It is impossible to overstate the revolution that was Rod Serling’s speculative fiction anthology show, The Twilight Zone.
On October 2, 1959, television entered the science fiction age with Twilight Zone’s debut episode, “Where Is Everybody?” The episode was pure science fiction, featuring an astronaut who returns from a lunar mission only to discover everyone had vanished. For the next five years, Twilight Zone offered a steady stream of speculative delicacies—usually more-or-less straight SF (at least by the standards of the time), although the show sometimes veered into the fantastical and often into the horrific. While there were clunky episodes, particularly as the program ran on, in the later seasons it’s increasingly clear that Serling, tasked with producing half of the scripts, ran out of ideas.
Nevertheless, The Twilight Zone managed to deliver a fairly consistent quality of programming right up to the end. More than that, it provided a high standard of writerliness, of erudite television almost single-handedly belying FCC Chair Nelson Minow’s 1961 observation that television was just a “vast wasteland.”
By the early 1950s, TV had become a widespread medium. Until The Twilight Zone, the visual airwaves were almost bereft of adult science fiction. There was kiddie fare like Space Patrol, and smug extollations of technology like Science Fiction Theater, but nothing really for grown-ups. What took so long?
Two things: Firstly, television had to grow up. When TV broadcasts began, they didn’t diverge much from their theatrical stage origins. Live shows, or ones that felt live, were the norm. Then came anthology shows like Playhouse 90, upon which up-and-comers like Rod Serling cut their teeth. By the end of the ’50s, there were enough mature TV writers to make a go of something like The Twilight Zone.
Secondly, by then, there were also enough science fiction writers for the endeavor, for The Twilight Zone resembles nothing so much as a visual translation of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Started in 1949, F&SF had established itself as the most literate of the SF digests, the most varied in theme and content, the most focused on shorter stories… and the most willing to feature stories by and for women (thus ensuring a more balanced readership).
It is no coincidence that many of The Twilight Zone’s finest episodes were penned by folks whose names often appeared on the F&SF cover: Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, Robert Bloch, Jerome Bixby, Lewis Padgett, Henry Slesar, Ray Bradbury.
The impact of Serling’s project, F&SF in living black and white, still echoes today. There have been three revivals and, even today, countless inspirations like Black Mirror and Love, Death, and Robots. Serling’s likeness and the words “submitted for your approval” have become part of our memetic vocabulary.
So, when you go to Seattle Worldcon 2025, revel in the fact that you are largely breathing the same cultural air that con-goers were breathing waaay back at Seacon 1961. There’s a signpost up ahead—you’re still well within The Twilight Zone!
Gideon Marcus is a science fiction author and space historian. He is the founder of Galactic Journey, a portal to 55 years ago in Science Fact and Fiction.