#booktube Books mentioned: A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck The Mustache by Emmanuel Carrère The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman The Hike by Drew Magary Redshirts by John Scalzi
What’s funny is as a kid I would watch the Planet of the Apes as the after school monster movie of the week. Consequently I always thought of Planet of the Apes as a monster movie. Years pass and as an adult I catch Planet of the Apes and was surprised at how much it wasn’t a monster movie. As the movie ends I think to myself, “Wow, that was more like a Twilight Zone episode than a monster movie!” And imagine my delight when the credit roll and damned if Rod Serling isn’t one of the screenwriters!!!!
you cant unsee the rod serling in it once you know. including the overall tone of the movie as an extended twilight zone episode. an amazing classic movie that gives you something new every time you watch it. 🎉
I am 72 years old, so I saw the Twilight Zone when it was new. It is a great example of what can be done with limited technology. Given how much of the writing was done by Rod Serling one can understand why he died so young.
My favourite episode of the original series was To Serve Man. I would watch replays when I was 13 or 14 in the late 60s at night when no-one else was home.
if you want another good Twilight Zone vibe in a sleek modern package, definitely check out There Is No Antimemetics Division (by qntm). i forget what i was talking about.
You sit down to watch an episode of the Twilight Zone but it's an episode you've never seen before and all the actors are inexplicably shouting at each other all the time and everyone is angry and you have a bad time. At the end Angela Collier walks on screen to explain why this is what's ruining Start Trek. You look at the TV guide and every show on every channel is a different episode of "this is what's ruining Star Trek" you may have just entered the Twilight Zone...
2:20 Man, I could not agree more about prestige tv. The endless cliffhangers and lack of resolution, or the padding of episodes and seasons with repreated red herrings, really annoy me these days. 5 or 10 years ago, when Netflix was blowing up, somebody said "Everyone with movie scripts are stretching them into series for streaming", and ever since then I can't help but ask "Does this need to be a series? Could it have been trimmed into a film and not wasted so much of my time?" And like 70% of the time the answer is annoying.
How many feature length movies could be 10 minute short films? Although I’ll say that there are some well written exceptions to what you are calling prestige tv. I was pleasantly surprised by Fallout. There’s also a really fun 2-season series called Partriot on Amazon. Not “The Patriot”, just “Patriot”.
For me, it's the constant need to ramp up, ramp up, ramp up. A series will start out with an interesting premise, but the need to always increase the stakes/threats leads to a ratchet-to-ridiculousness effect, where later seasons become unbelievable melodrama. It seems near-impossible to both keep your characters and situations grounded, while also keeping the tension high.
The 1980's Twilight Zone was initially edited by Harlan Ellison, until the inevitable conflict with the studio. Before he left the show, the episodes are worth watching. He wrote a couple of the stories as well, of which "Paladin of the Lost Hour" is pretty good. Also, did you watch Night Gallery, Rod Serling's later show? Very good indeed.
There are some real gems in the Ellison years. I can recall them to this day, and I haven't watched them since the '80s. Might as well toss in Tales From the Dark Side. It's more camp than serious, but there's some genuinely weird and dark episodes that are worth the watch.
OMG! Short Stay In Hell is a book I recommend to almost everyone. I was dumbfounded when you mentioned it. It is SOOOOO good. But as a former mormon, it hits different. As an engineer, the library was freaking me out. And last I checked, it was a cheap read on Kindle. I love the book and it's subversion of expectations. Like I said, as a mormon, this thing is shocking. And yes, a BYU professor wrote it.
Funny to me that I am old enough to be her dad... and in the 80's kids thought it was weird for me to be into a black-and-white show from "the old days". TZ writing has held up for 60 years and counting
that last bit of moral about "life having nothing to do with work" is a bit weird, because life has everything to do with work: the one thing that separates humans from everything else is the fact that humans can (and have to) shape their environment according to their immediate needs, which only happens through work. to be human is to work. the problem is, work is routinely being taken away from humans and is replaced by mundane crap that simulates actual work; and people are forced to spend one third of their lives on that simulacrum instead of actual creative stuff that would enrich them and enrich everybody around them.
My recommendations are "The Futurological Congress" by Stanislav Lem, and "The Master of Space and Time" by Rudy Rucker.* Also don't watch 1983's "The Twilight Zone: The Movie" but do listen to the episodes of Behind the Bastards where they talk about it. The story of the making of that movie is like a twilight zone episode where the moral is "don't give someone unfettered access to helicopters just because he's a rich and famous movie director" *edit: and "Why Do Birds" by Damon Knight! Maybe the most twilight zone book I've ever read
The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street and The Shelter are some of my favorites. I love the way social cohesion/good times atmosphere goes right out the window when someone feels threatened. Reminds us that we're still animals ultimately
The best part of The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street is the fact that the aliens are only toying with them and the group is already falling apart. The actual invasion hasn’t even started yet.
Two of my favorite episodes: "Time Enough to Last", a clip of which you included in the video, and "Once Upon a Time", featuring Buster Keaton. A play that has quite a bit of a Twilight Zone vibe to me is "Waiting for Godot" (written in 1948-49, published in 1952), by Samuel Beckett. This play was first performed on January 5, 1953; "Nothing in the Dark" was originally aired on January 5, 1962. Although there is no resolution in the former as in the latter, they could be 'siblings', as you say (pretty cool idea). Loved the quote from "Factory", I can totally relate. Thank you so much, great video. Cheers.
I just wanted to thank you in the most genuiously unmaicious way ever possibly written. You have introduced me to one of those books that Stephen King stated in "On Writing", that was so terribly written that someone was actually paid for it and he's a professor. But, "A Short Time In Hell" was exhaustively terrible. It made me think, I can write better than that. And you have given me Hope, with a capital "H". Thank you from the bottom of my heart. You are awesome!
Do other old, black and white shows also make you anxious? I have a random theory that watching really old shows makes some people feel weird/anxious/uncomfortable.
I read A Short Stay in Hell thanks to this video and loved it, thanks for sharing your reads :) I had to suspend my disbelief a bit about the man who does the computations near the end (I found it hard to believe no one else would even try to estimate what he calculated beforehand) but I found it very unique how scale was approached in the book, both in physical dimension and in time
Joined you few weeks ago and I'm sure this channel will have a terrific grow. Also thanks for the attention and care on details like the spoiler alerts or the books in the commentary box! Keep it up with the great content!
If you haven't already, please read The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. It was written in 1915 but relates quite disturbingly to our modern life and work environments.
You said in a previous video that you love reading plays and in this that you're trying to be international with your reading so I have a recommendation for an Irish play. Philadelphia, Here I Come by Brien Friel. It's quite short and is about a young lad living his last day in '60s Ireland before emigrating to America. I found it so emotionally engaging and thought provoking about cultural identity and I hope you give it a try.
This is great, and a nice diversion here on your channel; I'm always looking for that TZ vibe in books & short stories, and I'll be checking all of these out! :D
I have two potential recommendations. China Miéville is a phenomenal writer who practically defines the New Weird genre. His books aren't short but they tap into that incredibly human feeling in strange circumstances vibe. "This Census Taker" is a shorter novella about a boy whose father keeps chucking corpses into an infinitely deep pit. Ted Chiang is super famous for being phenomenal and if you haven't read anything of his you definitely have to. "Hell is the absence of god" for example is a short story about a man whose wife is killed in a old testament style miraculous visitation of an angel. He needs to bring himself to love God so that he can get into heaven and be with his wife again, but yknow, God did kill his wife so there's conflict there
The thing I like about Twilight Zone, old and new, is that it really is a reflection of what people are thinking. It may seem like the older ones are better for whatever reason they resonate, but let's not forget how many of them were "what if the literal Devil showed up," which is not a sort of thought we worry about today. The Literal Devil does not threaten our human soul today the way that social issues and technology do. Great shows, and great book picks!
There is a novella titled "There is no Antimemetics Division". If you want something that is, IMHO, quintessentially resonant with the core of the "Twilight Zone", I can't think of anything in print (except, maybe, "The Unfortunate Profession of Jonathan Hoag", by Robert Heinlein) that fits the bill.
Excellent point about Black mirror. I never really noticed until you pointed it out. Serling wrote about human nature, which is a more fundamental concept to explore.
I feel you so much on wanting to "just watch an episode." I haven't really watching The Twilight Zone but I may give it a try. I only remember one episode that I'm not sure if it was that show or The Outer Limits, but this couple of kids were being chased by Death and tried to hide in this town full of bicentarians+ that never died cause Death didn't know it was there somehow. Won't synopsis the rest.
Enjoyed your Twilight Zone inspired picks! The black and white video really took me back… I found/watched “Nothing in the Dark” on the web. Redford is so gentle in dealing with her fear of the unknown! You might like a couple of Ingmar Bergman films that deal with mortality: The Seventh Seal and Fanny and Alexander.
The book I've read that comes closest to a twilight zone vibe is probably Lathe of Heaven by Le Guin, but its way longer and more variagrated. A TZ episode about it would be possible but much more streamlined. For those interested [spoilers]... Its about a guy who can change reality with his dreams, but he doesn't want to bc he has blipped people out of existence through it and takes drugs to avoid sleeping/ sleep without dreaming. But he gets caught and sent to a therapist who finds out he actually can change reality and then the therapist uses hypnosis to make him dream specific things to actively change reality. The scariest part is the Therapist ostensibly wants to make the world a better place but just makes everything worse despite his best efforts, bc the problems are too complex, his perspective is too limited/ he's self- centered and has character flaws, and/or the fact the he has to go through another person's mind to do it so its imprecise or sideswiped by the subconscious. But i think it's a very powerful message about why giving 1 person too much power is bad, or at least bound to be ineffective, even if they have good intentions. The world is too complex, you must work with our through other humans with human tendencies, and we alone are too limited
Some of the 80s TZ episodes were great. The trucker who accepts a job hauling mysterious cargo, but finds he's actually carrying souls to hell. The guy stuck between moments, where construction crews are assembling the next moment in time. And one called "Nightcrawlers." Nightmares from Vietnam. I was just old enough to get it and it scared me half to death.
My favorite short book that has a Twilight Zone feeling is _The Invention of Morel_ by Adolfo Bioy Casares, from Argentina. In the story, a fugitive is hiding on an uninhabited island that has a couple substantial buildings. One morning, although he had not heard a boat, there are suddenly people on the island. Vacationers of some sort, but how are they not aware of him?
If you like books about hell, you should try Iain Banks's "Surface Detail" (as well as his other books in the Culture series which have no narrative relation to hell; they can functionally be read in any order since they are largely episodic from novel to novel). It takes place in a the only depiction of a sci fi utopia that I've encountered which may surpass the Federation (or at least looks like a Federation in a distant future beyond Star Trek). I forgot which channel, but original Twilight Zone used to be marathoned around Thanksgiving on broadcast tv. I usually caught some of those, and I own a few dvds of my favorite episodes.
I enjoyed his Culture series. A friend passed on a copy of Hydrogen Sonata, which got me started. I think it was his last of the series before he died. Anyway, I enjoyed it the most.
Yes, the Thanksgiving Marathon. On a back bedroom small TV set at the house of my two maiden great-aunts. It was “the kids’ thing”, after we got bored of the adults but before face-stuffing time.
Video idea: recently you did a review of despair, and the guy who wrote that wrote another book about a feller named HH and a young gal who toured the US together. Can you do a review of his other more infamous book?
In the game Alan Wake there's this tv show called Night Springs that is pretty much the in-universe equivalent of Twilight Zone. In the first game you can find bunch of TVs that play episodes of it. They're really short but pretty fun and cheesy. The sequel has a DLC that's basically a collection of playable episodes of the show.
I liked this video as soon as I pulled it up and realized you were keeping it black and white. I wish I could have liked it again when I saw the book covers in color.
It has nothing to do with scifi or fantasy but if you really like Rod Serling there is a really good movie titled “Patterns” he wrote the screenplay for that takes place in a business environment. It was one of the influences on Mad Men.
I hope you keep doing reviews! Ilike that you get your books from the thrift store. It’s nice to hear about books of different eras or just not new releases.
Thanks for all these book recommendation videos. I've since read The Stepford Wives and am enjoying Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Can't wait to get stuck into some of these. I would love a list of short books if you feel like it. :)
A weird suggestion: Junji Itos work is the best written equivalent of the twilight zone. It’s manga that’s mostly horror but it so perfectly captures its feeling I think.
I also grew up watching the old B&W Twilight Zone. Somehow the very first Black Mirror episode gave me such anxiety that I couldn’t watch the rest of it. Also Shirley Jackson often has similar vibes.
New subscriber here, and I just wanted to say that this is the booktube channel I've been waiting for. Speaks to my soul. Thank you. As for Twilight Zone books, I just read A Tidy Armageddon by BH Panhuyzen - 8 soldiers emerge from a bunker to find that all manufactured items humanity has ever made have been stacked into 9-storey blocks spanning all of North America. Also the people are gone. It's a little too slow-paced but I found it very emotional and thought-provoking, and the premise feels very Twilight Zone to me.
So this channel called jeffiot made a video essay about The Moustache (the scariest book I've read). It was so good! They even made a short film enacting the story! Strongly recommend.
If you want to watch something which nails that Twilight Zone vibe, I heartily recommend the 2019 film The Vast of Night. A haunting sci-fi horror drama set in the 1950s.
You should check out The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories compiled by Jeff and Ann Vandermeer, which is basically a collection of Weird (capital W) short stories and is like a compendium of twilight zone episodes. Some have even been adapted to Twilight Zone episodes maybe? I may have made that up. Anyway the genre and the compendium is A*; well worth checking out. A personal highlight worth looking into is The Window - Bob Leman.
I recommend STORIES OF YOUR LIFE by Ted Chiang, a collection of wonderful short stories that I think you will enjoy like the TWILIGHT ZONE short stories. The story “The Story of Your Life” was adapted to the big screen as the movie ARRIVAL, the one about the 7-legged aliens that write in circles. Any how, I loved the movie and loved the stories and I think you will too.
"Tales of Tomorrow" from 1951 is very similar to the Twilight Zone just a few years later. Steven Spielberg did a similar show called "Amazing Stories" in the late 1980's
They made a segment (not full episode) of the 80s TV revival of The Twilight Zone based on Arthur C. Clarke‘s short story “The Star” that I really found interesting.
The real secret to finding Twilight Zone style books is checking out SFF / horror short story anthologies. Ted Chiang is an all-timer in that regard, if you want a name. I also liked Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah and Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksberg.
It's a Creepypasta, but Radio Silence. It's a very short story about getting a response to the messages we've been beaming into space from just 20 light years away. (spoilers below) "Be quiet or they will hear you"
I actually stopped the video and read A Short Stay in Hell, and OMFG it hit me like a freight train an eternity light years long. 10/10 would get existential crisis again. Please more people read it, I need to discuss it 😅.
So speaking of books that are like Twilight Zone, a few years ago I found out that some episodes were based on short stories published in various Sci-Fi pulp magazines. So I went on eBay & Abe Books & I'm slowly building a collection of the old Sci-Fi magazines that featured stories that later inspired Twilight Zone episodes.
Some other books that have a Twilight Zone vibe: There's a lot of TZ paranoia and reality blurring in Philip K Dick's books, and something like "Time Out of Joint" or "Flow my tears, the Policeman said" is probably something of a sweet spot for TZ vibes without going completely surreal (something like Ubik or The Three Stigmata of Palmer K Eldritch may be too over the top for proper TZ vibes, though they're really cool). I'd also recommend "The Lathe of Heaven" by Ursula LeGuin (I'd recommend anything by LeGuin just on principle, but Lathe of Heaven specifically for the TZ aspects) You get a bit of a postmodern TZ vibe in some of Jonathan Lethem's books, like "As She Climbed Across the Table" (I think you'd enjoy it whether or not it scratches the TZ itch).
I'm just finding out about the book side of you. Being more of a book and words person than a math and science person, I like the topics you explore in literature.
RE: 1980s Twilight Zone -- I saw the episode "Wordplay" at The First Occasional Lone Star Science Fiction Convention & Chili Cook-off (aka Chilicon, aka LoneStarCon1) in 1985. We were honored to be seeing it before it started on television, and that episode was amazing! After the series started on TV I enjoyed the other episodes, but none of them as much as Wordplay. Maybe the situation heightened my enjoyment of it, idk.
Wordplay is the episode with Robert Klein. I always remember his new name “Hinge Thunder” in that episode because I played Dungeons & Dragons at the time and thought it would be a good name for a character.
these were great suggestions. ive read redshirts already and loved it and his newer book, starter villain as well. some more books that remind me of twilight zone episodes are a lot of phillip k dicks works. 'time out of joint' and 'flow my tears the policeman said' specifically feel like classic ttz stories to me. three stigmata also to an extent but maybe that lacks any morality lesson and is more of a psychedelic trip report. anyway, thanks for the video! enjoyed it!
It wasn't one of the choices you listed, but if you want a modern anthology show that has a Twilight Zone feel to it, you should absolutely seek out and watch Inside No. 9. Every episode is a self-contained story that stars the two creators and takes place inside a single location that is labeled #9, and most have a major twist near the end. They vary in tone and subject matter and type of twist. One episode is a nearly silent slapstick comedy about a pair of inept burglars attempting to steal a painting, while another was disguised as a quiz show so well that half the audience didn't know it was a Number 9 episode until things turned dark. If you want to sample it to see if it's to your taste, basically everyone agrees that the best episode is 12 Days of Christine, but others standouts include Mr. King, Wise Owl, Tom and Gerri, To Have and To Hold, The Last Weekend. Even if it doesn't sound like something you'd like, you owe it to yourself to at least watch 12 Days of Christine. It's one of the best anthology episodes of any TV series ever.
I think Red Shirts is about when I stopped reading Scalzi, just because his "voice" sounded so damn alike throughout all of his books. I didn't hate it or anything, but I just got bored. I don't know if it counts as Twilight Zone-y, but the cover of The Hike reminded me of Jason Pargin's John Dies at the End series. More cosmic horror/comedy, but has that weird vibe. His upcoming, "I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom," might be more of a Twilight Zone mystery box (in a good way), with some sort of morality tale.
I've loved the Twilight zone since I was a kid. I haven't seen the 80s tz, but the more recent tz that Jordan Peele did was phenomenal. Way better than Black Mirror in my opinion.
"Phones are bad" is the most reductive possible critique of Black Mirror, and I think it's telling that it's also the most popular critique of critique of Black Mirror
I have a hold on The Factory at another library so that should show up in 2weeks. Out of The Loop is the closest show I've viewed that comes close to Twilight Zone. Short Stay was great. Concrete Island (J.G. Ballard) might be more One Step Beyond vibe.
