An original anthology celebrating Rod Serling’s landmark television series
When it first aired in 1959, The Twilight Zone was nothing less than groundbreaking television. Freed from much of the censors’ strict oversight because of the show’s classification as “science fiction,” the 156 filmed episodes explored powerful and moving human themes—love, hate, pride, jealousy, terror—in their own unique style.The show has since inspired two revivals, as well as fiction, comic books, and magazines, and even a pinball game and theme park rides. Just as important, it sparked the imaginations of countless writers, filmmakers, and fans around the world, and is considered a seminal show for broadening the horizons of television.
This anthology will be an all-new collection of stories written in the vein of the original television show. 2009 is the fiftieth anniversary of The Twilight Zone’s first broadcast year. Edited and featured and introduction by Carol Serling, the anthology will include brand new stories by science fiction and fantasy luminaries such as Whitley Strieber, Loren D. Estleman, Joe Lansdale, R. L. Stein, Timothy Zahn, and Peter S. Beagle, as well as writers from the original series, Earl Hammer and Harlan Ellison®, all in honor of Rod’s incredible vision.
Publisher: Tor Books
Pages: 448
"The highway leads to the shadowy tip of reality; you’re on a through route to the land of the different, the bizarre, the unexplainable . . . Go as far as you like on this road. Its limits are only those of the mind itself. You’re entering the wondrous dimensions of the imagination. Next stop . . . the Twilight Zone." — Rod Serling
Titles and Authors:
Genesis by David Hagberg
A Haunted House of Her Own by Kelley Armstrong
On the Road by William F Wu
The Art of the Miniature by Earl Hamner, Jr.
Benchwarmer by Mike Resnick & Lezli Robyn
Truth or Consequences by Carole Nelson Douglas
Puowaina by Alan Brennert
Torn Away by Joe R Lansdale
Vampin' Down the Avenue by Timothy Zahn
A Chance of a Ghost by Lucia St. Clair Robson
The Street that Forgot Time by Deborah Chester
The Wrong Room by RL Stine
Ghost Writer by Robert J Serling
The Soldier He Needed to Be by Jim DeFelice
Ants by Tad Williams
Your Last Breath, Inc. by John Miller
Family Man by Laura Lippman
The Good Neighbor by Whitley Strieber
El Moe by Rod Serling
Author Bios:
Kelley Armstrong is the author of the New York Times bestselling “Women of the Otherworld ” paranormal suspense series, the “Darkest Powers” YA urban fantasy trilogy, and the Nadia Stafford crime series. She grew up in Ontario, Canada, where she still lives with her family. A former computer programmer, she’s now escaped her corporate cubicle and hopes never to return.
Alan Brennert was executive story consultant on the 1980s CBS network revival of The Twilight Zone and wrote some of its most well-remembered episodes, including “Her Pilgrim Soul” and “A Message from Charity.” He has won a Nebula Award for his short story “Ma Qui” and an Emmy Award as a producer for L.A. Law. More recently, he is the author of the bestselling novels Moloka’i and Honolulu.
Deborah Chester is the internationally published author of thirty-eight novels in several genres, primarily science fiction and fantasy. Her most recent books include The Pearls and The Crown. She’s also the John Crain Presidential Professor at the University of Oklahoma, where she teaches short-story and novel writing.
Jim DeFelice is the author of several novels, including Leopards Kill and the forthcoming Helios.
With her home office a Twilight Zone landscape of mannequins in vintage dress, no wonder award-winning ex-journalist and novelist Carole Nelson Douglas’s fifty-four books offer surreal TZ touches. They include two Vegas-set series: the Midnight Louie, feline PI, mysteries partially narrated by a “Sam Spade with hair-balls,” and the Delilah Street, Paranormal Investigator, noir urban fantasies of werewolf mobsters and silver-screen zombies. Douglas was the first author of a Sherlockian series with a female protagonist, diva-detective Irene Adler, the only woman to outwit Holmes, debuting with the New York Times Notable Book of the Year Good Night, Mr. Holmes.
David Hagberg is a former U.S. Air Force cryptographer who has traveled extensively in Europe, the Arctic, and the Caribbean. He has published nearly seventy novels of suspense, including the bestselling Soldier of God, Allah’s Scorpion, Dance with the Dragon, and the New York Times bestseller The Expediter. He has been nominated three times for the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe award and was nominated for the American Book Award. He and his wife make their home in Sarasota, Florida.
Earl Hamner was born in 1923 in a small village in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. Much of his writing is rooted in his growing up in a large and loving family during the Great Depression. Today he lives with his wife of fifty-four years in Studio City, California, where he continues to write and care for his collection of over fifty bonsai. He describes himself as “a good-looking old thing who doesn’t look a day over eighty-four.”
Joe R. Lansdale is the author of thirty novels and over two hundred short works. He has written screenplays, teleplays, and comics. His latest book is the short-story collection Sanctified and Chicken Fried from University of Texas Press, and forthcoming in June from Knopf is Vanilla Ride, his new Hap Collins and Leonard Pine novel.
Laura Lippman has published fourteen novels and a collection of short stories. She has won virtually every prize given for mystery fiction in the United States, including the Edgar, Anthony, Shamus, Agatha, and Quill Awards. She lives in Baltimore.
Author of four novels (Cutdown, Causes of Action, Tropical Heat and, most recently, Coyote Moon), as well as a collection of short stories ( Jackson Street and Other Soldier Stories ), which won the California Book Award for First Fiction, John Miller is a full -time writer and artist. His short stories have appeared in, among others, The William & Mary Review, Crosscurrents, The Missouri Review, North Dakota Quarterly, and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine . A native North Carolinian, Miller resides in the Pacific Northwest.
Mike Resnick is the all-time leading award winner, living or dead, for short science fiction (according to Locus). He has won five Hugos, plus other major awards in the United States, France, Spain, Japan, Croatia, and Poland , and has been nominated for major awards in England and Italy. He is the author of sixty novels, well over two hundred short stories, and two screenplays, and is the editor of almost fifty anthologies. His work has been translated into twenty-three languages.
Lezli Robyn is an Australian writer who sold her first couple of stories in the closing months of 2008, and in the three months since then has sold to Asimov’s, Analog, and other magazines, as well as science fiction markets as distant as China and Russia, alone or in collaboration with Mike Resnick. She is currently working on her first novel.
Lucia St. Clair Robson’s first novel, Ride the Wind, appeared on the New York Times Best Seller List and won the Western Writers of America’s Golden Spur award. It has been continuously in print for twenty-seven years. She has written eight other historical novels, the most recent of which is Last Train from Cuernavaca. Kirkus Reviews wrote, “Few novelists working today have a better grasp of early American history than Robson.”
Robert J. (Bob) Serling is Rod Serling’s older brother and a prolific author himself, with twenty-five published nonfiction and fiction works, mostly dealing with the airline and aerospace industries. Among his seven novels was the bestselling The President’s Plane Is Missing. Before becoming a full-time freelance author, he was aviation editor of United Press International, and now at age ninety is regarded by his peers as the dean of aviation writers. He served as technical adviser on Rod’s acclaimed TZ episode “Odyssey of Flight 33.”
Rod Serling (1924– 1975) worked in the television area for twenty-five years, developing, in addition tothe landmark Twilight Zone series, Night Gallery and The Loner, and countless drama anthologies, including Requiem for a Heavyweight and Patterns. During his career he won more Emmy Awards for dramatic writing than anyone in history. He also wrote the screenplay for the very first Planet of the Apes film, which embodied everything Serling was interested in as a writer. He continued to write for television while teaching in Ithaca, New York, until his death in 1975, leaving an indelible imprint on television that would inspire countless future writers and artists.
R. L. Stine is one of the bestselling children’s authors in history. His book series— Goosebumps, Fear Street, The Nightmare Room, Mostly Ghostly, and Rotten School— have sold more than 350 million copies around the world. Stine says his job is to “terrify kids.” But his proudest accomplishment is the millions of kids he has motivated to read. His adult-thriller titles include Superstitious, The Sitter, and Eye Candy. He is currently at work on a new batch of Goosebumps titles. Stine lives in New York City with his wife, Jane.
Whitley Strieber is the author of such books as The Wolfen, The Hunger, Communion, and Superstorm, which have all been made into feature films, and many other bestsellers, including Billy, Majestic, The Grays, 2012, and, most recently, Critical Mass. His website, www.unknowncountry.com, is the largest website in the world featuring daily news at the edge of science and reality.
Tad Williams is the New York Times bestselling author of some fourteen books for adults, which have been translated into twenty-three languages and sell worldwide. Among his bestsellers are The Dragonbone Chair, The Otherland Cycle, and Shadowmarch. He lives and works with his wife, Deborah Beale, and their family in the San Francisco Bay Area.
William F. Wu, Ph.D., is a six-time nominee for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards and the author of the six-volume young-adult science fiction series titled Isaac Asimov’s Robots in Time. He is the author of thirteen novels, one short-story collection, and sixty short stories as well as one book of literary criticism. Wu’s short story “Wong’s Lost and Found Emporium,” a multiple-award nominee, was adapted into an episode of The Twilight Zone from the 1980s and is available on DVD. He lives in Palmdale, California, with his wife, Fulian Wu, and their son, Alan.
Timothy Zahn has been writing science fiction for over a quarter of a century. In that time he has published thirty-six novels, over eighty short stories and novelettes, and four collections of short fiction. Best known for his eight Star Wars novels , he is also the author of the Quadrail series (Night Train to Rigel, The Third Lynx, Odd Girl Out, and the upcoming The Domino Pattern), the Cobra series ( including the upcoming Cobra Alliance), and the young-adult Dragonback series. His latest novel is From the Ashes, a prequel to the movie Terminator Salvation. The Zahn family lives on the Oregon coast.
Author Links:
Timothy Zahn: Amazon / Goodreads
RL Stine: Amazon / Goodreads
Robert J. Serling: Amazon / Goodreads
David Hagberg: Amazon / Goodreads / Website
Lucia St. Clair Robson: Goodreads
Deborah Chester: Goodreads / Website
Jim DeFelice: Amazon / Goodreads / Website
Tad Williams: Amazon / Goodreads
John Miller: Goodreads
Laura Lippman: Amazon / Goodreads
Whitley Strieber: Amazon / Goodreads / Website
Kelley Armstrong: Amazon / Goodreads
Rod Serling: Amazon / Goodreads
William F Wu: Goodreads
Earl Hamner, Jr.: Goodreads / Website
Mike Resnick: Goodreads
Carole Nelson Douglas: Amazon / Goodreads / Website
Joe R Lansdale: Amazon / Goodreads
Lezli Robyn: Amazon / Goodreads
Alan Brennert: Amazon / Goodreads
Carol Serling(Editor): Goodreads
Amazon / B&N / Kobo / Goodreads TBR
