Video: Thanks to PBS Digital Studios and its series Blank on Blank, we have this beautiful animation of an interview with The Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling. His ideas about science fiction, children and imagination all get expressed in a wonderful way.
The interview is from 1963, with Serling explaining the show on an Australian radio show. In addition to talking about The Twilight Zone and his own childhood, he also talked about why he was glad kids were fans of the show, saying, “The most unfettered imagination belongs to young people. And they don’t walk through life, they fly.”
He also explained that it was this imagination, fuelled by science fiction, that led to the the great leaps in science being made in the ’60s:
And that’s the reason we have astronauts orbiting now. And that’s why we’re planning a trip to the moon. People talk about science fiction being very far out and very wild. I don’t think it’s any of these things.
Everything we see in the way of space travel, space concept, scientific advancement, medical discoveries was already predicted by some good science fiction 25 years ago.
It’s a great thought.