![]() Between 19, Matheson produced dozens of stories, frequently blending elements of the science fiction, horror and fantasy genres. The tale of a monstrous child chained in its parents' cellar, it was told in the first person as the creature's diary (in poignantly non-idiomatic English) and immediately made Matheson famous. His first short story, "Born of Man and Woman," appeared in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1950. He married in 1952 and has four children, three of whom ( Chris, Richard Christian, and Ali Matheson) are writers of fiction and screenplays. In 1949 he earned his bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and moved to California in 1951. He then entered the military and spent World War II as an infantry soldier. ![]() David Langfordīorn in Allendale, New Jersey to Norwegian immigrant parents, Matheson was raised in Brooklyn and graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School in 1943. I Am Legend was altered out of recognition when filmed as The Omega Man (1971), starring Charlton Heston. What gives the story its uneasy power is the gradual perspective shift which shows that by fighting monsters Neville is himself becoming monstrous-not a vampire but something to terrify vampires and haunt their dreams as a dreadful legend from the bad old days. He also discovers pseudoscientific explanations, some rather strained, for vampires' fear of light, vulnerability to stakes though not bullets, loathing of garlic, and so on. ![]() By day, when they hide in shadow and become comatose, Neville gets out his wooden stakes for an orgy of slaughter. By night, the bloodthirsty undead of small-town America besiege his barricaded house: their repeated cry "Come out, Neville!" is a famous SF catchphrase. ![]() The hero Robert Neville, perhaps the last uninfected man on Earth, finds himself in a paranoid nightmare. Without losing the horror, it presents vampirism as a disease whose secrets can be unlocked by scientific tools. I Am Legend, though, was a trailblazing and later much imitated story that reinvented the vampire myth as SF. It seems strange to find a 1954 vampire novel in Millennium's "SF Masterworks" classic reprints series. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |