An Early Article On "The Twilight Zone"

Charles Beaumont (1929-1967), one of the writers on The Twilight Zone, wrote an article in Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine's December 1959 issue about the now classic sci-fi/fantasy CBS television series, which premiered on October 2, 1959.

Beaumont's article revealed the initial resentment of people in the sci-fi community toward the show's creator, Rod Serling (1924-1975), "the eminent TV writer," who they felt was "an outsider." After Beaumont met Serling, he learned of Serling's "love [for] science fiction and fantasy." And when he read the first nine scripts that Serling wrote for The Twilight Zone and discovered their high quality, "I knew," wrote Beaumont, "that Serling was an 'outsider' in terms of experience; in terms of instinct, he was a veteran."

As it turned out, wrote Beaumont, "a circle of excitement surround[ed] the show. People [actors, directors, writers] want[ed] to be associated with it." Furthermore, "Serling and his associates...[did] their best to make this a first rate production."

And as everyone now knows, their efforts created a memorable, revered, thought-provoking, and timeless anthology series of half-hour dramas that examined human nature. "The Twilight Zone," noted the entertainment website IMDb.com, "featured forays into controversial grounds like racism, Cold War paranoia and the horrors of war."

Beaumont's brief article, if it hasn't by now, deserves to be included as a foreword to a Twilight Zone book. It chronicles the attitudes and expectations about the series from someone who was there as an observer and a participant during its creation.