To Serve Man

I would still like to know what it is we're actually trying to accomplish here.

To Serve Man was a cookbook.

Never forget that.

Not that some people won't get a lot out of it.

Oh, yeah.

It's the To Serve Mankind.

Yeah.

Again, I saw that before I saw that Twilight Zone episode.

Yeah, exactly.

So I think the one I would put up for the most famous one is To Serve Man.

Okay.

Where the aliens come down and they have this book called To Serve Man and they're like really nice and kind to humans and they want to take some humans home with them.

Do you know that one?

Can you give me more without giving it away?

... of the Twilight Zone episode.

It was, uh, it was called To Serve Mankind, you know that?

[laughs] Yeah.

Which one is that? I need to ...

[laughs]

It was, it was like benevolent aliens come, um, and they're, you know, gonna solve all the Earth's problems, and they're loading people onto the ship so they can bring us to, uh, you know, our reward or something, I guess, in a good way supposedly.

And then finally someone like decodes their, their little gospel-like book, To Serve Mankind, and realizes that it's a cookbook.

[laughs]

Forever! [upbeat music]

Welcome back to another episode.

I'm your co-host, the toast of the third coast, Professor Degree.

With me, as always, I. Blade Daily, the host of-

Like [laughs]

Big time.

It, I mean, a lot of it comes off like a Twilight Zone episode, uh, visually as well as...

I mean, it reminds me of the episode To Serve Man quite a bit Um, but yeah, there's like a little, there's a little...

Well, I've been a professional writer since I was 19.

I went to the Clarion Writers Workshop, which is the leading science fiction writing workshop in the country, sold my first short story to Damon Knight.

He wrote the short story To Serve Man, which Rod Serling made into a classic Twilight Zone episode.

And then I started writing The Twilight Zone Companion when I was 22. uh two years after rod sterling's death and uh and then i was writing for tv by the time i was 22 or 23 uh my friend michael reeves who also wrote a lot of great animation including batman the animated series he won an emmy for that uh uh he brought me into animation and so i was writing for space ghost and then smurfs and he-man and super friends and all that stuff so and then jumped over to live action with captain power developed that for television and uh and then, you know, Star Trek and all those other shows.

So it's been, and still going strong.

Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellis, and Ted Sturgeon, Richard Matheson, you know, on and on, Jerry Soule, et cetera, George Clayton Johnson.

And so I started going to science fiction conventions when I was a teenager and meeting these people who then ultimately became friends and mentors.

And when I was 19, I went to the Clarion Writers Workshop and sold my first short story.

Uh, most-mostly silent.

This episode called "To Serve Man," which is a Season 3 episode.

Very good.

Yeah.

When Morn screams, quote, "We're all doomed," it's a tribute to the 1991 The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear movie when Lloyd Bochner screams i- in panic, "It's a cookbook.

It's a cookbook," parenthetical, which in itself is a parody of Bochner's classic role in the classic Twilight Zone episode, To Serve Man.

So that's awesome.

Um-