Everything I Need to Know I Learned in the Twilight Zone ─ A Fifth-Dimension Guide to Life

Can you live your life by what The Twilight Zone has to teach you? Yes, and maybe you should. The proof is in this lighthearted collection of life lessons, ground rules, inspirational thoughts, and stirring reminders found in Rod Serling’s timeless fantasy series. Written by veteran TV critic, Mark Dawidziak, this unauthorized tribute is a celebration of the classic anthology show, but also, on another level, a kind of fifth-dimension self-help book, with each lesson supported by the morality tales told by Serling and his writers.

The notion that “it’s never too late to reinvent yourself” soars through “The Last Flight,’’ in which a World War I flier who goes forward in time and gets the chance to trade cowardice for heroism. A visit from an angel blares out the wisdom of “follow your passion” in “A Passage for Trumpet.” The meaning of “divided we fall” is driven home with dramatic results when neighbors suspect neighbors of being invading aliens in “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.” The old maxim about never judging a book by its cover is given a tasty twist when an alien tome is translated in “To Serve Man.”

Mark Dawidziak has been a theater, film and television critic for more than thirty-five years. He has been the TV critic at the Cleveland Plain Dealer since July of 1999. His many books include the horror novel Grave Secrets, The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Dracula, the literary biography Jim Tully: American Writer, Irish Rover, Hollywood Brawler (with Paul J. Bauer) and two acclaimed histories of landmark TV series: The Columbo Phile: A Casebook and The Night Stalker Companion. A member of the editorial board of Rod Serling Books, he penned the foreword to the 2015 reissue of Rod Serling’s first book, Patterns. He has edited three collections of works by Twilight Zone contributor Richard Matheson. His many books on Mark Twain include Mark My Words: Mark Twain On Writing, Horton Foote’s The Shape of the River: The Lost Teleplay About Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Guide to Diet, Exercise, Beauty, Fashion, Investment, Romance, Health and Happiness, Mark Twain in Ohio, and Mark Twain for Cat Lovers. A recognized Mark Twain scholar, he has been playing the great American writer on stage for more than thirty-five years. Dawidziak and his wife, actress Sara Showman, founded the Largely Literary Theater Company in 2002 to promote literacy, literature, and live theater. Their repertoire includes: Twain By Two; The Tell-Tale Play, a two-act collection of poems and stories by Edgar Allan Poe; and Shades of Blue and Gray: Ghosts of the Civil War. A journalism graduate of George Washington University and an adjunct professor at Kent State University, he was born in Huntington, New York. He lives in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, with his wife and their daughter, Rebecca “Becky” Claire.