Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone: The 50th Anniversary Tribute Review Part I

Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone: The 50th Anniversary Tribute by Douglas Brode and Carol Serling. (Barricade Books, Fort Lee, N.J., 2009, 245 pages) Reviewing pages i-xxviii and 1-20.

I confess to being a little confused. I'm glad I bought this book, and I'm excited to read it, but there's something I don't understand.

The book carries the byline "Douglas Brode and Carol Serling." Yet in her Foreword, Mrs. Serling, Rod's widow, calls this "Douglas Brode's remarkable book." So far, I haven't seen Brode's explanation for the coauthor credit.

It's understandable that someone publishing a book about Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone wants Mrs. Serling's name on the cover. Rod and Carol Serling met as students at Antioch after he returned from World War II. This, of course, was long before he became famous. As young, married college students, they lived in a trailer without heat or running water.

Carol Serling encouraged her husband's writing. How many other wives would've insisted instead that their husbands get a "real" (please don't overlook the quotation marks) job? She served as a first reader, critiquing her husband's writing. She also gave him important career advice. Since Rod Serling's death, Carol Serling has been a caretaker of his legacy. So for this fan, at least, hers is a prestigious name on a Twilight Zone project.

Maybe Brode's being generous with the byline, or maybe it's Mrs. Serling who's generous in her Foreword. If I see an explanation elsewhere, I'll mention it in a future post. Anyway, it's easy to envision, Mrs. Serling providing valuable source material and insights. So far, Brode places great importance on how personal experiences influenced Serling's work. So source material and insight is key.

In her Foreword, Mrs. Serling promotes the work which follows. She also theorizes about why The Twilight Zone still appeals to so many people decades after its original run ended.

In his introduction, Brode explains the scope and purpose of the book. Brode says, "This volume will concentrate on those Zones which touch a common core, focusing on classics written by Serling himself. Key episodes by other contributors will be discussed in passing so Zone's full impact will be fully represented." (xxvii) Brode cautions that this book isn't intended to have encyclopedia like entries on every episode, and notes that Mark Scott Zicree's The Twilight Zone Companion already fulfills that purpose.

As you can see, Brode uses both italics and bold font when referring to The Twilight Zone, which he often abbreviates as Zone or, in his manner, Zone.

Brode includes a biographical sketch of Serling which could work as a chapter of its own. Brode didn't use footnotes, and I'll have to read further to see if he cited sources for the information. (Did Carol Serling contribute heavily in providing biographical info?)

Minor errors pop up in places. One I recall was dating Twilight Zone The Movie as 1978 instead of 1983

The introduction struck one sour note.

If Brode intends to prompt greater appreciation of Serling, then he made a counterproductive statement near the start. He said something which may close minds against Serling rather than open them. It won't bother fans who put Serling ahead of all other writers, or at least all other genre writers. (Me? I include my favorite genre writers among my favorite writers period.) Brode's statement may bother fans who recognize the wonderful creativity displayed by other writers besides Serling. It may garner hostility toward Serling from those devoted to other writers and who placed Serling in a lesser rank but who had been willing to reconsider his work.

In his second paragraph, Brode refers to "Serling's stellar reputation as the most imaginative of all American writers since Edgar Allan Poe." (xv) This is unnecessarily confrontational and prompts argument as well. Fans (fanatics) devoted to other writers will take this as an insult to their favorite writers. Sure, that's close minded. For instance, had someone argued that "Clifford Ball was the most imaginative writer since Poe," I'd like to think I could keep an open mind toward Ball's work even though I think other writers were more imaginative.

Unfortunately, that's not the way I see fans react when someone makes such "my writer is better than your writer" statements. They usually grow hostile and go ad hominem toward the rival writer to diminish him and make their favorite look better in comparison. So, if your goal is to show people what's great about Serling's work and why he deserves greater respect, then it's counterproductive to push them into closing their minds.

Brode's claim makes me wonder if he's even knowledgeable enough about science fiction, fantasy, and horror to make such an assessment. Hemingway and Fitzgerald didn't choose to focus on tales of time travel, space travel, aliens, androids, and the supernatural. Still is Serling really more imaginative than H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Robert Heinlein, Stanley Weinbaum, Edmond Hamilton, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Clark Ashton Smith, or Ray Bradbury to name just a few American writers whose careers began between Poe's time and Serling's?

For instance, consider Bradbury.

I know Bradbury harbors bad feelings toward Serling. Despite Bradbury's influence on the show, his own script submissions missed what Serling wanted. At the same time, many episodes contain similarities to a number of Bradbury's stories. Bradbury went overboard though when he accused Serling of plagiarism. His contention that Serling lifted "Walking Distance" from "The Black Ferris" is particularly off-base.

That said, is "Walking Distance"(a man steps into the past and meets his boyhood self) more imaginative than "The Black Ferris" (criminal carnies turn into children by riding a Ferris wheel backwards)? Is "Where is Everybody?" (a man finds himself in a strange, abandoned town) more imaginative than Bradbury's earlier "The Silent Towns" (a man wanders through abandoned towns on Mars)? Is Serling's adaptation of Matheson's "Third From the Sun" (2 families fleeing an impending nuclear holocaust head for another world) more imaginative than Bradbury's earlier "The Million-Year Picnic" (2 families fleeing an impending nuclear holocaust arrive on a new world)?

Brode at least shows familiarity with Bradbury though. He appears unaware of several other noted genre writers. On pages xvi-xvii, Brode discusses horror and how Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Wolfman had grown quaint, the stuff of jokes and comedy. He cites Serling, Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, and Ray Bradbury as writers of a new kind of horror. Brode demonstrates no familiarity with H.P. Lovecraft, who three decades before The Twilight Zone, had already created a new brand of horror, distinct from tales of vampires and werewolves as it was from Serling and co.'s stories.

I love Serling's work. I love The Twilight Zone. Serling is one of my favorite writers. Despite that, I see no evidence that Serling is more imaginative, than Bradbury, Lovecraft, Howard, the other writers I listed, and others whom I didn't. Yet he certainly had a great imagination.

Calling Serling "one of the most imaginative American writers since Poe" would be more accurate, fair, and productive than saying he is the most imaginative of all American writers since Poe" (emphasis added). The first statement is inclusive recognizing that other writers may equal or surpass Serling in terms of pure imagination. The second one dismisses the possibility that a Ray Bradbury or an H.P. Lovecraft was as imaginative as or possibly even more imaginative than Serling.

I think Serling was too humble when he said, "I don't have the imagination most writers have." While, I understand Brode's desire to balance Serling's statement, it would be a shame to let such hyperbole reflect badly on Serling, especially considering Serling's own humility when comparing himself to others.

As I mentioned earlier, Brode groups his analyses in chapters by theme. Chapter 1 examines nostalgia. He includes "Walking Distance," "A Stop at Willoughby," and "The Incredible World of Horace Ford." Other episodes such as "No Time Like the Past" deal with nostalgia, but also fit in the chapters where Brode placed them instead.

As he promised in the introduction, Brode goes in depth on Serling's better known stories while devoting less time to "The Incredible World of Horace Ford."

Brode's interpretations of a few of these episodes differ slightly from my own. Brode's views provoked thought.

For instance in "Walking Distance," Martin Sloan enters a drugstore without realizing he's stepped 35 years back into the past. He's surprised to learn 3 scoop ice cream sodas only cost a dime. He says that nobody sells sodas for a dime any more and says, "you're gonna lose your shirt."

To me, this hints that something is amiss. It foreshadows that Sloan has entered the past, and it evokes the nostalgia which infuses the episode. One of the common things people discuss when waxing nostalgic is to note how low prices were. Look at those birthday cards themed around remembering the year someone was born. They include pictures, list popular songs, movies, and the prices of a few things which cost much more now. One everyday thing people notice most when looking back at the modern past is prices. When I was a kid plunking down 35 cents for a comic book, I'd have gotten rich if I had a dime every time an adult said "Back when I was a kid, comics only cost 10 cents!"

So for me, this statement ties in with nostalgia and going back in time, but for Brode there's something else. It indicates that Sloan's "flight to freedom is doomed to failure; how can you run away from the contemporary money culture when you carry it around inside?" (3)

Brode earlier discussed how he saw Serling's work as criticizing, the post-war, upwardly mobile, suburban life style. It's a critique from the inside rather than the outside. Brode paints Serling as someone who enjoyed that lifestyle, but who had some misgivings.

In these episodes, The Twilight Zone explores nostalgia with varying outcomes. They range from accepting change and resolving to find the good things still around us to a total surrender and retreat into an idyllic dream world. "The Incredible World of Horace Ford" warns us that we often remember the good things and forget the bad. Kinda like how we remember those lower prices but forget the lower wages.