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Twilight Zone: The Movie
You're travelling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. Next-stop
Twilight Zone
The Movie
-where demonic tyrants of the past live again to terrorize a man who carries the seeds of their hate into the present.
-where evil perches on a plane wing taunting the psychic who dare not believe his eyes--and still hold on to his mind.
-where the power to control the world rests in the fantasy-fraught imagination of a lonely child.
-where the joys of eternal youth are offered to those who remember childhood and are not too old to dream.
Twilight Zone
The Movie
-where demonic tyrants of the past live again to terrorize a man who carries the seeds of their hate into the present.
-where evil perches on a plane wing taunting the psychic who dare not believe his eyes--and still hold on to his mind.
-where the power to control the world rests in the fantasy-fraught imagination of a lonely child.
-where the joys of eternal youth are offered to those who remember childhood and are not too old to dream.
208 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
4 people are currently reading
247 people want to read
About the author
Robert Bloch
1,090 books1,284 followersRobert Albert Bloch was a prolific American writer. He was the son of Raphael "Ray" Bloch (1884, Chicago-1952, Chicago), a bank cashier, and his wife Stella Loeb (1880, Attica, Indiana-1944, Milwaukee, WI), a social worker, both of German-Jewish descent.
Bloch wrote hundreds of short stories and over twenty novels, usually crime fiction, science fiction, and, perhaps most influentially, horror fiction (Psycho). He was one of the youngest members of the Lovecraft Circle; Lovecraft was Bloch's mentor and one of the first to seriously encourage his talent.
He was a contributor to pulp magazines such as Weird Tales in his early career, and was also a prolific screenwriter. He was the recipient of the Hugo Award (for his story "That Hell-Bound Train"), the Bram Stoker Award, and the World Fantasy Award. He served a term as president of the Mystery Writers of America.
Robert Bloch was also a major contributor to science fiction fanzines and fandom in general. In the 1940s, he created the humorous character Lefty Feep in a story for Fantastic Adventures. He also worked for a time in local vaudeville, and tried to break into writing for nationally-known performers. He was a good friend of the science fiction writer Stanley G. Weinbaum. In the 1960's, he wrote 3 stories for Star Trek.
Bloch wrote hundreds of short stories and over twenty novels, usually crime fiction, science fiction, and, perhaps most influentially, horror fiction (Psycho). He was one of the youngest members of the Lovecraft Circle; Lovecraft was Bloch's mentor and one of the first to seriously encourage his talent.
He was a contributor to pulp magazines such as Weird Tales in his early career, and was also a prolific screenwriter. He was the recipient of the Hugo Award (for his story "That Hell-Bound Train"), the Bram Stoker Award, and the World Fantasy Award. He served a term as president of the Mystery Writers of America.
Robert Bloch was also a major contributor to science fiction fanzines and fandom in general. In the 1940s, he created the humorous character Lefty Feep in a story for Fantastic Adventures. He also worked for a time in local vaudeville, and tried to break into writing for nationally-known performers. He was a good friend of the science fiction writer Stanley G. Weinbaum. In the 1960's, he wrote 3 stories for Star Trek.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
April 10, 2018
Creo que a nadie que conozca un poco mi canal le será ajeno que La Dimensión Desconocida es mi serie favorita de toda la vida. Este libro recopila las historias homenajeadas en el film "Al filo de la realidad", una película que consiste en remakes de ciertos capítulos originales y clásicos de la serie. Algunos fueron escritos originalmente por Richard Matheson, otros fueron escritos exclusivamente para la serie, pero quien se encarga de (re)escribirlos acá es Robert Bloch. Conocía perfectamente las historias por la serie, pero sentía muchísima curiosidad de saber qué tal sería verlo por escrito. Y si bien todos me han gustado, creo que en ciertas ocasiones no era tan necesario darles extensión de hasta cincuenta páginas. Pero aun así me pareció una linda antología.
February 1, 2013
What's with this anyways? Film novelizations are something that is usually done by a starving beginner anxious to hone his professional skills or an established writer under a pseudonym. In fact one author told me that no writer should do novelizations as publishing companies look down on them as hacks and do not take them seriously. Which is probably why many writers use pseudonyms on their novelizations such as Jack Martin for Dennis Etchison and Carl Dreadstone for Ramsey Campbell.
Yet here we have not just an established writer but one of the greats in modern horror writing a film novelization under his real name for the Twilight Zone movie. And it wasn't a very good movie. Two of the stories were originally done on the TV series and were based on stories by Richard Matheson and Jerome Bixby. The actual screenplay for the movie was written by Bloch's illustrious colleague, Richard Matheson. Yet now Bloch rewrites them into this questionable and unnecessary novelization and adds nothing to it. They are well written . Bloch could not write crap. But they are ...again...unnecessary. I'm sure there are legal and commercial reasons for this travesty but sometimes, for art's sake, you just gotta pass. Which is what Bloch should have done.
Yet here we have not just an established writer but one of the greats in modern horror writing a film novelization under his real name for the Twilight Zone movie. And it wasn't a very good movie. Two of the stories were originally done on the TV series and were based on stories by Richard Matheson and Jerome Bixby. The actual screenplay for the movie was written by Bloch's illustrious colleague, Richard Matheson. Yet now Bloch rewrites them into this questionable and unnecessary novelization and adds nothing to it. They are well written . Bloch could not write crap. But they are ...again...unnecessary. I'm sure there are legal and commercial reasons for this travesty but sometimes, for art's sake, you just gotta pass. Which is what Bloch should have done.
November 30, 2023
Back in the day it was thought that all big-budget films had to have a prose adaptation in bookstores to help make them more successful, and so when Spielberg undertook overseeing the Twilight Zone film project Bloch was selected as the author for this one. In his autobiography, Bloch mentions having to write, revise, and turn in the completed manuscript in just six weeks, getting almost no cooperation from the film's producers, only getting to see a rough version of less than half of the film, being told that he couldn't add any events or details, not being informed that one of the main characters was black, not being told that one of the episodes was significantly changed due to a tragic on-set accident, etc. The film is a set of four short stories, so you can't really call this book a novelization. The movie presented stories by John Landis, George Clayton Johnson, Jerome Bixby, and Richard Matheson that had been converted to screenplays by Matheson, Johnson, Landis, and Josh Rogan, so it's a true example of commercial art by committee. Bloch did the best he could with the early version of the script he had to work with and came up with over two hundred pretty well-written pages, but it was a sort of unnecessary book based on a somewhat unfortunate (for a number of reasons) movie, and it adds little to his legacy.
August 26, 2023
En Los Límites De La Realidad.- Robert Bloch
"En el momentáneo fulgor de aquel relámpago verdoso lo vio con toda claridad: la silueta desnuda y simiesca de un hombre, a horcajadas sobre el motor del avión.
La visión desapareció en la oscuridad de la tormenta. Retumbaron los truenos.
Y una vez más, una veta mellada de luz verde iluminó el cielo. Valentine vio su fuente. ¡El rayo surgía de los brazos extendidos de aquella bestia!"
En Los Límites De La Realidad (The Twilight Zone) se publicó originalmente en el año 1983, y es una novelización de la película del mismo título escrita por el autor estadounidense Robert Bloch (1917-1994).
Presentado en forma de antología, el libro incluye los 4 segmentos principales de la película, en el orden original que se había pensado, y no incluye el prólogo y el epílogo de la misma. A su vez, la historia que abre el libro, tuvo que ser modificada en su final de forma apresurada por el autor, debido al cambio que produjo en la película la trágica muerte del actor Vic Morrow y dos pequeños niños producto de un accidente con helicóptero. Excepto esta historia que abre la antología, Bill, que está basada muy libremente en dos episodios de la serie, el resto son reversiones de capítulos clásicos. Los títulos de los cuentos llevan los nombres de los protagonistas principales a diferencia de los títulos originales de la película.
Si bien no soy muy fan de las novelizaciónes, esta en particular siempre me llamó la atención, dado el material original y el autor encargado de adaptarlo. Es un libro que se lee rápido, muy entretenido, de contenido variado y que todavía se consigue a muy buen precio en las librerías de usados ¿Que más se puede pedir?
🤘🤘🤘🤘
"En el momentáneo fulgor de aquel relámpago verdoso lo vio con toda claridad: la silueta desnuda y simiesca de un hombre, a horcajadas sobre el motor del avión.
La visión desapareció en la oscuridad de la tormenta. Retumbaron los truenos.
Y una vez más, una veta mellada de luz verde iluminó el cielo. Valentine vio su fuente. ¡El rayo surgía de los brazos extendidos de aquella bestia!"
En Los Límites De La Realidad (The Twilight Zone) se publicó originalmente en el año 1983, y es una novelización de la película del mismo título escrita por el autor estadounidense Robert Bloch (1917-1994).
Presentado en forma de antología, el libro incluye los 4 segmentos principales de la película, en el orden original que se había pensado, y no incluye el prólogo y el epílogo de la misma. A su vez, la historia que abre el libro, tuvo que ser modificada en su final de forma apresurada por el autor, debido al cambio que produjo en la película la trágica muerte del actor Vic Morrow y dos pequeños niños producto de un accidente con helicóptero. Excepto esta historia que abre la antología, Bill, que está basada muy libremente en dos episodios de la serie, el resto son reversiones de capítulos clásicos. Los títulos de los cuentos llevan los nombres de los protagonistas principales a diferencia de los títulos originales de la película.
Si bien no soy muy fan de las novelizaciónes, esta en particular siempre me llamó la atención, dado el material original y el autor encargado de adaptarlo. Es un libro que se lee rápido, muy entretenido, de contenido variado y que todavía se consigue a muy buen precio en las librerías de usados ¿Que más se puede pedir?
🤘🤘🤘🤘
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March 4, 2018Het spijt mij, maar hoezeer de korte inhoud op de achterflap mij aansprak, ik raak hier niet doorheen...
October 12, 2022
Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) novelization by Robert Bloch
I’m a lifelong fan of the original Twilight Zone television series, and am apparently one of the few people who thinks that Twilight Zone: The Movie is highly underrated. Just recently I came upon the novelization of the movie and was curious to see how closely it followed the screen version.
My first surprise was that this novelization was written by none other than Robert Bloch, author of Psycho. While Bloch was only given six weeks to complete the novelization, and was only able to screen two of the four segments before his manuscript was due, it’s pretty amazing how much effort he put into fleshing out the main characters in each story and revealing their thoughts (something impossible to do in a movie without excessive voiceovers). As a result, the book doesn’t read like a typical novelization, with the screenplay simply regurgitated in novel form.
If you’re familiar with the movie, the book does not contain too many surprises. I was most curious to read Bloch’s adaptation of “Time Out,” the infamous first segment that had to be reedited when Vic Morrow and two children were killed by a helicopter on set. I was hoping Bloch’s story might follow the original screenplay, which featured a heroic ending for Morrow’s loathsome character, but it turns out the book was rewritten to follow the edits of the final movie (and dang, is that ending by far the bleakest of the four).
In the book, the four segments have different titles and are in a slightly different order than the movie: “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” comes second in the book (last in the movie), switching places with “Kick the Can.” And, just like the movie, the two best stories in the book are “It’s a Good Life” and “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” The only story not adapted from a Twilight Zone episode, “Time Out,” is compelling but frustrating, and “Kick the Can” is ultimately boring both on the screen and on paper. The movie’s wraparound segments starring Dan Aykroyd are not featured in the book at all.
Of all the stories, “It’s a Good Life” (my personal favorite segment in both the book and the movie) benefits the most, as we get more of a backstory on teacher Helen Foley (played by the beautiful Kathleen Quinlan, for whom I still carry a torch thanks to this movie) and why she would be motivated to voluntarily stay with a boy who is capable of making any wish come true (to very horrific results for those around him). Her willingness to remain with Anthony and guide him rings truer once her past is explained to the reader.
For horror fans, I say Twilight Zone: the Movie is most definitely worth watching for the final two segments (major shout-out to John Lithgow’s gonzo performance in “Nightmare”), and for big fans of the movie like me, the novelization is definitely worth a read if only to give you a deeper understanding of the four main characters.
I’m a lifelong fan of the original Twilight Zone television series, and am apparently one of the few people who thinks that Twilight Zone: The Movie is highly underrated. Just recently I came upon the novelization of the movie and was curious to see how closely it followed the screen version.
My first surprise was that this novelization was written by none other than Robert Bloch, author of Psycho. While Bloch was only given six weeks to complete the novelization, and was only able to screen two of the four segments before his manuscript was due, it’s pretty amazing how much effort he put into fleshing out the main characters in each story and revealing their thoughts (something impossible to do in a movie without excessive voiceovers). As a result, the book doesn’t read like a typical novelization, with the screenplay simply regurgitated in novel form.
If you’re familiar with the movie, the book does not contain too many surprises. I was most curious to read Bloch’s adaptation of “Time Out,” the infamous first segment that had to be reedited when Vic Morrow and two children were killed by a helicopter on set. I was hoping Bloch’s story might follow the original screenplay, which featured a heroic ending for Morrow’s loathsome character, but it turns out the book was rewritten to follow the edits of the final movie (and dang, is that ending by far the bleakest of the four).
In the book, the four segments have different titles and are in a slightly different order than the movie: “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” comes second in the book (last in the movie), switching places with “Kick the Can.” And, just like the movie, the two best stories in the book are “It’s a Good Life” and “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” The only story not adapted from a Twilight Zone episode, “Time Out,” is compelling but frustrating, and “Kick the Can” is ultimately boring both on the screen and on paper. The movie’s wraparound segments starring Dan Aykroyd are not featured in the book at all.
Of all the stories, “It’s a Good Life” (my personal favorite segment in both the book and the movie) benefits the most, as we get more of a backstory on teacher Helen Foley (played by the beautiful Kathleen Quinlan, for whom I still carry a torch thanks to this movie) and why she would be motivated to voluntarily stay with a boy who is capable of making any wish come true (to very horrific results for those around him). Her willingness to remain with Anthony and guide him rings truer once her past is explained to the reader.
For horror fans, I say Twilight Zone: the Movie is most definitely worth watching for the final two segments (major shout-out to John Lithgow’s gonzo performance in “Nightmare”), and for big fans of the movie like me, the novelization is definitely worth a read if only to give you a deeper understanding of the four main characters.
April 18, 2016
1st Read: June 19, 1998 - June 25, 1998
This was probably a better book upon its initial release in 1983. Reading it after fifteen years had passed, really dated the stories, as it seemed so much farther from reality. If you want to read it for nostalgia effect, it may be the only way it will measure up.
I) "BILL" - (June 19)
- This was an interesting short story. I enjoyed it for the karma effect it had on the title character and for him being such a racist douche-bag!
II) "VALENTINE" - (June 22)
- The whole time I was reading this one, visualization awakened my mind. The actor, John Lithgow, who had portrayed the crazed man on the airplane in the movie, was there inside my head as well. Good story!
III) "HELEN" - (June 24)
- I didn't really get much out of this one as my mind was struggling to concentrate while I was using Calgary transit.
IV) "BLOOM" - (June 24 - 25)
- There wasn't anything at all spectacular about this one for me. Anyone who remembers being a kid, hasn't wished for this once upon a time in their lives.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 1, 2016
quatro pequenas histórias baseadas no file ou série Twilight zone: 1) História de bill - um branco americano que se vê aflito pois em cenários que não percebe é perseguido como judeu por nazis, negro pelo KKK e vietcong pelo exército americano; 2) História de Valentine e seu pânico no avião; 3)História de Helen do seu encontro com um menino, Anthony, que quer ser amado e que consegue que tudo o que imagina aconteça; 4) História de Bloom que em asilo de idosos faz que os velhos sintam felicidade.
December 5, 2014
A nostalgic science fiction novel, The Twilight Zone offers hours of captivating small stories. You can go back to a simpler time where time and space do not exist, and relax with the accompaniment of 8 tales. Each is just the right amount of length so you may read this at your leisure with the same feeling of depth or complexity of large books. If you don't have a lot of time and you still want to read a quality story this is you book .
August 28, 2013
A disappointing novelization of a movie I recall being pretty disappointing itself. The highlight of both is the same- the remake of the airplane bit, but really only because of Matheson's screenplay for the original show, which was brilliant. Don't waste any time on this, just go watch the old TV show a bit for a Twilight Zone fix.
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August 23, 2008isbn,original
April 25, 2016
Oude herinneringen van een serie die ik soms keek. leuke verhalen.
November 14, 2016
Un viaje a mi infancia.
Excelente amalgama de autores y colaboradores en el genero del horror literario.
Excelente amalgama de autores y colaboradores en el genero del horror literario.
September 18, 2019
Excelente recopilación de cuentos adaptados por grandes como Matheson, Bloch, Landis, etc a la pequeña pantalla en la serie mítica de ciencia ficción/terror "The Twilight Zone". Leer estos cuentos me hizo volver a mi niñez cuando veía esos capítulos y quedaba aterrado por días.... un nostálgico y muy buen reencuentro.
December 8, 2019
Way back when, I had seen the movie, thought it was amazing, bought the book, and... was underwhelmed. Started watching the movie the other day and could not believe I liked it so much. So I guess the book has not got better with age either
May 4, 2024
Just like the movie, these stories were fast paced and vivid. Some of the dialogue or references in this book might not be suitable for the modern reader, as a note. If you’ve seen the movie, this book is exactly the same!
July 11, 2024
Un maestro de los relatos de terror, hay varios que ya conocía y que inclusive se han visto en diversas series y capítulos a modo de parodia. Pero leerlos ha sido refrescar la memoria y tener nuevos temores. Muy recomendados estos cuentos.
February 13, 2023
This was a few short stories that had strange twists. Some were better than others.
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June 21, 2009Horror
September 28, 2015
A solid if uneventful novelisation by Robert Bloch covering the four segments of the film - nothing at all remarkable but readable if a little redundant.
January 22, 2016
For once the movie was better than the book
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews