The Binge Watcher's Guide to The Twilight Zone: An Unofficial Journey

Book excerpt: “You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension—a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind.” There are a lot of compendiums on The Twilight Zone out there, most offering a backstage peek at the ins and outs of producing this seminal genre series. The Binge Watcher’s Guide to The Twilight Zone will offer you something these other books do not: a microscopic look into the themes and ideas that Rod Serling weaved into his landmark show to give you a deeper understanding of why The Twilight Zone still resonates with audiences over 60 years later. This guide will examine how the socio-political turmoil of the early 1960s, the global anxiety over nuclear power, and the looming specter of trauma in post-war America influenced Serling to use The Twilight Zone as a bully pulpit, pushing back against social ills, from racism and censorship to McCarthyism and totalitarianism. Whether this is your first trip to the Zone or you’re an old fan returning for one more round, this retrospective is an opportunity to engage with the timeless classic in a way that can help you make sense of our here and now. “You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into the Twilight Zone.”