Richard Matheson (1926-2013)

[james_davis_nicoll]

Tor.com is saddened and staggered to learn of the passing of Richard Matheson, the esteemed author of I am Legend, The Shrinking Man, What Dreams May Come, Hell House, the script for the Steven Spielberg film Duel, and many Twilight Zone scripts, among many more works.

Comments

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

I remember, a few years ago, I went to go check his bibliography.

I was shocked at how many things he'd written -- and how many things I'd seen and enjoyed where he was credited for the story, or even screenplay.

And I don't think he ever got attacked by the brain eater.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

His Twilight Zone output alone is impressive: "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" (there's a man on the wing of the plane!!!), "The Invaders" (Agnes Moorehead vs. tiny spacemen), "Little Girl Lost" (maybe best known today from The Simpsons referencing it when Homer enters the third dimension), and many others.

He was also, I think, responsible for Star Trek's very first transporter malfunction, in "The Enemy Within".

[cmattg.livejournal.com]

Cripes. We're running out of Stephen King's boyhood heroes.....

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

One by one we watch our brothers set their feet upon the rainbow.

[the-xtina.livejournal.com]

Our kinsfolk, rather.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

Brothers. It's a Polynesian saying. And you're trivializing a tragedy by correcting a direct quote for PC purposes.

[the-xtina.livejournal.com]

Direct quote from where? The only place I find this online, anywhere, is you saying it. Unless you're Polynesian, which is possible, I suppose.

I am saddened by the loss of Richard Matheson, as I loved his work, a rarity in the horror field.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

Then you might show it by taking a break from political agendae.

[the-xtina.livejournal.com]

No such thing.

The quote is, apparently, from a fictional Polynesian account, put together by a white dude, about how women should be included in an exploratory voyage because what if the place they're travelling to has no people.

[the-xtina.livejournal.com]

Also, since when do I gotta do one thing at a time?

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

"Multitasking" is a euphemism for "doing two things poorly".

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

There's a James Michener quote with a fictional Polynesian here, but it has "friends", though the friends being referred to are all men:

http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/BOYD/2004-03/1078580258

[doc-lemming.livejournal.com]

I'm very sorry and saddened to hear of this. His I Am Legend was a huge effect on me (though I still haven't seen The Last Man On Earth). Between that and Some Of Your Blood, I was marked for life. Hell House was also formative.

In Danse Macabre, Stephen King mentioned (not by name) a writer who had terrible sentences but great story: I always figured that he meant Matheson, whose prose was occasionally clunky but whose stories were almost always fascinating.

Have you seen the anthology where other writers got to play in his worlds? I wasn't fond of the I Am Legend story, but some of the others were wonderful.

[bruce munro (from livejournal.com)]

Do you recall the name of the collection? It sounds interesting.

[doc-lemming.livejournal.com]

He Is Legend

Here is an amazon.ca link: http://www.amazon.ca/He-Is-Legend-Anthology-Celebrating/dp/0765326132