Stories from the Twilight Zone

Stories from the Twilight Zone by Rod Serling


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.

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