such as science fiction or the marvelous, without compromising the integrity of the fantastic
effect as long as the opposition between identifiable reality and the unbelievable is respected:
the presence of a Martian in a marvelous universe of the space-opera variety will not create
narrative tension by itself; however, the same Martian in a mall on a Saturday afternoon will
create a sensation just by being there, that is create a conflict that justifies the narration by
establishing authority through the means of the opposition between the expected and the
unacceptable. The supernatural elements we find in fantastic narrations do not necessarily
have to be original, as long as they are opposed to a reality the recipient recognizes as her or
his own.
This is not to say that every single episode of The Twilight Zone can be deemed
fantastic: “Time Enough at Last” which tells of an atomic holocaust, and “Steel,” the story of a
robotic boxing match set in the future, could be seen as belonging to the uncanny and science
fiction respectively; since the possibility of complete annihilation by means of weapons of mass
destruction evoked in “Time Enough at Last" is unfortunately as current today as it was in the
fifties, the narration remains within the boundaries of realism; “Steel,” on the other hand, takes
place in a distant future (the 1970s), an enlightened era in which human boxing matches have
been outlawed and boxers replaced by robots, and must be hence considered as science
fiction for it does not represent the reality we know but rather its projection in the future.
There exists as well the always present possibility of intersection or co-existence of two
neighboring modes within one narrative syntagm, as we have seen above concerning the very
first episode. “The Rip Van Winkle Caper,” for instance, starts in the fantastic mode, as four
gangsters steal an important load of gold and decide, in order to elude pursuit, to go into
hibernation for a century or so by means of a gas invented by one of them. The impossible
existence of such gas introduces an irrational element within a very identifiable reality - four
regular outlaws hiding in the desert after a heist - and hence creates the fantastic effect by
opposing the real to the impossible. However, the conclusion of the episode will take place in
the future, when gold has become worthless after humanity found a way to manufacture it,
making the opposition between our identifiable reality and the impossible disappear since the
universe in which the narration ends is no longer ours and therefore escapes the limits of our
reality. “The Rip Van Winkle Caper” hence morphs into science fiction when our reality is
replaced by its future projection, just as “Where is Everybody?” morphs from the fantastic into
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