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.

[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.

[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.