Life Lessons from The Twilight Zone: A Self-Help Manifesto

The Twilight Zone, the beloved horror/science fiction anthology series created by hometown hero Rod Serling, might seem like an odd source to mine for a self-help book. Nevertheless, that is precisely what Mark Dawidziak, a theatre, film, and television critic (and lifelong Twilight Zone fan) seeks to do in his new book, Everything I Need to Know I Learned in the Twilight Zone: A Fifth-Dimension Guide to Life. Part philosophical rumination, part love letter to the classic series that ran from 1959 to 1964, his book draws from the show’s original run to explore such lessons as “Read every contract… carefully” and “The civilization that does not value the printed word and the individual is not civilized.”

The book features an introduction by Anne Serling, who herself published a memoir of her father’s life and work in 2013’s As I Knew Him: My Dad, Rod Serling. The early chapters of Dawidziak’s book explore Rod Serling’s school years, his experience in World War II, and his early work in television leading up to the inception of The Twilight Zone. It is here that Dawidziak discusses just how formative Serling’s work was for him and lays out his central thesis: that The Twilight Zone’s enduring popularity can be attributed to more than just entertaining storytelling—that the series, which was largely written by Serling himself, speaks to universal human truths and that, as guides to life go, one could do worse than looking to The Twilight Zone.

It’s an interesting proposition, and Dawidziak is clearly enthusiastic about his source material; his love of all things Twilight Zone shines through in every sentence. The execution is somewhat uneven, however. The author’s autobiographical focus sometimes obscures the points he is trying to make, and he’s fond of dropping references to Mark Twain, another literary idol of his, in ways that don’t quite mesh; while he makes some effort to connect Twain’s writing with Serling’s, the fact remains that there is little to link the two other than unlikely, enduring popularity, and it sometimes seems that Dawidziak is simply shoehorning in another of his enthusiasms where it doesn’t quite fit.

He has clearly cast his net far and wide when it comes to soliciting opinions on the show, and each chapter includes a “Guest Lesson” from a notable name in the field of science fiction or TV writing. Some of these seem like little more than an opportunity to drop in a blurb by a famous name, though others are excellent; the legendary Harlan Ellison observes, in a hilarious dig at the author’s entire project, “And the lesson? I have no idea what the lesson is, kid. I’m eighty-one years old. Things don’t have lessons for me anymore.”

Other than these relatively minor flaws, however, the book is entertaining and even, potentially, useful. It is inarguable that The Twilight Zone is inclined toward the didactic, which makes it a better-than-average framework, at least as far as television shows go, to hang a self-help book upon. The lessons that Dawidziak references are clearly not pulled from thin air; for example, Lesson 24 (When nobody else believes in you, keep believing in yourself) references “Nightmare at 30,000 Feet,” in which Bob Wilson (played by a youthful William Shatner), discovers a monster trying to destroy the plane he’s on, and rescues both himself and the rest of the passengers despite the fact that nobody else believes that the monster is there. Believing in himself, and his own perception of the world, was what allowed him to save them all. “To Serve Man,” one of the show’s most infamous (and chilling) episodes, is mined for a number of lessons, including the maxim that something that seems too good to be true probably is. The Twilight Zone, Dawidziak observes, does not push a cynical worldview—but neither does it endorse wholesale credulity. In fact, this call for a measured, thoughtful humanism could be considered the most enduring lesson of the show.

All in all, this is a heartfelt tribute to The Twilight Zone and its creator, wrapped up in a book of life lessons. Worth a read for fans of the classic show, or anyone who enjoys self-help books with an unusual approach.

Mark Dawidziak has been a theatre, film, and television critic for over 35 years. In addition to his many works of fiction, he is also the author of two acclaimed histories of landmark TV series: The Columbo Phile: A Casebook and The Night Stalker Companion. He lives in Ohio.