Utilizing a series of essays examining the broad philosophical concepts embedded in Rod Serling's series,The Twilight Zone,Philosophy in The Twilight Zone provides a platform for further philosophical discussion.Features essays by eminent contemporary philosophers concerning the over-arching themes inThe Twilight Zone, as well as in-depth discussions of particular episodesFuses popular cult entertainment with classical philosophical perspectivesActs as a guide to unearthing larger questions - from human nature to the nature of reality and beyond - posed in the seriesIncludes substantial critical and biographical information on series creator Rob Serling

Noël Carroll is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, a former President of the American Society for Aesthetics, and a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship. He has published numerous books including thePhilosophy of Horror (1990) andA Philosophy of Mass Art (1999). He has also worked as a journalist and has written five documentary pictures.

Lester H. Hunt is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has also taught at Carnegie-Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh, and The John Hopkins University. He has written extensively on ethics, political philosophy, and the aesthetics of film, and is the author ofNietzsche and the Origins of Virtue (1990) andCharacter and Culture (1998). He is currently working on a book on anarchy and the justification of the state.

Notes on Contributors

Introduction:Lester H. Hunt

1. And Now, Rod Serling, Creator ofThe Twilight Zone: The Author asAuteur:Lester H. Hunt

2. Tales of Dread inThe Twilight Zone: A Contribution to Narratology:Noël Carroll

3. Frame Shifters: Surprise Endings and Spectator Imagination inThe Twilight Zone: Carl Plantinga

4. The Treachery of the Commonplace:Mary Sirridge

5. Where is the Twilight Zone?:Richard Hanley

6. Existentialism and Searching for an Exit:Susan L. Feagin

7. Through the Twilight Zone of Nonbeing: Two Exemplars of Race in Serlings Classic Series:Lewis R. Gordon

8. Blending Fiction and Reality: The Odyssey of Flight 33":Thomas E. Wartenberg

9. Epistemology at 20,000 Feet:Sheila Lintott

10. Rationality and Choice in Nick of Time:Aeon J. Skoble

11. The Little People: Power and the Worshipable:Aaron Smuts

12. Nothing in the Dark: Deprivation, Death, and the Good Life:James S. Taylor

Index