Richard Matheson
Richard Matheson
Richard Burton Mathesonwas 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 horror novel that has been adapted for the screen four times, as well as the movie Somewhere In Time for which Matheson wrote the screenplay, based on his novel Bid Time Return. Matheson also wrote 16 television episodes of The Twilight Zone for Rod Serling, including "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScreenwriter
Date of Birth20 February 1926
CountryUnited States of America
'I Am Legend' is quite unusual for its time. I just wanted to write a story about female boxers, and I couldn't get that going in my mind. I don't know exactly where the idea of just a man pitting himself against a robot boxer came from.
I could never write about strange kingdoms. I could never do 'Harry Potter' or anything like that. Even when I did science-fiction, I didn't write about foreign planets and distant futures. I certainly never did fantasies about trolls living under bridges.
I had to write about realistic circumstances. That's the way my brain works. And I think that gave me a sort of place in the field.
At the last meeting, I was opposed to the expenditures at the Police Department,
I wrote about real people and real circumstances and real neighborhoods. There was no crypt or castles or H.P. Lovecraft-type environments. They were just about normal people who had something bizarre happening to them in the neighborhood.
I think there are other places where we need to spend money.
I don't think the other council members are looking at it like I did,
Thank you...for gracing my life with your lovely presence, for adding the sweet measure of your soul to my existence.
To me there is nothing that goes against nature. If it seems incomprehensible, its only because we havent been able to understand it yet.
If men only felt about death as they do about sleep, all terrors would cease. . . Men sleep contentedly, assured that they will wake the following morning. They should feel the same about their lives.
I'm sitting in my office trying to squeeze a story from my head. It is that kind of morning when you feel like melting the typewriter into a bar of steel and clubbing yourself to death with it. (“Advance Notice”)
In a world of monotonous horror there could be no salvation in wild dreaming.
Because there was only one thing worse than dying. And that was knowing you were going to die. And where. And how. (“Death Ship”)
After a while, though, even the deepest sorrow faltered, even the most penetrating despair lost its scalpel edge.