From 1959 to 1964, Rod Serling took CBS audiences on a journey. A journey to another dimension. A dimension of sight. A dimension of sound. A dimension of mind. He took them, of course, to The Twilight Zone. Serling, a veteran, humanist, and playwright in the “social realist” mode of the 1940s and 1950s, was [...]
Smoke over a desiccated, radioactive landscape, where sunlight barely pierces the sky. Men at war - for this is the Great War VII. Qarlo, the protagonist of Harlan Ellison’s short story “Soldier” is one of those men – hiding in the dark, ready to make a push against the unknown (but human) enemy. Then, the [...]
When streaming television behemoth Netflix announced in 2015 they had acquired the rights to Black Mirror, fans’ reaction was skeptical. How would the chilly, British sci-fi anthology show translate to an American studio? At the time Netflix signed on for more Black Mirror, the show was a cult program – six episodes, plus a special, [...]
In 1982, the British science fiction writer J.G. Ballard wrote a story called “Report on an Unidentified Space Station.” The title is a straightforward description of the plot: A crew of explorers navigates, and reports back on, an alien space station. The station is unusual for two reasons: First, it resembles a large airport waiting [...]
