’ of extremely complex hermeneutic codes and hyperdeigesis on the other. It sets out a detailed analysis of Lost’s neo-baroque aesthetics, situating it in relation to its reconfigurations of the time tr ... More

This volume in the Constellations series explores in detail what made the TV series Lost a popular hit with critics and viewers, while also accruing intense fan scrutiny. Lost is discussed in terms of its generic hybridity, and in particular how it incorporates and reframes familiar tropes of science fiction in the context of a Survivor reality TV-style plot on the one hand and as a ‘mystery box’ of extremely complex hermeneutic codes and hyperdeigesis on the other. It sets out a detailed analysis of Lost’s neo-baroque aesthetics, situating it in relation to its reconfigurations of the time travel, reproductive technology, conspiracy, and surveillance strains of science fiction. Further, it explores the ways in which Lost uses science fictional narrative approaches to the intersections between themes of gender, identity, community, science, faith and philosophic thought. The book also discusses the series’ relationship with its narrative extensions in online games, merchandise and secondary texts. Accordingly, it sets out an in-depth analysis of Lost as a narrative that invited the viewer into a storyworld extending beyond the television episodes into paratexts and transmedia storytelling, of which Lost is a significant example from the early 2000s. Constellations: Lost is thus an important retrospective examination of a significant television series and an indispensable account of a pioneering transmedia text.