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james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2013-06-24 10:02 pm
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Richard Matheson (1926-2013)

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.
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[identity profile] kithrup.livejournal.com 2013-06-25 02:12 am (UTC)(link)
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.

[identity profile] mmcirvin.livejournal.com 2013-06-25 03:16 pm (UTC)(link)
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".
ext_22548: (rogue)

[identity profile] cmattg.livejournal.com 2013-06-25 03:18 am (UTC)(link)
Cripes. We're running out of Stephen King's boyhood heroes.....

[identity profile] harvey-rrit.livejournal.com 2013-06-25 05:19 am (UTC)(link)
One by one we watch our brothers set their feet upon the rainbow.

[identity profile] harvey-rrit.livejournal.com 2013-06-25 07:09 am (UTC)(link)
Brothers. It's a Polynesian saying. And you're trivializing a tragedy by correcting a direct quote for PC purposes.

[identity profile] the-xtina.livejournal.com 2013-06-25 11:45 am (UTC)(link)
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.

[identity profile] harvey-rrit.livejournal.com 2013-06-25 06:51 pm (UTC)(link)
Then you might show it by taking a break from political agendae.

[identity profile] the-xtina.livejournal.com 2013-06-26 07:01 pm (UTC)(link)
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.

[identity profile] the-xtina.livejournal.com 2013-06-26 07:02 pm (UTC)(link)
Also, since when do I gotta do one thing at a time?

[identity profile] harvey-rrit.livejournal.com 2013-06-27 04:08 am (UTC)(link)
"Multitasking" is a euphemism for "doing two things poorly".

[identity profile] mmcirvin.livejournal.com 2013-06-25 06:54 pm (UTC)(link)
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

[identity profile] doc-lemming.livejournal.com 2013-06-25 01:56 pm (UTC)(link)
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.
Edited 2013-06-25 13:57 (UTC)

[identity profile] bruce munro (from livejournal.com) 2013-06-25 07:25 pm (UTC)(link)
Do you recall the name of the collection? It sounds interesting.
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