Elayne Zalis

Reimagining The Twilight Zone Elayne Zalis

Reimagining The Twilight Zone: A Young Fan's Stories blends fact, fiction, and fantasy to explore how the Twilight Zone television series sparked the imagination of a young girl growing up in Miami, Florida, in the late 1950s and early '60s. The collection of twenty hybrid essays considers selected episodes from the child's perspective and includes remixes and mash-ups of the shows, similar to fan fiction.

Each episode prompts the young fan to exercise her imagination in new ways. She learns to push the boundaries of what is possible while also expanding her worldview. In the process of telling these stories, the adult narrator reinvents both the child she was and the woman she has become. The Twilight Zone serves as a springboard to creative thought.

A portrait emerges of a writer as a young TV fan in the Kennedy era. Her personal stories contribute to public dialogues about the impact of television and popular culture on the baby boomer generation, and the collection as a whole experiments with novel approaches to life writing in the digital age.