2023 Winners: Narrate Your Own Twilight Zone Competition

THE CONTEST: Imagine a new Twilight Zone episode. Write Rod Serling’s opening and closing narrations. Give it a title and send us your entry …and you did!

Watch Winner Videos:     2024     2023     2021     2020     2019     2018     2017

Congratulations to the 2023 Winners

First Place: “The Lesson” by Susan Rosenzweig
Second Place (tie): “A Measure of Victory” by Matthew Hawes
Second Place (tie): “We Always Go To Coney Island” by Lea McCall
Third Place: “I am Not a Robot” by Jay P. Maille

I didn’t run the contest for 2022, partly because of busy-ness and partly because I feared that the contest itself was getting old. Who would enter again after five years? I’m delighted to tell you how wrong I was. We got a record seventy-two entries this year! And they included some of the best narrations that I’ve ever read.

You have available to you the fruit of much honest labor: 74 stories (72+2, see below) that will take you on some surprising flights of fancy. And a video of the contest winners, narrated by Stephen Dexter performing as Rod Serling. This is Stephen’s sixth turn for us, pausing his busy schedule of acting, voicing, writing, and producing, to make these prizes such a treat. You won, yeah that’s cool, but wait—hearing Rod Serling perform your entry? That is seriously special. We thank him for donating his abundant skill and limited time.

Stephen’s Broadway debut in The Shark is Broken (about the filming of Jaws) consumed a large portion of his year, but didn’t slow him from reaching a big milestone in his audiobook narration career. The man is versatile!

A tie in judging gave us four winners—again! I love that…it’s an opportunity to honor more work. THANK YOU to everyone who submitted an entry. 2020 first-place winner Matthew Hawes tied for second this year with “A Measure of Victory.” As I noted, we’ve got some really good stuff here, and not just the top four. Our Foundation Board member Gail Flug wrote two narrations—ineligible to win of course, but quite worthy and included here. Plus, one entry is remarkably short with no definitive plot, but is a fair surrogate for nearly every Twilight Zone episode ever broadcast. I’ll let you find those Easter Eggs on your own.

So here are all the entries, for you to enjoy in the theater of your mind…

ATTRIBUTIONS

Stills and video were collected over the internet from Creative Commons, Wikimedia Commons, and from various sites that did not specify copyright. All art is used in brief under the Fair Use Doctrine. No profit was acrued nor any infringement intended, from use. Below: available specifics.

THE LESSON

• Clips from: BAD TEACHER – Official Trailer posted 2011 on YouTube by Sony Pictures Entertainment
• Clips from: Bad Teacher (2011) – Elizabeth’s First Class Day (HD) posted 2020 on YouTube by MovieClips

A MEASURE OF VICTORY

• Clips from: Hornets’ Nest (1970) ORIGINAL TRAILER [HD 1080p] posted 2020 by on YouTube by HD Retro Trailers
• Clips from: Hornets Nest (1970) #3 posted 2022 on YouTube by ForeverBlueClassics

WE ALWAYS GO TO CONEY ISLAND

• Clips and one still from: Coney_Island_(ca._1940s).ogv (Ogg multiplexed audio/video file, Theora/Vorbis, length 9 min 19 s, 400 × 300 pixels, 569 kbps overall, file size: 37.92 MB) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Coney_Island_(ca._1940s).ogv. This file is in the public domain because this footage is part of the Prelinger Archives and is Public Domain according to https://archive.org/details/ConeyIsl1940
• Video of GIF: Fire tornado GIF Manda Lights.gif https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fire_tornado_GIF_Manda_Lights.gif This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Attribution: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Ima_Julien&action=edit&redlink=1 
• Fire Watch – Flickr – olavXO.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fire_Watch_-_Flickr_-_olavXO.jpg Attribution: olavXO from Norway, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

I AM NOT A ROBOT

• Still photo: Achievement Hunter Interview – Supanova 2014 screenshot.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Michael_Jones_at_RTX_2015_(20515036672).jpg This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. Attribution: Attack on Gaming
• Still photo: Achievement Hunter Interview – Supanova 2014 screenshot.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Achievement_Hunter_Interview_-_Supanova_2014_screenshot.jpg This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. Attribution: Attack on Gaming
• Still photo: Lazer Team premiere – Cast and director (26829370524).jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lazer_Team_premiere_-_Cast_and_director_(26829370524).jpg This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. Attribution: anna Hanks from Austin, Texas, USA
• Still photo: Michael Jones (43913646101).jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Michael_Jones_(43913646101).jpg This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. Attribution: Super Festivals from Ft. Lauderdale, USA
• Clip from: Typing example.ogv https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Typing_example.ogv NotFromUtrecht, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons. Attribution: NotFromUtrecht
• Python code generated by ChatGPT in response to prompts by Steve Schlich. No copyright.
• 3 still photos: Male facial morphology.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Male_facial_morphology.jpg  This file is in the public domain because it is the work of a computer algorithm or artificial intelligence and does not contain sufficient human authorship to support a copyright claim. The United Kingdom provides a limited term of copyright protection for computer-generated works of 50 years from creation. [1] Attribution: Sxologist, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

FINAL SPEECH

• Still photo: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:March_on_Crystal_City_-51-_(10333992106).png This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
• Still photo: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Happy_People.jpg This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
• Still photo: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hope_Peace_Joy_(4207698474).jpg This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
• Still photo: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:So_happy_smiling_cat.jpg This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
• Still photo: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Happy_Ending.JPEG This media file is in the public domain in the United States. This applies to U.S. works where the copyright has expired, often because its first publication occurred prior to January 1, 1929, and if not then due to lack of notice or renewal. See this page for further explanation.