Book Review: The Best of Richard Matheson

Award-winning author and editor Christopher Conlon returns to the Vortex to share his thoughts on a new career retrospective of Twilight Zone scribe Richard Matheson.

The Best, and the Rest

by Christopher Conlon

The Best of Richard Matheson. Victor LaValle, ed. New York: Penguin Classics, 2017.

Choosing the “best” of a writer—especially a prolific writer—is by its nature problematic. Once editors get past the obvious classics, their choices inevitably become subjective and thus open to criticism, especially from the writer’s most passionate and well-informed fans. In fact, even the inclusion of a writer’s classics can become a bone of contention, as happened two years ago with Penguin’s unfortunate Charles Beaumont volume, Perchance to Dream—an anonymously-edited “Selected Stories” in which the stories were mostly incompetently selected, reprinting numerous dated and unremarkable tales while inexplicably omitting much of Beaumont’s best work, including “The Hunger,” “The Crooked Man,” “Miss Gentilbelle,” and what many Beaumont fans consider his single greatest story, the astonishing “Black Country.” And so when Penguin announced The Best of Richard Matheson, fans couldn’t help but feel some trepidation. Would this volume, like the Beaumont, also be curated by some anonymous hack who clearly possessed little knowledge of the subject at hand?  What would the final result be like?

Happily—and perhaps due in part to the criticism the Beaumont book received—Penguin has chosen another tack with Matheson, whose oeuvre constitutes over sixty years of top-flight work in nearly every genre and whose short stories are considered among his finest accomplishments. As editor Penguin has enlisted the services of that fine fantasist Victor LaValle, perhaps best known for his wonderful short novel The Ballad of Black Tom, a variation on Lovecraft’s “The Horror at Red Hook.”

The vast majority of the stories editor LaValle has chosen will certainly be welcomed by any Matheson fan as representing this great writer’s “best.” Matheson’s first published tale, the groundbreaking “Born of Man and Woman,” is here, along with “Prey” (the TV movie version with Karen Black being chased by a Zuni fetish doll is as well-remembered as the story itself), “Duel” (filmed unforgettably by Steven Spielberg at the beginning of his career), and five pieces that were turned into memorable episodes of The Twilight Zone—“Death Ship,” “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” “Third from the Sun,” “Long Distance Call,” and “Mute.” “Button, Button” is here too, and “Witch War,” and “Dress of White Silk,” along with over twenty more tales—all wrapped up in a handsome package, with the distinguished Penguin Classics label lifting Matheson’s stories permanently out of the realm of mere pulp fiction and placing them where they have always really belonged, on the shelf marked American Literature. Could a Matheson fan possibly ask for anything more?

Well, as a matter of fact, yes.

To be clear: The Best of Richard Matheson is a fine collection, surely the best one-volume introduction available to Matheson’s stories—and it certainly beats Perchance to Dream by miles in terms of the wisdom and appropriateness of its selections.

And yet…the truth is, this book might have been better. For all his editorial acumen, LaValle has made a mistake by including several of the author’s “rarities”—i.e., trunk stories—that were not published until many decades after their original composition. In each case (“Man With a Club,” “The Prisoner,” “Haircut”) it’s quite obvious why these pieces went unpublished at the time. Simply put, they’re not very good. They certainly have no place in a volume purporting to represent the cream of Matheson’s particular crop, especially when by taking up space they bump other, far superior tales. Of course any editor is limited by a publisher’s maximum word count for a project, but it’s still a little startling to see a book called The Best of Richard Matheson that doesn’t include “The Distributor,” “The Children of Noah,” “Mad House,” or, most egregiously, what is perhaps Matheson’s single most emotionally wrenching story, “The Test.” Cutting the unimpressive “rarities” would have made room for at least one or two more of Matheson’s truly indispensable tales.

The editor’s introduction is also, unfortunately, something of a loss. While LaValle makes some perfectly valid points regarding Matheson’s influence—“He’s in the DNA of too many other writers to count”—a large chunk of the essay is taken up with a lengthy personal narrative about LaValle’s own youth, detailing a series of events which he claims led to his own “Matheson moment” but which in fact (spoiler alert) has absolutely nothing to do with Richard Matheson. This kind of self-indulgent logorrhea should have been removed by the publisher before the book ever went to press—and trimming this tedious, overlong piece might have made sufficient room for one more Matheson masterpiece.  

But whatever this collection’s problems, they are relatively minor in comparison to the riches that await both experienced and novice readers of Richard Matheson in these pages. While it’s not quite all it could have been, The Best of Richard Matheson stands as a worthy tribute to a writer whose importance to the American literary landscape only seems to grow with each passing year.

______________________

The Best of Richard Matheson is available October 10. Get the book. 

Thanks again to Christopher Conlon. Visit Chris’s site. Buy Chris’s books.

The Best of Richard Matheson (Penguin Classics, 432 pages)

Table of Contents (date of story publication):

-Introduction by Victor LaValle

-Born of Man and Woman (1950)

-Prey (1969)

-Witch War (1951)

-Shipshape Home (1952)

-Blood Son (1951)

-Where There’s a Will (with Richard Christian Matheson) (1980)

-Dying Room Only (1953)

-Counterfeit Bills (2004)

-Death Ship (1953)

-Man with a Club (2003)

-Button, Button (1970)

-Duel (1971)

-Day of Reckoning (1960)

-The Prisoner (2001)

-Dress of White Silk (1951)

-Haircut (2006)

-Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (1962)

-The Funeral (1955)

-Third from the Sun (1950)

-The Last Day (1953)

-Long Distance Call (1953)

-Deus ex Machina (1963)

-One for the Books (1955)

-Now Die in It (1958)

-The Conqueror (1954)

-The Holiday Man (1957)

-No Such Thing as a Vampire (1959)

-Big Surprise (1959)

-A Visit to Santa Claus (1957)

-Finger Prints (1962)

-Mute (1962)

-Shock Wave (1963)

Here follows additional notes on select adaptations of the stories for those interested in such things.  –JP

--“Prey” was adapted by Matheson as the third and final segment of the 1975 television film Trilogy of Terror. The film was directed by Dan Curtis and featured Karen Black. Matheson’s friend William F. Nolan wrote a sequel to the story, “He Who Kills,” as a segment of the 1996 television film Trilogy of Terror II, directed by Dan Curtis.

--“Dying Room Only” was adapted by Matheson into a 1973 television film directed by Philip Leacock and featuring Twilight Zone actors Ross Martin and Cloris Leachman.

--“Death Ship” was adapted by Matheson as the 108^th episode of The Twilight Zone, the 6^th episode of the fourth season. The hour-long episode was directed by Don Medford and featured Jack Klugman and Ross Martin.

--“Button, Button” was adapted as a segment of episode 20 of the first season of The Twilight Zone revival television series. Matheson adapted his short story but, dissatisfied with changes made to his teleplay, placed his pseudonym “Logan Swanson” on the work instead. The segment was directed by Peter Medak and featured Mare Winningham. The short story was also the basis of a 2009 film, The Box, written and directed by Richard Kelly and featuring James Marsden, Cameron Diaz, and Frank Langella.

--“Duel” was adapted by Matheson for a 1971 television film directed by Steven Spielberg and featuring Twilight Zone actor Dennis Weaver.

--“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” was adapted by Matheson as episode 123 of The Twilight Zone, episode 3 of the fifth season. It was directed by Richard Donner and featured William Shatner. Matheson also adapted his story for the 1983 film Twilight Zone: The Movie. The segment was directed by George Miller and featured John Lithgow.

--“The Funeral” was adapted by Matheson as a segment of episode 15 of the second season of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery. The segment was directed by John Meredyth Lucas.

--“Third from the Sun” was adapted by Rod Serling as episode 14 of the first season of The Twilight Zone. It was directed by Richard L. Bare and featured Fritz Weaver and Edward Andrews.

--“Long Distance Call” was adapted by Matheson as “Night Call,” episode 139 of The Twilight Zone, episode 19 of the fifth season. It was directed by Jacques Tourneur and featured Gladys Cooper.

--“One for the Books” was adapted by Matheson for episode 23 of the first season of Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories television series. The episode was directed by Lesli Linka Glatter and featured Leo Penn and Joyce Van Patten.

--“Now Die in It” was expanded into a 1959 novel titled Ride the Nightmare. This novel was adapted by Matheson for the first season of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. It was directed by Bernard Girard and featured Hugh O’Brian, Gena Rowlands, and Twilight Zone actor John Anderson. The novel was also the basis for a loose adaptation as the 1970 film Cold Sweat, directed by Terence Young and starring Charles Bronson.

--“No Such Thing as a Vampire” was adapted by Hugh Leonard as an episode of the anthology series Late Night Horror. It was directed by Paddy Russell. Matheson adapted the story as a segment of the 1977 television film Dead of Night, directed by Dan Curtis.

--“Big Surprise” was adapted by Matheson as a segment of episode 8 of the second season of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery. The segment was directed by Jeannot Szwarc and featured John Carradine.

--“Mute” was adapted by Matheson as episode 107 of The Twilight Zone, episode 5 of the fifth season. It was directed by Stuart Rosenberg and featured Frank Overton, Barbara Baxley, and Oscar Beregi, Jr.

--One final note: Both “Finger Prints” and “Mute” originally appeared in the 1962 anthology The Fiend in You, edited by Matheson’s close friend and fellow Twilight Zone writer Charles Beaumont.

BOOK REVIEW: Another Day, Another Twilight Zone Tribute

Award-winning author Christopher Conlon returns to the Vortex with a review of a new Twilight Zone book hitting shelves at the end of February. Chris is the author of numerous novels and short stories as well as an accomplished editor. As an editor he's gifted Zone fans with Filet of Sohl: The Classic Scripts and Stories of Jerry Sohl, The Twilight Zone Scripts of Jerry Sohl, and He Is Legend: An Anthology Celebrating Richard Matheson. Chris has also written "Southern California Sorcerers," the definitive account of "The Group," the Southern California based writers who wrote so many influential novels, short stories, films, and television programs during the 1950s and 1960s, including the bulk of Twilight Zone episodes. Chris's most recent book  is Rossum's Universal Replicas: Karel Capek's "R.U.R." Reimagined, a fresh take on a pioneering work of artificial intelligence and the fate of humankind. Chris can be found at his homepage.

-JP  

Dawidziak, Mark. Everything I Need to Know I Learned in the Twilight Zone. New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, 2017.

Of all the series from the early black-and-white era of American television, few have been more popular—not to mention analyzed, memorialized, and tributized—than The Twilight Zone. As author Mark Dawidziak points out in his new book, Everything I Need to Know I Learned in the Twilight Zone, Serling’s seminal program keeps “making the jump” from generation to generation in a way that only a single other series from that period, I Love Lucy, has done. “My students no longer know bus driver Ralph Kramden, deputy Barney Fife, or comedy writer Rob Petrie,” states Dawidziak. “But they still have spent some time with the Ricardos and in Serling’s ‘middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition.’” The continuing relevance of Rod Serling’s brainchild has led to a seemingly endless outpouring of tributes of all kinds, from books to movies to TV shows, a radio series, comic books, websites, blogs…somehow Twilight Zone just goes on and on, and pretty much everybody, it sometimes seems, wants to tell us all about it.

Into this crowded field of TZ tributes now comes Mark Dawidziak’s tome, subtitled “A Fifth-Dimension Guide to Life.” Taking its approach from the world of self-help books, the idea is to discuss various TZ episodes through the “life lessons” they teach, thus guiding us in our daily lives (“Submitted for Your Improvement,” in Dawidziak’s clever phrase). The tone throughout the book is light—clearly we’re not to take these lessons too seriously—and overall the effect is of a kind of easy breeziness. It’s not difficult to keep turning the pages, though for a lightweight project like this, 300+ pages seems a good deal more than anyone could possibly need.

Initially the book is rather fun. It’s divided into fifty distinct “Lessons,” and it’s entertaining to try to figure out from the Table of Contents which episodes the author might connect to which lessons. (The episodes are identified only within the text itself.) See if you can guess which episode(s) these “lessons” refer to (answers appear at the end of this review).

          a)-When nobody else believes in you, keep believing in yourself

      b)-That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger

      c)- Share with others

      d)- Nobody said life was fair

      e)-Divided we fall (two episodes)

Despite this relatively promising start, though, Everything I Need to Know I Learned in the Twilight Zone quickly begins to run out of steam upon arrival at the actual episode discussions. The problem is perhaps inimical to the nature of this project: all the author can do in each lesson is reiterate what is already clear from the title of the lesson itself. Thus in “Beauty truly is in…” we are treated to a summary “Eye of the Beholder,” a few brief quotes from actress Donna Douglas, and a couple of pages explaining how the story fits the “Beauty truly is in…” homily—which must surely be obvious to anyone who has simply watched the episode. It’s certainly true, as Dawidziak argues, that “lurking in almost every episode of The Twilight Zone is at least one guiding rule, one life lesson, one stirring reminder of a basic right or wrong taught to us as children,” but when it comes to Serling’s approach to these “lessons,” few have ever accused him of subtlety. As a result, Dawidziak’s discussions tend to merely rehash and belabor the obvious.

Reading through these many pages it’s possible to wonder who the intended audience is for this book. One might guess it’s for relative newcomers to the series, given the shallowness of the analyses, but no: plot-reveals abound here, as the author acknowledges in his early chapter, “One Giant Spoiler Alert.” A TZ neophyte, then, would only be annoyed by these spoiler-rich discussions. Yet for knowledgeable fans of the show, this book has little to recommend it.

Editing is lax here, as well. Most of these discussions would be better at half their present length, and even the homilies are too wordy: surely “When nobody believes in you, keep believing in yourself” should read simply “Believe in yourself,” while another lesson, “You’re only truly old when you decide you’re old” should certainly read “You’re as old as you feel.” The occasional odd misinterpretation also hinders this book, as when, discussing the ending of “Kick the Can,” Dawidziak claims: “[I]t’s too late for Ben, at least for this night and this summer. Maybe, if the screams of playing children become a lure rather than an annoyance to Ben, there will be another chance to grab the magic…another chance to play kick the can.” But nothing in the episode supports this. Everything we see leads to the conclusion that, while the newly-young Charlie and his friends will play Kick the Can in their youthful heaven forever, Ben has missed his chance; while the magical children are now immortal, he will die old, bitter, and alone. It’s Ben’s fate that lends “Kick the Can” its painful poignancy; Dawidziak’s odd misreading only robs the episode of its meaning.

Finally, a word about the celebrity names attached to this book. On the back cover the publisher has proudly proclaimed the presence within the text of what are billed as “mini-essays” from the likes of Robert Redford and others, but if readers hope for a serious reflection from Mr. Redford on his episode (“Nothing in the Dark”)—memories of the shoot, say, thoughts about the story itself, how the episode affected his career—they are doomed to disappointment. The star’s “mini-essay” is exactly one sentence long. Even then, Redford beats out George Clayton Johnson, whose mini-essay is precisely five words long, and the words don’t even comprise a complete sentence. The ultimate prize for “mini,” however, is taken by writer James Grady, whose “essay” runs exactly one word. (In the interest of avoiding spoilers, that word shall not be revealed here.)

Alas, despite Dawidziak’s obvious love of TZ, Everything I Need to Know I Learned in the Twilight Zone serves only as evidence that the possibilities of TZ tributes are now most likely exhausted.

ANSWERS: a) “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”; b) “Steel”; c) “I Shot an Arrow Into the Air”; d) “Time Enough at Last”; e) “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” and “The Shelter.”

Everything I Need to Know I Learned in the Twilight Zone by Mark Dawidziak is available on February 28, 2017.

An Interview With Author Christopher Conlon

Christopher Conlon is one of our favorite writers here in the Vortex. He has done as much as anyone to illuminate the writers behind The Twilight Zone in various books and essays. Chris edited the 2009 Bram Stoker Award winning book He Is Legend: An Anthology Celebrating Richard Matheson, which included the first publication of the screenplay for Burn, Witch, Burn! (A.K.A. Night of the Eagle) a 1962 film based on Fritz Leiber’s novel Conjure Wife (1943) and adapted in collaboration by Twilight Zone writers Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson.* 

Chris also compiled two volumes of the work of Twilight Zone ghostwriter Jerry Sohl: Filet of Sohl (2003), a volume which includes two unproduced Twilight Zone scripts, and The Twilight Zone Scripts of Jerry Sohl (2004).  Chris edited the 2006 anthology Poe’s Lighthouse: All New Collaborations with Edgar Allan Poe, which included new work from Twilight Zone writers George Clayton Johnson and Earl Hamner.

Chris has been one of the chief chroniclers of the Southern California Group of writers, a close-knit group of like-minded, creative individuals drawn to one another in the Los Angeles area in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Members included Twilight Zone writers Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson, George Clayton Johnson, Jerry Sohl, and John Tomerlin, as well as such accomplished writers as Chad Oliver, William F. Nolan, Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, and Harlan Ellison. We highly recommend you read Chris's definitive account of the Group. Chris also wrote the essay “Buried Treasures: The Twilight Zone’s Unseen Episodes” for Dark Discoveries #14 (Summer, 2009).  

Chris is an accomplished fiction writer whose work has strong appeal for fans of The Twilight Zone. He was a Bram Stoker Award finalist for A Matrix of Angels and Midnight on Mourn Street. Booklist calls Chris “One of the pre-eminent names in contemporary literary horror,” and Twilight Zone writer George Clayton Johnson said “Conlon is a consummate literary artist.” Learn more about Chris’s writings here. Be sure also to follow the link to Chris's blog and read his moving remembrance of the late Twilight Zone writer George Clayton Johnson. 

Chris became a friend of George Clayton Johnson in the ‘90s and worked on Johnson’s 1999 retrospective All of Us are Dying and Other Stories, writing an introduction and conducting a long and informative interview with Johnson as sectional interludes in the book. As the George Clayton Johnson scripted episode “A Game of Pool” is the next episode we will be covering as well as a personal favorite here in the Vortex, we reached out to Chris to get his thoughts on Johnson, the Southern California Group, The Twilight Zone, and how it all influenced his own writing. Chris was kind enough to take time out to answer a few of our questions.

*The screenplay is available only in the hardcover first edition from Gauntlet Press and is not included in the paperback edition.

Vortex: What first led you to the Southern California Group of writers and how have they affected your own work as a writer?

Conlon: Well, I was aware of several of them individually from a very early age thanks to Twilight Zone. By the time I was twelve the names Beaumont, Matheson, and Johnson were very familiar to me, since I was an inveterate credits-reader. But it wasn’t until I read Zicree’s Twilight Zone Companion when it first came out in the early ’80s that I became aware of the Group. I was fascinated, because I so desperately wanted to be a writer myself—I was about 19 at that point—and this became an ideal for me of how writers could interact. Growing up I didn’t know any writers. I didn’t even know any kids who wanted to be writers. My family thought I was some kind of freak. The whole idea of a group of deeply-bonded creative types meeting, workshopping, collaborating, driving around, going to late-night restaurants, talking about stories, talking about life, was inspiring to me. Much of what I’ve written owes a clear debt to those men, including their mentors Bradbury and Serling.

Vortex: A lot of the Group's best work, especially their work on The Twilight Zone, seems ageless, still able to resonate with a modern reader or viewer. What is it about the work that you feel lends it this quality?

Conlon: I believe that Twilight Zone endures for the same reason that the great film noirs endure, and the great Hitchcocks. In the end, they’re about the central preoccupation of our time—anxiety. So many of the great musicals, great comedies, great Westerns and such have faded into obscurity, of interest only to film buffs or historians; but Twilight Zone just goes on and on, because each new generation struggles with its own anxieties. Some are specific to the time—the arms race, Communism, terrorism, whatever—but others are eternal, existential. Questions of mortality, identity, the nature of reality. Twilight Zone dealt so powerfully with those that the stories still speak to us over a half-century later. It’s pop surrealism; Kafka for the masses. The black-and-white image is vital, too—black-and-white gives a heightened quality with its super-contrasted, super-dramatic chiaroscuro effects. Twilight Zone wouldn’t have been the same in color, any more than great noirs like Kiss Me Deadly or Detour or great Hitchcocks like Psycho. One classic series that partook of some of these elements I’m talking about, The Fugitive, went to color in its final season, and it was a disaster. The stories were all right, but that heightened feeling of dread that the show generated was gone—lost in a wash of colorful blah that took away the shadows and contrasts and pools of threatening darkness and just made everything look cheap and shoddy and as bright as a cartoon.

Vortex: George Clayton Johnson's output for Twilight Zone was relatively small but of exceedingly high quality. What are your general impressions of his work on the series and on “A Game of Pool” specifically?

Conlon: George came into his own as a writer on Twilight Zone. In episodes like “Nothing in the Dark” and “Kick the Can” he displayed a poetic lyricism that was reminiscent of Bradbury, but his scripts were far more effective because George’s dialogue, unlike Bradbury’s, was diamond-sharp, natural, real—Serlingesque, in fact. “A Game of Pool” is a perfect example, and nearly a perfect episode. The ending, which was not George’s, was tacked-on by Serling and Co. in a rare moment of bad judgment, and George hated it. Still, for most of its length it’s as good as any episode of Twilight Zone. You know, I suspect that only other writers really understand how good George Clayton Johnson was. Some kinds of writing—Bradbury’s short stories come to mind—display styles that allow anyone who is even semi-literate to look and say, “Well, now, that’s great writing.” George was more subtle than that. But if you think what he did was easy, well, you just sit down and try to write a twenty-two minute teleplay that contains exactly two characters in one scene on one tiny set—and make it so gripping that it’s unforgettable. When you can do that, you’ll understand just how good George really was.

Vortex: Jerry Sohl was a ghostwriter on several Twilight Zone episodes credited solely to Charles Beaumont. You've edited volumes of Sohl's short stories and television scripts. Tell us how these books came about and what is your estimation of Sohl's contributions to The Twilight Zone?

Conlon: Jerry Sohl is truly the “ghost” writer of Twilight Zone. Like most of his novels, his three scripts for the show weren’t terribly original, but his sheer professionalism and storytelling ability made them memorable—“Living Doll” is based on an idea that was old hat even in 1963, but Sohl’s story construction and characters and dialogue turned it into a classic anyway. As for the two books, Filet of Sohl and Twilight Zone Scripts of Jerry Sohl, I got in touch with Jerry a few years before he died and interviewed him for “Southern California Sorcerers.” I’d always been curious about his two unproduced scripts, “Who Am I?” and “Pattern for Doomsday,” which were mentioned in Twilight Zone Companion—they’d been accepted for production in the last season but were killed by William Froug. After Jerry died I asked the family about those scripts. One thing led to another, and eventually they were published in Filet of Sohl. One delightful thing for me was the fact that after the book was published I met Carl Amari, producer of The Twilight Zone Radio Dramas, and acted as a kind of friendly agent for the Sohls in selling him the audio rights to those two scripts. He produced both of them—Henry Rollins starred in one ("Pattern for Doomsday"), Sean Astin in the other ("Who Am I?"). So those old forgotten scripts that had been gathering dust in Jerry’s files for forty years were finally done, under his own name—and on The Twilight Zone, no less! I was so happy to have played a role in that.

Vortex: Your essay “Southern California Sorcerers” is the most definitive history of the Group to date. What did the research entail? Were you able to speak directly to writers from the Group?

Conlon: I interviewed several people by phone and by letter, yes. George and William F. Nolan were my primary sources. I corresponded with Sohl, as I’ve mentioned, and talked with Matheson and Ellison as well. The rest of the job was finding printed sources with relevant material—easier said than done in that pre-Internet era, or at least before I was online myself.

Vortex: Do you have a favorite episode of The Twilight Zone and, if so, why is it your favorite?

Conlon: “Walking Distance” is my favorite episode. Always has been, always will be. It represents all its major contributors—Rod Serling, Robert Stevens, Gig Young, Bernard Herrmann—working at the absolute peak of their powers on a story that’s beautiful and profound and universal.

Vortex: Besides the two Sohl collections and your Richard Matheson tribute anthology He Is Legend, which of your books do you think Twilight Zone fans might be most interested in and why?

Conlon: The obvious choice would be Poe’s Lighthouse, which I conceived and edited—it contains original stories by something like two dozen writers, including Earl Hamner and George Clayton Johnson—in fact, I think George’s story may have been the last one he had published in his lifetime. As for my own writing, the Twilight Zone fan might be well-served by my newest collection, The Tell-Tale Soul: Two Novellas, a pair of long stories on the dark side—one a kind of literary thriller and tribute to Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart,” the other a gentle rural fantasy about an alternate early 20th century with robots. The author of the book’s introduction, John Pelan, actually titled his piece “Christopher Conlon’s Twilight Zone,” so the connections would seem to be pretty clear. I’m glad about that.

Chris mentioned that "Walking Distance" is his favorite episode of the series and he wrote a fantastic article on the episode which you can read here. We want to again thank Chris for taking time to answer our questions and we hope to do this again soon.