Stories from the Twilight Zone

by Rod Serling, Anne Serling (Introduction)

Rod Serling became a cultural icon of the 20th Century with his creation 'The Twilight Zone, ' which more than 50 years later was nominated by the Writers Guild of America as the third best written television series of the past seventy years. Of the 156 Twilight Zone episodes, Serling wrote 92. In the early 1960s, Rod Serling, novelized nineteen (19) of his scripts and published them in three volumes - this is the first. In this volume, you will read about a baseball pitcher with magical powers; a self-centered hypochondriac; a nostalgic journey back to childhood; a self-righteous domineering husband getting his comeuppance; the panic of a man with no memory finding himself alone in an empty town; and the destructive combination of fear and mob mentality.

Genres: Science Fiction, Horror, Short Stories, Fiction, Fantasy, Anthologies, Science Fiction Fantasy

177 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 1, 1960

About the author

Rodman Edward "Rod" Serling (December 25, 1924–June 28, 1975) was an American screenwriter and television producer, best known for his live television dramas of the 1950s and his science fiction anthology TV series, The Twilight Zone.

Reviews

[Dan Schwent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picture, if you will, a collection of tales. A robot plays baseball for the Brooklyn Dodgers. A man trades his soul for eternal life. A man is able to return to his childhood and try to make a change for the better. A married couple goes to Las Vegas and gets a prize they hadn't counted on. A man wakes up and finds he's the last living thing on Earth. Aliens invade a neighborhood. Tales are not always what they first seem to be at first glance, as you realize when you enter... the Twilight Zone.

Stories from the Twilight Zone is a collection of six Twilight Zone episodes, The Mighty Casey, Escape Clause, Walking Distance, The Fever, Where is Everybody, and The Monsters are Due on Maple Street, adapted into short stories by Rod Serling. If you've seen the episodes, this book probably isn't worth the time. However, I've mainly watched the episodes penned by Richard Matheson so this was a pretty entertaining ebook.

Some of the stories have stood the test of time better than the others but they were all pretty good. My favorites were Escape Clause and Walking Distance. Serling's writing isn't spectacular but it's easy to see how his style influenced later storytellers. I think it's cool that most of the opening and closing narration was included with the stories.

Also included in the book is an introduction by Anne Serling, talking about her father and giving a little history behind each of the episodes. I found it interesting but it wasn't essential and gave away some hints as to the plots of each.

My only gripe with the book is that it only contained six stories. However, it was pretty cheap on the kindle so I can't really complain. If you're looking for a collection of stories with endings that bite you in the ass, you can always look... in the Twilight Zone. Four out of five stars.

[Shainlock · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quote that says it all from the last story:
I remember seeing this one as well. It was chilling to read it.

From : THE MONSTERS ARE DUE ON MAPLE STREET-
“NARRATOR’S VOICE The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices—to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own for the children … and the children yet unborn. (a pause) And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to The Twilight Zone! FADE TO BLACK”

These are the truths that aren’t so pretty and Serling put them all out in the Twilight Zone for us to see. I love these stories. I think he was a guy ahead of his time and I love his writing.

[Phil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Di di di di, di di di di... I loved the Twilight Zone back in the day; I fondly remember watching marathons of them late at night on my little 12 B&W TV set in my room as a kid. Stories contains six novelizations (or should I say short storyizations 😎) of episodes from 1960, which all conclude with the actual closing narration by Serling. "The Mighty Casey" tells the tale of a robot baseball pitcher, which can pitch a smoking fastball. "Escape Clause" concerns a middle aged hypochondriac who makes a deal with the Devil for immortality. "Walking Distance" involves a middle aged guy, sick of NYC, who travels back to his home town in Upstate NY, and oddly enough, it has not changed an iota. "The Fever" takes us to Vegas with an uptight guy and his wife, the wife having won the trip for some slogan she wrote; trust me, it does not end well. "Where is Everybody?" has some guy waking up on some country lane, walking into town, and finding precisely no one; cigars still burn and the coffee is still warm, but no people. "The Monsters are due on Maple Street" revolves around the dynamics on a suburban block when suddenly the power and water shut off completely; not even cars will start...

I enjoyed reading these, and vaguely remember some of them from TV, but jeez, must have been over 40 years now! T.E.D Klein provides a great introduction as well, noting the huge impact the TV show had on popular imagination. Hard to pin down a genre for them-- science fiction perhaps, horror? Dark drama? In any case, all involve something out of the ordinary. 4 nostalgic stars!!

[Aimee · Rating 5 out of 5]

For me, this centered around horrible little men that get caught up in the wheel of karma, with two stories

The Fever- where a man keeps his wife in a tiny little boring box of a life. When she wins a trip to Vegas he scolds her on his high horse of her lack of morality on being excited to visit such a trifle sinful place. How dare she want to have a little fun.
When they end up taking the trip he becomes transfixed in “beating” the coin machine as “its his right”His control takes over and soon the universe decides to teach this sad hateful man a lesson, a lesson that ends in his demise.


The next was escape clause which is a favorite of mine.
Not only is Walter a hypochondriac with a paranoid personality, but it really shows in the writing, that he centers his entire life on the idea of “look at me!! It’s my world and you’re just living in it!!” Making his poor wife wait on him hand and foot while simultaneously berating her that she doesn’t ever care enough, nothing is ever good enough.
I mean hell… she mentions in the book she only married him because he lied and said that he had two weeks to live because of TB.
When he sells his soul to the devil, he is finally free from the dangers of the world… but the universe extends farther then any deal made on earth. After he kills his wife, the twilight zone decides to wheel its justice down on another. Tiny. Little. Man.


Though the grand finale the monsters are due at maple street is such a genius look into the psyche of human nature, are own destruction of one another. No other story in my opinion has come close to sterlings writing in calling it out. Reading this, felt like it was from a twin of Stephen king, makes me wonder how much king drew inspiration directly from him- I truly believe sterling was a horror writer and this story proves it.

I just love rod sterling. 🚪🌀

[Kaethe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another of my beloved texts from middle school. A great collection of stories from an amazing array of authors. Serling, like Hitchcock, knew to choose strong writing. Great for MG kids to whom the themes will be familiar, but the specific stories probably not, and for adults who've avoided SF/F in the past. Pure happy nostalgia for fans like me.

[Berna Labourdette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recuerdo con mucho cariño dos historias de esta antología de Twilight Zone (acá conocida como La Dimensión Desconocida, aunque también es bonita la traducción: La Zona Crepuscular) que leí hace muuuchosss añooos: Claúsula de escapatoria, donde un desagradable hipocondríaco se encuentra que deseó mucho más de lo que puede manejar y Los monstruos van a llegar a Maple Street, un cuento un tanto pulp y desfasado sobre el terror descontrolado que se podría sentir ante una inminente invasión extraterrestre pero que aún así se deja leer bien como metáfora de la caza de brujas y el mccarthismo.

[Aubrey Braddock · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was really fun to read these stories in print I’ve watched many, many times on the screen. Definitely added to the stories! Well worth the read for all fans of The Twilight Zone.

[Bufo Calvin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picture if you will...

...a storyteller who uses a cathrode ray as a paintbrush. This quiet man with an unmoving face and a smirk as permanent as the Mona Lisa's smile is such an individual.

What happens when he trades the light from behind the screen, for the one behind the eyes? Will his twisted tales of modern philosophy be as effective as literature?

Or will they be mere shadows of themselves...in the Twilight Zone?

---

The answer is: Rod Serling is also a good story writer! It's interesting to see how removing the need to please sponsors and network legal departments gives enough freedom to strengthen some of these short story adaptations of familiar episodes.

The language can be more realistic, the damage caused by individual's actions can be more explicit...and interestingly, brand names can be used freely.

I would be giving the book five stars, because the stories absolutely hold up and hold your interest...if not for a couple of major problems with this edition.

The first, and strangest thing, is that they group all of the introductions to the stories in the beginning of the book, rather than having them appear before each of the stories. The ending monologue is where it should be (after each story), but it simply makes no sense to me to lump all of the scene setting in the same place. Those intros and outros, by the way, are the only parts which are scripts...the others are prose, plain, but never simple.

The other thing is that the foreword by Anne Serling (Rod's daughter) is fascinating, but imperfectly proofread. For example, there appears to be a missing word here:

"As much as my father believed in second chances and redemption, he also felt there were certain people who did warrant the privilege, and he, I imagine, relished in providing them their due fate."

I can only assume here that this is supposed to read, "...certain people who did not warrant the privilege." Leaving out the word "not" makes it confusing...and if they did deserve what they got (which would be a positive thing in the book's construction) relishing their "due fate" seems odd.

Once you get into the stories themselves (past the perhaps transcribed transcriptions...one spells "Kansas" as "Kansa"), the proofreading is good.

The stories, which are all first season episodes, are:

* The Mighty Casey
* Escape Clause
* Walking Distance
* The Fever
* Where Is Everybody?
* The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street

I remember all of the episodes, having seen them each several times, but that didn't diminish my enjoyment of them. In fact, one fun multimedia experience was reading the story as a Kindle book (and one I borrowed from the Kindle Owners' Lending Library) and then watching the episode as part of Prime streaming (at no additional cost over the annual membership).

I do recommend the book, and with a few minor tweaks to the added material, it could be greatly improved.

[Mauoijenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such awesome stories straight from The Twilight Zone, easy to read a story right before bed each night. Rod Serling really knew how to get your imagination running.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a big fan of the TV series. The Twilight Zone. some of the best writers supplied scripts and short stories that were turned into episodes. Rod Serling of course was one of the talented writers who churned out some very good short stories for Twilight Zone episodes. this book first came out in about 1960. it contains six stories.
my favorite stories were," Walking Distance." Where a thirty something man misses the the town he grew up in. Unhappy with his life he walks back to his town and finds himself back in time. a good story. I also liked" Where is everybody?" a lone man ends up in a town where he is by himself and it appears that everyone has disappeared. the one that really stood out for me was "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street" this is a real classic that "makes you think of the what if?" a story about a regular neighborhood, when one afternoon the electricity goes off, cars, power tools and lawnmowers, and phone lines stop working all at once. at first they are curious. then one little boy holds up a comic book about UFOs and says he thinks the neighborhood is being invaded by Monsters from another planet. he explains that these "monsters' look just like humans. Soon weird things happen, one person's car turns on and off by itself, fingers start getting pointed, questions come up such as "why do you stand on your porch and look at the stars?' a once friendly neighborhood turns hostile on each other.What or who is causing this? the ending is rod Serling at his best.
most of the six stories are good. the only one I did not like as much was "the Fever" a man and his wife win a trip to Las Vegas. the man, although resistant at first, gets caught up in The Fever" of the slot machines. the writing was good in this story but the lead character was an unpleasant jerk and i really did not care what happened to him.
I have seen all of these short stories on Twilight zone.{ we own the whole series} most good to great episodes. except for The Fever. a very good book of short stories from the talented Rod Serling. I read this on my kindle.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember when I was about eight years old wanting and failing to find a collection of Twilight Zone tales in my local library system in the USA. Now more then half a century later I have discovered this in the reserve stock of my London (UK) library system. In such ways are the disappointments of childhood rectified as I descend (I hope not to quickly) into my second childhood! Reading these stories today I was struck by how good they are and I am surprised that haven't encountered them previously in various 'golden' age anthologies of SF and Fantasy, though maybe the now ubiquitous availability of the original TV series mitigates against this? I think the stories actually stand up better then the TV shows (though I have watched many of them recently with great pleasure) because the printed word filters out the visual anachronisms that can seem, even for someone like me who saw them as a child in the 1960's, now very glaring. Some of the stories like 'The Monsters are due on Maple Street' have only grown in their power and relevance.

These stories gave me more pleasure then those by other authors of the 'golden age' like Asimov, Heinlein and others because their essentials, dealing with man and his fragilities, inadequacies and fears, seem less dated then those who looked at the future through technology and seem so much less relevant. A rare and delightful discovery.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have always loved the Twilight Zone, it’s one of the best concepts ever devised... Next to HP Lovecraft in terms of thrilling horror.
The last story “Monsters are due on Maple street.” was great because it showed very real and human reactions to the threat of outsiders, or rather the threat of ‘us vs them’ even amongst normally friendly neighbours. To be honest, I’m nervous about how the people around me would act in that scenario. Could I trust my neighbours not to freak out and become a lynch mob?
These stories are great and I want to read more.

[Amy Gay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always love watching Twilight Zone episodes this time of year and first time reading through a collection. Such great stories. Hope to find more anthologies!

[Elford Alley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Serling spent years fighting censors to tell his stories, and in this book you get three classic Twilight Zone stories told how he wanted!

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid prose retelling of several creepy, hilarious & poignant tales from this most classic of television series. This short story collection fired my imagination and stoked my literary passions...feelings all good books should aspire to ignite.

[Numidica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in about eighth grade, and remember loving the fact that there was a book companion to the TV series (which I loved).

[Spence · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

1 perfect story ("Walking Distance")
2 excellent stories ("Where is Everybody?", "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street")
1 good-not-great story ("Escape Clause")
1 fine story ("The Fever")
1 less-than-fine story ("The Mighty Casey")

As a fan of the series, I don't regret having taken the time to read this collection. I only wish Serling had reconsidering the latter three stories—I'm not exaggerating when I say any other episode from the series would have been more enjoyable than "The Might Casey," and would have been more thematically relevant too. Here we have five tales that deal with unexplainable events bordering on supernatural or phenomenal, all of which follow... a story about a robot playing baseball? I know Serling loved the sport, but jeez.

If it was me adapting only six episodes from the first season into prose, my list would go something like this: "Walking Distance," "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street", "Where Is Everybody?", "The Four of Us Are Dying", "The Hitchhiker," and one of the most under-appreciated episodes of the entire series, "Nightmare as a Child."

All this to say, while the quality of the former three stories far makes up for the tedium of the latter, this book could have been an easy four (perhaps even five) stars had some different choices been made.

[Mariah · Rating 4 out of 5]

For October, I decided to read a spooky book, but I’m not too into horror so this was the perfect amount of eerie. Prior to picking up “Stories from The Twilight Zone” I had watched a couple of episodes and heard lots about it. Unfortunately, in my country Netflix doesn’t carry it, but reading this book was an excellent alternative. It was really incredible reading these stories in 2022 because it led me to realize how much of an influence “The Twilight Zone” has had on culture (e.g. the T.V. show “Black Mirror” was definitely inspired by it). It was neat as well because it mentioned specific years in the book that have already past, but were seen as the future at that point of time. The only negative I found was more-so an indicator that it was a product of its times. There were several tropes such as the women being the housewives, or the only black man being a boxer. Overall, a pleasant read and I would recommend picking up this book, Sterling has the most creative descriptions.

[Andrew Garrett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m trying not to be biased, because I love the Twilight Zone—and I generally try to be very selective about which books I give five stars to—but these stories are fantastic. The adaptation of the stories on the show are all great, but the narrative adaptations add even more to the richness of these stories.

I love the combination of humor (The Mighty Casey, Escape Clause), nostalgia (Walking Distance), and philosophical themes (The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street) that this collection offers. Each story is rich, moving, challenging, and thought-provoking.

I was especially moved by “Walking Distance”. Even though I’ve seen the episode before, I found reading the short story version to be very powerful.

I love Serling’s talent for making his storytelling simultaneously readable, enjoyable, and powerful. I’ll be reading the next two volumes of this collection soon.

4.7 ⭐️

[Kris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this book, essentially the source material for many of the episodes. Serling can definitely write! The descriptors he chose sometimes actually made me chuckle out loud. They were very vivid and it really enhanced my reading of these works. As with any collection, some are stronger than others but overall I enjoyed this immensely. It gave some details that were either left out or not obvious from the episodes. Highly recommended for any fan of the series.

[Joshua Hair · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is it really any surprise that this book is stellar? This is just a small helping of Rod Serling’s prolific writing career, but it showcases a few of my all-time favorite Twilight Zone episodes. This is what people mean when they talk about a book being timeless. Give this short collection to an ancestor next century and it would be just as enjoyable and impactful.

[Kev Ruiz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great collection of stories from a number of authors. I remember having watched a few of these as featured in the Twilight Zone Tv series, and it was great to be able to read them.

The six stories all explore and showcase the human condition and mind and do so wonderfully well.

My favourite stories in this mini collection have to be Walking Distance about a man who travels to his childhood, Where is everybody - which I think is the episode I watched as a kid which most struck me, and The Monsters are due on Maple Street.

A great, quick read with profound analysis into the workings of the human condition and mind. Wish the book was longer and featured more stories - I'm going to prolong my twilight Zone feeling by streaming a few episodes from the older seasons now

[Simina · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Aaron Lindsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

6 episodes of the Twilight Zone novelized by host Rod Serling. It is a lot of fun reading and remembering the shows.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

not bad.

[Kenneth Pua · Rating 5 out of 5]

Walking Distance is one of my favorite Twilight Zone tales.
The other one is In Praise of Pip . I really love Jack Klugman's performance in the TV episode of Twilight ZOne.

[Steve Wiggins · Rating 4 out of 5]

With the recent reboot of The Twilight Zone you’d think interest might be running high with Rod Serling. I’m not seeing it, if it is. My own fiction writing, which often falls into that Zone, struggles to find interested publishers. The world has moved on. For some of us, however, Serling’s ideas are still cogent. Serling was a playwright more than a novelist. Before his untimely death he “novelized” three small volumes of some of his Twilight Zone episodes. This is the first of the three collections.

It’s a strange experience reading these if you’ve seen the episodes. Sterling is a punchy writer, often, his characters are hard-boiled. They assume they belong in the world and that others should simply accept that. Still, his psychological realism takes over. Some of his more famous stories are here, including one of my personal favorites, “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.” As I point out in my blog post Sects and Violence in the Ancient World on this book, that story has become timely once again. His “Walking Distance,” about his own boyhood in Binghamton, is still poignant. Many of the stories left me feeling sorry for their protagonists who had no idea they were in the Twilight Zone.

For me some of the draw of these stories is nostalgia. This is ironic because many of Serling’s stories here are about nostalgia. You can’t go back, and psychologists tell us we really do remember childhood (and much of our lives) in terms of the rosy glow that accompanies experiences now inaccessible. While not a Hemingway or Melville, Serling was an extremely perceptive writer. If, like me, you grew up in the Zone, this will happily take you back there for a few hours.

[Ariel Lynn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book in my hometown’s train station where there’s a “take a book, leave a book” carousel. I enjoy random books. They give me a little thrill.

Back on topic! Rod Serling created The Twilight Zone &, later, re-wrote some of the episodes in prose form, which is how this book came to be! I looked up Serling in order to write that one little sentence, but that completely changed how I interpreted the stories I just finished reading.

Apparently, Hollywood referred to Serling as the “angry young man” because his political & professional lives were inseparable. His thoughts on war, racism, & (especially later) censorship – sponsors were both censors & editors of early television – shaped his work. When sponsors continually erased the social & political statements from his work, Serling decided to make his own show.

&, thus, The Twilight Zone was born. Rod Serling figured – correctly – that he could tuck his “controversial” opinions into a science fiction show without much fanfare.

I thought these six stories were simple, kind of boring, stories that probably played better to early TV audiences than to someone reading them more than 50 years later. Knowing a little bit more about the author & how he wanted to include social & political comments in his stories, I saw the messages a little more clearly.

To be honest, it wasn’t that hard to find the underlying messages. I thought they were spelled out too directly, which probably led me to overlook their importance. Again, perhaps they were shocking to early audiences, but not so much to me in 2016.

POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERT!!!
The Mighty Casey encourages us to think what makes a person human. Serling implies (correctly, in my mind) that compassion is an inherent human trait while “competitiveness, drive, & ego” are learned behaviors.

Escape Clause touches on how a lack of moderation in life – either too careful or too wild – leads to trouble. You’re either going to be stuck in the house, terrified of the outside world, or you’ll keep trying to top your previous extreme activity & you’re going to be bored. Here, Serling also depicts the first of two long-suffering, verbally abused, wives that appear in Stories From The Twilight Zone. I’ll give my thoughts on them later.

The next story, Walking Distance, touched me on a deep, personal level. I feel like it would touch a lot of people for the same reason… I imagine that most of us have looked at our lives at some point & thought, “I wish I could be a kid again.”

The social implications are pretty obvious for this story: We can never go back. Even if we got the chance that Martin Sloan got in Walking Distance, life wouldn’t be the same as it was when we were kids. We bring the experiences & perspectives of our adult selves back with us, & they color the childhood for which we long with adult worries.

The Fever features the second long-suffering wife that I mentioned earlier. In my opinion, Serling captures how & why an addict lashes out at his loved ones when the “low” hits. He can’t take out his anger on what he sees as the cause of his frustration – in this case, the slot machine. So Franklin, a man who already treats his wife badly just for wanting more out of life than making his meals & listening to his opinions, lashes out at his wife, Flora. Honestly, I wish the author hadn’t spelled it out so directly.

This story also shows a man hung up on the “immorality” of legalized gambling & infuriated by the idea of wasting even a nickel become what he hated. This, again, reminds me of Escape Clause, where the character goes from one extreme (rigid, uptight, afraid to live a little) to the other (sloppy, compulsive, courting death).

Where Is Everybody is only 26 pages long, but it seemed much longer. It’s possible that Serling wanted to emphasize the solitude & monotony of being endlessly alone. Unfortunately, it came across as boring.

It does, however, make the reader think about the worries the military might have with lengthy space travel missions. It also shows the lengths they are prepared to go to make sure their soldiers are ready.

The final story, The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street, makes an amazing commentary on human nature. How Serling shows people, once close & friendly, turning on one another at the first sign of distress is spooky because of how true it seems given today’s current events.

The aliens at the end of the story represent any people who might seek to wreak havoc on another – through fear, confusion, & the ease with which humanity turn on one another in those situations. Much like we see with our current political season, the neighbors in this story are driven to hurt one another by the prospect that one of them is an “other.” It really makes me think about politicians’ desire to create an “us versus them” fear & how it affects the “them” population.

[Kevin Lucia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent. Some stories a little heavy-handed - but that's just part of what's become the Sterling Charm. And if you've seen most of the episodes, you've probably seen these. But the best one - better as a story, I think - was "Walking Distance" and "Where is Everybody?"

[Mason Marcobello · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is timeless.