100 books like The Twilight Zone

Richard Matheson is a horror legend for good reason, and most casual viewers of genre films and TV would probably be surprised at how much of his work they’ve encountered in some form or another. The Will Smith movie I Am Legend is adapted from his work. Steven Spielberg’s first film, Duel, as well. The paranoid Nightmare at 20,000 Feet is best known as a classic Twilight Zone episode, referenced and parodied numerous times in the decades since, but Matheson’s original reflects everything that’s great about his work: a fairly practical, everyman sort of protagonist (for the 1960s anyway) undone by an impossible situation.

I don’t think most Lovecraft fans casual or devoted would single out The Music of Erich Zann, given the staying power of the Cthulhu mythos and everything associated with it. But what causes Lovecraft’s work to resonate so many decades later is his mastery over the disquieting, and this story about music channeled from a horrific place played on a street that doesn’t seem to exist by a violinist terrified and compelled to keep playing has stayed with me more than any of Lovecraft’s other stories in the years since I read it. Maybe it’s the musician in me, or maybe it’s the distortions of reality that tend to crop up in my own writing. Either way it’s striking, and a good introduction to the strangeness of H. P. Lovecraft.

Specifically, I'm recommending the short story "Sea Oak." In the expanse of horror fiction, it has to be said that there are very few stories about a kindly old woman who returns from the dead as a pissed-off, vulgar, rotting corpse demanding her nephew start showing his cock (Saunders’s phrasing, not mine) for extra money so that his family can stop being pushovers and start earning some cash. George Saunders, it should be noted, is not remotely a horror author—rather, one of the more offbeat, distinctive writers of short literary fiction of the last quarter century—and Pastoralia is determinedly not a horror collection. But it’s exactly this that makes “Sea Oak” the strangest, least likely zombie story, if you can call it that, that you’ll ever read.

"The One Who Waits," one of my favorite stories in this collection, would be regarded more commonly as science fiction, as it takes place during an Earth expedition to Mars. But Ray Bradbury’s story also pioneers the classic horror trope of a small group of people falling one by one to a mysterious creature they cannot see—and with a means of disguise highly imaginative, beautifully written, and fundamentally terrifying. Bradbury is a phenomenal writer and it’s difficult to recommend any one story without feeling certain you’ve dropped the ball in not recommending another--you really can't go wrong with this entire collection--but the quick, clever, nuanced "The One Who Waits" is one of the best sci-fi/horror hybrids ever written.

Wallis Eates is the master of picking scabs and upturning stones to see what scuttles beneath. And often among all the dirt and bugs, she finds such amazing treasure. In this book, she has such vivid and detailed memories I found myself staring into her wonderful pencil marks and time travelling back into the mind of my own little self and feeling all the fear and awe of those years. I was going to write, it's like happening upon someone’s secret diary, but it's so visceral, it's more like being Sam Beckett in Quantum Leap and suddenly, wonderfully finding yourself in someone else’s body for a minute.

Kid books are the most important books. They hook deep into the gray matter right as it’s branching off in all directions, and set the course for a whole new crop of writers. The imagery in this companion to the long-running Animorphs series was off the charts – for example, a moon-spanning hivemind organism that keeps thousands of victims tethered underwater, trepanned by tendrils that let it access their decaying brains. This one is dark, vivid, and capped off by a beautifully understated death. 

I remember the moment I walked into a bookstore and saw this book sitting face out on the shelf and thought; “Wait, they make books about every episode of a TV show?” Not just that but for the show that to this day I maintain was the greatest TV show ever made: The Twilight Zone. Marc Scott Zicree’s book was my beginner’s guide into the making of a TV production with an emphasis on my greatest love: the writers. From the day I bought this, I never sat down to watch the show again without it beside me for reference. My copy is worn and tattered but eternally loved. This was the book that made me want to work for and write about television.

The cover of this biography is J-O-S-H spelled out in huge theatrical lights—and Logan really was a Broadway legend as a director/producer/writer.  The book chronicles his successes and failures, and he analyzes each show he worked on with an unsentimental and critical eye. He astutely argues for what audiences want to see, and what they reject. Particularly compelling are his personal portraits of Lorenz Hart, Richard Rodgers, and Oscar Hammerstein II.

This title is designed to help student neuroscientists grasp the staggeringly complicated anatomy of the brain by -literally – coloring-in its parts in a way that shows up their connections. Colouring- will take you straight into the Zone, and using this book will allow you to do it in public without people looking around for your carer. If it leaves you with a better idea of how the bits join up, count it as a bonus.

How to Create a Mind is a fascinating non-fiction book that explores the intricacies of the human brain and the potential for creating artificial intelligence. It does an excellent job of weaving together scientific research, personal anecdotes, and philosophical musings. Powerful computers are essential to solving human longevity. So, I ask what if those computers need to be partly human themselves? I wish we could simply feed this book into an AI, let it know this is the blueprint to how our human minds work, then set it free to do its best creation. Make us into a human-computer that can live past our expectations. Whether fictional or real, this is a survival story that will leave even non-sci-fi fans with a lot to consider.