Serling, Robert
Entry updated 22 January 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1918-2010) US editor, journalist, writer of nonfiction on aviation issues, and author, who wrote infrequently as Robert J Serling; he was the older brother of Rod Serling. The Jeremy Haines series beginning with The President's Plane Is Missing (1967) occupies, as is often the case with Political thrillers, a forward edge of the present that might conceivably invade the very Near Future. In the first tale, President Jeremy Haines seems to be missing from Air Force One, though he is in fact at a secret meeting with his Russian counterpart attempting, successfully, to fend off World War Three, which his vice-president wants to initiate with a surprise attack; this novel was filmed as The President's Plane Is Missing (1973) directed by Daryl Duke. In Air Force One Is Haunted (1984), the ghost of Franklin D Roosevelt (see Supernatural Creatures) haunts Haines whenever he is alone in the official plane, his advice helping Haines initiate a new New Deal.
Serling is of some sf interest for the Near Future Something's Alive on the Titanic (1990) (see Titanic), set in 1993 as an expedition that – despite the disaster of a 1975 dive Under the Sea – finds something like a congregation of ghosts and something like an emanation out of Spiritus Mundi haunting the wreck, which it protects. Captain Ahab is directly cited (see Herman Melville), as is Captain Nemo (see Jules Verne). W T Stead, who went down with the ship, is channelled by a contemporary parapsychologist, to whom he offers indirect advice. The Titanic itself, as an Icon of the hubris and comeuppance characteristic of its overweening century, is effectively embedded. [JC]
Jerome Robert Serling
born Cortland, New York: 28 March 1918
died Tucson, Arizona: 6 May 2010
works (highly selected)
Jeremy Haines
- The President's Plane Is Missing (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1967) [Jeremy Haines: hb/]
- Air Force One Is Haunted (New York: St Martin's Press, 1984) [Jeremy Haines: hb/]
individual titles
- Something's Alive on the Titanic (New York: St Martin's Press, 1990) [hb/uncredited]
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