Rod Serling (1924–1975)

I am a fan of the Twilight Zone and have been watching and rewatching since I was very young. Rod Serling was probably one of the first few names permanently branded on my brain. So, of course, when I found this book, I had to have it. Now, I have been trying to read solely horror novels and stories since 'tis the season but this one, like the original Twilight Zone TV series, the three stories within fit firmly in the Supernatural Thriller and Grim Thriller/Drama categories rather than show more straight horror. The stories mostly take their time with character work and at times, they build tension and suspense well but could still be pared down a bit. However, this is par for the course with Serling in my experience. A character-heavy story with a spare plot takes place in a fundamentally moral universe with a supernatural twist or twist of perspicacity at or near the end.
The stories spend a lot of time on characters, mostly to paint the bad guys with as many strokes of black as possible and, more interestingly, streaking their victims in shades of gray humanizing them to a greater extent and magnifying the antagonist’s crimes. The antagonists are given strokes of torture revealing their weaknesses more than anything else. They are truly monsters but still, only human evil that the unyielding cosmos will eventually punish severely.
The plot of each story is very, very simple: an escaped nazi war criminal in his attempt to escape imminent justice falls into a cosmic reckoning worse than death, a race-baiting preacher con-man responsible for inciting race riots and lynchings does his thing and crashes hard into supernatural justice, and a rich blind woman manipulates criminals and a destroyed ex-boxer to get what she wants for a mere 12-hours sowing nothing but devastation and death only to jump headlong into a torment rife with perspicacity which serves her just desserts. Again, this is par for the course.
I liked this book and all three stories as they were exactly what I expected. However, I found no surprises here either. I basically got what I was looking for, some Twilight Zone tales, and nothing more. I would recommend this book to fans of the Twilight Zone and of Serling’s other works but don’t expect anything beyond that. show less

It's amazing how this show resonates even 60 years later. I recently binged on this show, and even six decades later, so many of the episodes remain relevant, it's just mind-blowing. Despite special effects and some storylines that seem really cheesy, the series overall is one of these wonderful things that has aged far better than many shows or movies younger than it. There's several episodes involving Hitler/Nazism/fascism/war/etc that feel chillingly familiar in 2025.

This is a collection of science fiction stories based on scripts by The Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling. Each story runs for about 40 minutes and is presented in the style of old radio shows complete with full cast readings and special effects.

Not really having watched The Twilight Zone myself, I'm not sure if all of these were actually television episodes or not. I can say they all work well as radio show episodes. The full cast includes some pretty big names like Jason Alexander.

This show more volume includes these stories:

- "The Obsolete Man," in which a librarian is deemed unnecessary in a futuristic society and thus condemned to death. This one tackled authoritarian regimes and the necessity of literature (and by extension the arts) for a healthy life while holding a twist that quite surprised me.

- "Back There," in which a man is transported back in time and tries to prevent Abraham Lincoln's assassination. While this is one of those themes that has been crossed many times in various science fiction works (whether on the page or on film), this particular story still is clever enough to be interesting.

- "A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain," in which an older man with a young wife demands his scientist brother inject him with an experimental formula to reverse the aging process. While the twist was fairly predictable, this was still an interesting story in terms of character drama.

- "Nervous Man in a Four-Dollar Room," in which a man with a criminal past is asked to escalate his crimes to include murder and he wrestles with his conscience as it manifests itself physically in his mirror. This story seemed to drag on longer than necessary to make its point, but the premise was a good one.

- "The Monster Are Due on Maple Street," in which a freak power outage results in a neighborhood becoming suspicious of everyone and pointing fingers as to who might have nefarious intentions. This is one story I was actually familiar with as I read the graphic novel version of it previously. I do like how it is clearly a metaphor for McCarthyism but still works for today as unfortunately people are always ready to assume the worst of others based on basically nothing.

- "Escape Clause," in which a hypochondriac man is approached by the devil with the promise of immortality but soon finds himself bored with being impervious to all harm. This story was one I couldn't really enjoy much, perhaps because the main character was just so obnoxious; I was glad when the twist meant things ended poorly for him. show less

This is a collection of science fiction stories based on scripts by The Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling. Each story runs for about 40 minutes and is presented in the style of old radio shows complete with full cast readings and special effects.

Not really having watched The Twilight Zone myself, I'm not sure if all of these were actually television episodes or not. I can say they all work well as radio show episodes. The full cast includes some pretty big names like Jane Seymour.

This volume show more includes the following stories:

- "Night Call" in which an elderly woman receives strange calls in the middle of the night after a storm interferes with her telephone service, and she discovers her dead lover is trying to contact her from the grave. I really enjoyed how this one was creepy and spooky without relying on jump-scare tactics.

- "Long Live Walter Jameson," which opens with a professor discussing the Civil War as if he had lived through it before settling down to a discussion with his soon-to-be father-in-law where he explains he has actually been alive for centuries. The 'big reveal' here was predictable but the side routes it wandered down weren't; also, it was a good character drama.

- "The Lateness of the Hour" in which a young woman protests against her parents never wanting to leave their house while her parents argue that with their robots providing for their every single desire, why would they ever need to venture out? This one seemed oddly relevant to today on many levels.

- "The Thirty-Fathom Grave," in which the navy picks up a noise from a shipwreck and think there's a possible survivor before learning that the vessel has been there for decades. This was another one that was creepy in the best sort of way; I could easily see this being an episode of The X-Files and loving it.

- "The Man in the Bottle," in which a genie offers to grant wishes to a down-on-their-luck couple but they quickly learn the truth of the 'be careful what you wish for' adage. I feel like this particular story has been told in some variation so many times, but it was still well done enough here to be interesting.

- "Night of the Meek," in which a department store Santa finds some real Christmas magic in giving. This was the weakest story in the collection in my opinion, but it's also the most feel-good so it was a nice note to end on. show less