Richard Matheson


Richard Burton Matheson was an American author and screenwriter, primarily in the fantasy, horror, and science fiction genres.
He is best known as the author of I Am Legend, a 1954 science fiction horror novel that has been adapted for the screen three times, the first of which, The Last Man on Earth, was co-scripted by him. Matheson also wrote 16 television episodes of The Twilight Zone, including "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" and "Steel", as well as several adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe stories for Roger Corman and American International Pictures - House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum, Tales of Terror and The Raven. He adapted his 1971 short story "Duel" as a screenplay directed by Steven Spielberg for the television film Duel that year. Seven of his novels and short stories have been adapted as motion pictures: The Shrinking Man, Hell House, What Dreams May Come, Bid Time Return, A Stir of Echoes, Steel, and Button, Button. The movie Cold Sweat was based on his novel Riding the Nightmare, and Les seins de glace was based on his novel Someone is Bleeding.

Early life

Matheson was born in Allendale, New Jersey, to Norwegian immigrants Bertolf and Fanny Matheson. They divorced when he was eight, and he was raised in Brooklyn, New York by his mother. His early writing influences were the film Dracula, novels by Kenneth Roberts, and a poem which he read in the newspaper Brooklyn Eagle, where he published his first short story at age eight. He entered Brooklyn Technical High School in 1939, graduated in 1943, and served with the Army in Europe during World War II; this formed the basis for his 1960 novel The Beardless Warriors. He attended the Missouri School of Journalism at the University of Missouri, earning his BA in 1949, then moved to California.

Career

1950s and 1960s

His first-written novel, Hunger and Thirst, was ignored by publishers for several decades before eventually being published in 2010, but his short story "Born of Man and Woman" was published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Summer 1950, the new quarterly's third issue and attracted attention. It is the tale of a monstrous child chained by its parents in the cellar, cast as the creature's diary in poignantly non-idiomatic English. Later that year he placed stories in the first and third numbers of Galaxy Science Fiction, a new monthly. His first anthology of work was published in 1954. Between 1950 and 1971, he produced dozens of stories, frequently blending elements of the science fiction, horror, and fantasy genres.
He was a member of the Southern California Sorcerers in the 1950s and 1960s, which included Charles Beaumont, Ray Bradbury, George Clayton Johnson, William F. Nolan, Jerry Sohl, and others.
Several of his stories, including "Third from the Sun", "Deadline", and "Button, Button" are simple sketches with twist endings; others, like "Trespass", "Being", and "Mute" explore their characters' dilemmas over 20 or 30 pages. Some tales, such as "The Doll that Does Everything" and "The Funeral" incorporate satirical humour at the expense of genre clichés, and are written in an overblown prose very different from Matheson's usual pared-down style. Others, like "The Test" and "Steel", portray the moral and physical struggles of ordinary people, rather than the then nearly ubiquitous scientists and superheroes, in situations which are at once futuristic and everyday. Still others, such as "Mad House", "The Curious Child", and perhaps most of all, "Duel", are tales of paranoia, in which the everyday environment of the present day becomes inexplicably alien or threatening. "Duel" was adapted into the 1971 TV movie of the same name.
Matheson's first novel to be published, Someone Is Bleeding, appeared from Lion Books in 1953. In 1960, Matheson published The Beardless Warriors, a non-fantastic, autobiographical novel about teenage American soldiers in World War II. It was filmed in 1967 as The Young Warriors though most of Matheson's plot was jettisoned. During the 1950s he published a handful of Western stories ; and during the 1990s he published Western novels such as Journal of the Gun Years, The Gunfight, The Memoirs of Wild Bill Hickok, and Shadow on the Sun.
His other early novels include The Shrinking Man and a science fiction vampire novel, I Am Legend .
Matheson wrote screenplays for several television programs including the Westerns Cheyenne, Have Gun – Will Travel, and Lawman. He is most closely associated with the American TV series The Twilight Zone, for which he wrote more than a dozen episodes, including "Steel", "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet", "Little Girl Lost", and "Death Ship". For all of his Twilight Zone scripts, Matheson wrote the introductory and closing statements spoken by creator Rod Serling. He adapted five works of Edgar Allan Poe for Roger Corman's Poe series, including House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum , and The Raven.
He wrote the episode "The Enemy Within |The Enemy Within".
For Hammer Film Productions he wrote the screenplay for Fanatic based on the novel Nightmare by Anne Blaisdell, starring Tallulah Bankhead and Stefanie Powers; he also adapted for Hammer Dennis Wheatley's The Devil Rides Out.

1970s and 1980s

In 1973, Matheson earned an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for his teleplay for The Night Stalker, one of two TV movies written by Matheson and directed by Dan Curtis. Matheson worked extensively with Curtis; the 1977 television movie Dead of Night features three stories written for the screen by Matheson — "Second Chance" ; "No Such Thing as a Vampire" ; and "Bobby", an original script written for this omnibus movie by Matheson. "Bobby" was later refilmed with different actors as the second segment of Trilogy of Terror II.
Three of his short stories were filmed together as Trilogy of Terror, including "Prey" with its famous Zuni warrior fetish doll. The Zuni fetish doll reappeared in the final segment of the belated sequel to the first movie, Trilogy of Terror II.
Other Matheson novels turned into notable films in the seventies include Bid Time Return, and Hell House, both adapted and scripted by Matheson himself.
In the 1980s, Matheson published the novel Earthbound, wrote several screenplays for the TV series Amazing Stories, and continued to publish short fiction.

1990s

Matheson published four western novels in this decade, plus the suspense novel Seven Steps to Midnight and the blackly comic locked-room mystery novel, Now You See It ..., aptly dedicated to Robert Bloch.
He also wrote several movies—the offbeat comedy and box-office flop Loose Cannons, the biopic The Dreamer of Oz, a segment of Rod Serling's Lost Classics, and segments of Trilogy of Terror II. Short stories continued to flow from his pen, and he saw the adaptations by other hands of two more of his novels for the big screen—What Dreams May Come and A Stir of Echoes. In 1999, Matheson published a non-fiction work The Path, inspired by his interest in psychic phenomena.

21st century

Many previously unpublished novels by Matheson appeared late in his career, as did various collections of his work and previously unpublished screenplays. He also wrote new works, such as the suspense novel Hunted Past Reason. and the children's illustrated fantasy Abu and the Seven Marvels.

Personal life and death

In 1952, Matheson married Ruth Ann Woodson, whom he met in California. They had four children. Bettina Mayberry, Richard Christian Matheson, Chris Matheson and Ali Matheson.
Richard Christian, Chris and Ali became writers of fiction and screenplays.
Matheson died on June 23, 2013 at his home in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 87.

Awards

Matheson received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 1984 and the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Horror Writers Association in 1991. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame inducted him in 2010.
At the annual World Fantasy Conventions he won two judged, annual literary awards for particular works: World Fantasy Awards for Bid Time Return as the best novel of 1975 and Richard Matheson: Collected Stories as the best collection of 1989.
Matheson died just days before he was due to receive the Visionary award at the 39th Saturn Awards ceremony. As a tribute, the ceremony was dedicated to him and the award was presented posthumously. Academy President Robert Holguin said "Richard's accomplishments will live on forever in the imaginations of everyone who read or saw his inspired and inimitable work."
The tribute anthology He is Legend was published by Gauntlet Press in 2009.

Influence

Other writers

has listed Matheson as a creative influence and his novels Cell and Elevation are dedicated to Matheson, along with filmmaker George A. Romero. Romero frequently acknowledged Matheson as an inspiration and listed the shambling vampire creatures that appear in The Last Man on Earth, the first film version of I Am Legend, as the inspiration for the zombie "ghouls" he envisioned in Night of the Living Dead
Anne Rice stated that when she was a child, Matheson's short story "A Dress of White Silk" was an early influence on her interest in vampires and fantasy fiction.

Directors

After his death, several figures offered tributes to his life and work. Director Steven Spielberg said:
Another frequent collaborator, Roger Corman said:
On Twitter, director Edgar Wright wrote "If it's true that the great Richard Matheson has passed away, 140 characters can't begin to cover what he has given the sci fi & horror genre." Director Richard Kelly added "I loved Richard Matheson's writing and it was a huge honor getting to adapt his story 'Button, Button' into a film. RIP."

Novels