Richard Matheson's The Twilight Zone Scripts, Volume 2

Apart from Rod Serling, screenwriter Richard Matheson wrote more teleplays for the cult classic The Twilight Zone than any other writer. Many of these episodes became the series' most acclaimed and most frequently aired. Published here for the first time are eight original scripts. Each is preceded by an introduction and commentary that lends insight into Matheson's creative process, how he felt about the adaptation of his scripts, and his relationship with Rod Serling. Information about the fate of two lost scripts and suggestions for further reading and viewing are also included. Volume Two includes the final six complete Twilight Zone scripts Matheson wrote for the show.

Alba Petrella

"This volume gives the reader a manifold emotions, and these are motivated by the elements it is made up of. Firstly, it brings back the fondness, or doubtlessly the vivid memory, for a TV series, The Twilight Zone, whose contribution to the communication of passion for fantasy and horror literature in various historical moments has played a determining role. The material in the volume is composed, in fact, of several original scripts for The Twilight Zone by Richard Matheson, one of contemporary literature s most fertile minds, and these are commented and introduced by Stanley Wiater, a writer himself, with a profound knowledge of the symbolic in this kind of narrative. Stanley Wiater s intimate motives (an immediate passion for the TV series and therefore a cerebral and affective debt towards the authors, Rod Serling for a start) are superimposed by intellectual and artistic motives. He is the ideal person to edit this volume, and so he welcomes the reader into his prologue, he introduces every one of Matheson s scripts and masterfully recreates the climate of those years, also thanks to the direct testimony of the writer who made Rod Serling s TV series great...

The merit of this volume edited by Gauntlet Press, and of its suggestive cover, that re-proposes the surrealistic images that characterized the fourth and fifth series of The Twilight Zone is above all in the gift of these scripts. They fully render the wealth and plasticity of Richard Matheson s typical images and his use of fantasy in the inventions in both the dialogues and descriptions, which put him at the forefront of the great contemporary narrators."

Richard Matheson, author of I AM LEGEND, HELL HOUSE, WHAT DREAMS MAY COME, THE SHRINKING MAN and SOMEWHERE IN TIME to name just a few, was the primary writer other than Rod Serling for the original THE TWILIGHT ZONE. He penned 14 scripts, some of the most memorable to air. Matheson has also written numerous short stories and screenplays, among them DUEL, THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN and STIR OF ECHOES, all based on his fiction. He currently lives in California where he continues to write screenplays. He has just completed a new novel to be published in 2002.

Stanley Wiater is considered one of the greatest experts in horror and dark fiction. His career as a professional writer began in 1975, and since then, his articles, stories, and most especially his interviews have given him world-wide renown. He is the writer who has most often interviewed Stephen King, Peter Straub, Richard Laymon, among so many others; investigating the creative mind of the maestros of horror in literature and in the cinema, thereby offering lovers of this genre the chance to listen to their voices. He is the author of DARK DREAMERS: CONVERSATIONS WITH THE MASTERS OF HORROR, winner of the Bram Stoker Award in 1991 from the Horror Writers Association, DARK THOUGHTS: ON WRITING, winner of a Bram Stoker in 1998, DARK DREAMERS: FACING THE MASTERS OF FEAR (a collection of photographs and commentary with the 100 greatest masters of horror), and THE STEPHEN KING UNIVERSE.