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Book Reviews

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson: Book Review

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson Book Cover

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Several GR friends have read this and raved about it recently. I’ve been doing a lot of Halloween-related books this month, so I decided to give it a try.

It somehow wasn’t exactly what I expected, and I mean that in a good way. I’ve seen bits of the Will Smith movie (and what I’ve seen has very little in common with the book), I’ve read my friends’ reviews, but it’s still something that I think you have to experience for yourself to understand.

I would definitely call it a horror book, but not exactly for the reason that I expected. There are the vampires, and there are a couple of intense scenes with them, but that wasn’t what made the book scary to me. It was more about the absolute aloneness that Neville experiences. He truly is the last man in the world. How would you deal with that? Would you give up? Would you keep fighting? Would you start searching for others? Would you search for the reason behind the horror that has become your life? Matheson explores all of these avenues and more. Neville’s reactions felt very real to me. I experienced all of his emotions with him. The vampires were scary at first, and then they just sort of become background noise. Then there’s the rage, despair, curiosity, really the whole gamut of emotions that you would feel in that position. There’s even one scene that just broke my heart. It’s all in here, it all feels very real, and I am very impressed. Highly recommended.

Review of the other stories

I finished out the other stories and they were pretty good. They weren’t on a level with I Am Legend , but there were some genuinely spooky pieces in here. My favorites were

“Prey” about an insecure woman and an African doll “Dress of White Silk” about a little girl showing off her mother’s evening dress “Person to Person” about a guy who answers a phone that’s ringing inside his head

My least favorite were

“Buried Talents” about a carnival game “Dance of the Dead” which is vaguely post-Apocalyptic “Mad House” about an angry man in an angry house.

I’m glad I read them, but I Am Legend was definitely the star of this show.

Reviewed October 14 and 21, 2009

Read an excerpt .

Buy I Am Legend at

Friday Flashback Reviews are a weekly feature here on The Introverted Reader. These are old reviews I wrote on GoodReads . Thanks to Angieville and her Retro Friday Reviews for the inspiration and encouragement!

I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop’s , my local independent bookstore located in downtown Asheville, NC; and Better World Books . I will receive a small commission at no cost to you if you purchase books through links on my site.

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The loneliness in this is so terrifying and really gets under your skin. I was surprised that the creatures were vampires, because they didn't strike me that way at all in the movie. All in all I really liked it. I could not get myself to read the short stories that followed, though.

It's been a while since I've read this one but I remember it being good and creepy. A great October book indeed.

I want to get my hands on I am legend so bad I really enjoyed the movie and the book seems to have so much more to it. Thanks for your review! 😉

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Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations

Reviews of vintage science fiction (1945-1985), book review: i am legend , richard matheson (1954).

Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend (1954) is an influential SF vampire/zombie novel that spawned three film adaptations (I’ve watched the first two) and inspired directors such as George A. Romero and Danny Boyle, game designers such as Tim Cain ( Fallout ), and countless authors. The subject of the novel–man attempts to survive an onslaught of vampires, caused by bacterial infection, that act like smart(er) zombies in a post-apocalyptic wasteland–normally isn’t my cup of tea. I’m the first to admit that I picked up the novel entirely due to its historical importance. And I’m somewhat glad I did! While the physical onslaught of vampiric zombies didn’t interest me, the main thrust of the narrative concerns the mechanisms of grief and sexual frustration in the burning wreckage of one-time domestic bliss.

The Rituals of Solace and the Path out of the Haze (*spoilers*)

Richard Neville, a tattooed war veteran mysteriously immune to the vampiric affliction sweeping America, spends his days lathing stakes, traveling short distances from his home killing vampires, hanging garlic, listening to Beethoven, and drinking. The female vampires attempt to cajole him from his house with lewd acts: “there was no union among them. Their need was their only motivation” (12). The facts about the vampires seem straight from gothic legends of the past: “their staying inside by day, their avoidance of garlic, their death by stake, their reputed fear of crosses, their supposed dread of mirrors” (16). Intermixed with Neville’s daily ritual are intense moments of disillusion and sadness as he remembers the domestic happiness before the disease within the same walls he still occupies. He deeply loved his wife Virginia and his young baby Kathy. When he dreams about Virginia his “fingers gripped the sheet like frenzied talons” (11). He remembers their final conversations. Her death. His grief. And her return… And when the despair builds he slips back into the routine again: “reading-drinking-soundproof-the-house” (21).

Two ideas jolt him from his alcoholic malaise: 1) the faint possibility that “others like him existed somewhere” (18). 2) a growing desire to uncover the scientific rationale behind the vampires, and perhaps, an ability to more effectively kill them. Neville, little educated in science, throws himself into his studies (i.e. an excuse for Matheson to divulge extensive mind-numbing passages of rudimentary bacterial theories that never make the “reality” of vampires any less scientifically inane). He uncovers the reason behind how the disease is spread, why vampires need human blood, and how they are able to animate a dead body.

The narrative gains intense emotional heft, if it didn’t have it already, when Neville comes across the emaciated shape of a dog in the middle of the day (vampiric dogs bark at night): “Why pretend? He thought. I’m more excited than I’ve been in a year” (82). He spends days and days domesticating the beast–which has developed its own ways to survive the predations of the vampires at night. And at its death, he is again crazed by grief. And then a woman appears on one of his voyages…

The Male Sex Drive in the Wasteland

I enjoyed I Am Legend as an allegory of nuclear terror. Matheson makes clear that the vampiric disease–spread by bacteria in dust clouds (i.e. paralleling fallout)—is a metaphorical (and mythological) manifestation of humanity’s fears of the end present in the 1950s. Virginia asks Richard whether the bombings caused the disease and Richard answers, “and they say we won the war” (43). Matheson implies a limited nuclear conflict in the near future that reflects growing knowledge of fallout after Americans learned about the “Ivy Mike” Hydrogen bomb tests in 1953 [1]. The vampiric disease represents America’s existential dread present in a rapidly changing post-WWII world and how the suburban American way of life is under threat. Neville’s discoveries of the nature of vampirism after the apocalypse suggests we too might understand the true impact of nuclear weapons on the wrong bank of the Rubicon.

Lima de Freitas’ cover for the 1958 Portuguese edition (below), and to a lesser degree John Richards’ cover with its staked nude female for the 1956 edition (above), reflect an omnipresent thread of sexual chaos amidst the incomprehensible horror of vampiric holocaust that runs through the novel [2]. Lima de Freitas’ figure of Richard Neville does not have his eyes on the burnt buildings of the surrounding city but on the suggestively splayed nude female body of a vampire. At night that body with rouse itself and mill around Neville’s house attempting to cajole him out with macabre parroting of female sexuality: “The women, lustful, bloodthirsty, naked women flaunting their hot bodies at him. No, not hot” (21). Neville, alone, is possessed by perverse sexual desires. In one instance he ponders why he always experiments on female vampire bodies he collects while they sleep during the day: “Why do you always experiment on women? […] What about the man in the living room, though For God’s sake! He flared back. I’m not going to rape the woman!” (48). But he can’t help but notice her “torn black dress” with “too much [..] visible as she breathed” (48). In another instance, consumed by the heat of his loins Neville finds himself removing the bars of his door in an effort to run out into the night–“Coming, girls, I’m coming. Wet your lips now” (21).

Elaine Tyler May analyzes the juxtaposition of sex symbols with nuclear devastation in American popular culture–think bikini bathing suit, an attractive woman as “bombshell” or “Bill Haley and His Comets singing about sexual fantasies of a young man dreaming of being the sole male survivor of an H-bomb explosion” [2]. The home provided a form of “sexual containment” [3] that would be released in terrifying forms in the case of apocalypse. If the home falls, society falls. And Richard Neville attempts to preserve his home in I Am Legend and avoid the endless temptation of flesh in the burnt wreckage of suburbia that surrounds him. And when he gives in to his sexual desires and lets a new woman into his house in a confused attempt to recreate what he had lost, the end has already been spelled out.

[1] For more on what Americans knew about nuclear testing–and saw on TV–and when they knew it, check out Robert A. Jacobs’ concise and fascinating The Dragon’s Tale: Americans Face the Atomic Age (2010).

[2] As I read I Am Legend as an allegory of nuclear fears, I used Chapter 4 “Explosive Issues, Sex, Women, and the Bomb” of Elaine Tyler May’s Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (1988, revised edition 2017). I am riffing of some of her ideas.

[3] May, 107.

[4] May, 108.

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Matheson is an interesting case. The Matheson stories I’ve read showed a talent or skill — though either word is too strong, really — for writing a kind SF/fantasy/horror that entirely dispensed with the bother (for normie readers) of any science-fictional conceptualization — that in fact had dumb premises that didn’t make any sense at all and didn’t care about it.

It became a very successful genre in itself via Matheson’s — and his peer Charles Beaumont’s – adaptations of their stories for 1960s television series like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits .

It’s the genre that Stephen King, who counts Matheson as a primary influence (though King is a far better writer) operates in today, and that Harlan Ellison (who actually sold some scripts to those shows) was also an upscale example of. Literally, there are King and Ellison short stories that are clearly re-writes of specific episodes of those shows.

So:significant from the POV of the history of the SF genre and culture as a whole. Not my thing, though.

I’ve never seen an episode of 1960s television series like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits! Haha.

I mean, he tries to generate “science-fictional conceptualization” and those are definitely the passages that are far less impactful than the emotional toll Neville experiences. At its heart this novel tries to provide a scientific explanation of a historical myth.

But I do agree with the novel’s importance in the history of SF genre and culture. And how it’s not entirely my thing either…

“The vampiric disease represents America’s existential dread present in a rapidly changing post-WWII world and how the suburban American way of life is under threat.”

I prefer to think of the suburb itself as the true wasteland, made possible by the vampire of capital (to use one of Marx’s telling phrases): the American Dream as vapid, denatured, empty, etc. This, I feel, is the real fear of so much 1950s and 60s culture, that capitalism “at its best” is the end not the pinnacle of material want and success. Philip K Dick nails this sense of the doom of suburbia in works like “The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch”.

But it’s already there in “I Am Legend”–a novel I love by the way (how can you give it a measly “good”?!). In particular, it’s end–which has been botched by all of the film adaptations–underlines the dead end of the American Dream, and Neville’s hopeless wish to hold on to it.

Neville only remembers the suburban life fondly within the matrix of the story. Of course, he focuses his memories on the love of his wife and child. Hence the phrasing I used. But I take the point that Matheson’s critique might be directed at the suburb itself as in other stories of his I’ve read from around the same time — for example, the spectacular “Mad House” (1953) which I reviewed in his collection Third From the Sun (1955).

But the end… it fails because its not the genuine love he experienced before. It’s a charade and he knows it. And yeah, I guess a macabre charade of the American Dream in the last house standing. But could this not be a warning of what is to come if everything collapses? Neville’s final posturing is a final attempt at normality as it all fades away. I do feel the story does fit within common contemporary views of the dangerous sexual landscape that emerges after the apocalypse. The subversive sexuality isn’t really subversive in the context of fears of what would happen if the institution of the American family collapsed.

As for my rating, I adore the historical context of the novel and I point out its historical importance. But the entire let’s come up with some ridiculous point-by-point scientific explanation for Vampirism and revisionist interpretations of the Black Death and past plagues…. grated on me and muted its allegorical impact. There are counter arguments of course — Matheson is essentially stating that scientific knowledge won’t save us in the end. But everything else rates much higher in my book. And I HATE VAMPIRES AND ZOMBIES! hahahahaha. I enjoyed it far more than I thought I would.

Don’t get me wrong, I like your review and think your argument about “sexual chaos” is right on the money. I suppose I was struck by the idea of the phrasing of a “threat to suburban life”, given the threat that is suburban life. Speaking of sexual chaos, I read his “The Shrinking Man” last year, and was bowled over by its wonderful take-down of 1950s masculinity. Highly recommended.

No worries. I’m all for debate and counter argument. I revised my comment extensively. I hope I’ve clarified my views.

I found the suburb critique angle more muted here than in “Mad House” (1953) so I read the threat as a more general response to nuclear fears that will impact all — including suburban life. The review probably dodges how Matheson is also critiquing suburban life… at the same time.

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the “The Shrinking Man” movie at one point. I haven’t read the book. I’ll keep it in mind. Thank you! And I’m all for take-downs of 1950s masculinity.

The film is good but the novel is great. But can you trust me? I should check out ‘Mad House’. Like yourself and others I’ve had mixed results reading his short fiction. I’m almost certainly overstating the suburbia is wasteland line. It’s been a while since I read “I Am Legend”. Your review makes me want to reread it. Meanwhile, the wasteland that is my suburb is all too present and real. Inescapable dare I say? Roll on its destruction…

You know me, I don’t only read to find great pieces of literature. I’m bound to get something out of the novel even if it isn’t my favorite thing ever. Hence why I got so excited about this novel and Moudy’s “The Survivor” even if my ratings didn’t exactly reflect my excitement. The social history surrounding it excites!

For all I know I’m misremembering “Mad House.” Most of my memory of it is tied up in the short review I wrote…

Speaking of 50s takedowns of suburbia, I finished Sturgeon’s “And Now the News…” (1956) moments ago for my media series. He even identifies how suburbia diminishes interaction between people vs. life in a city (although he has his main character take a train to work vs. drive a car which is a bit off).

I have my own built in hatred of the suburb. I moved from rural Virginia to a suburb in Texas in my teens. I remember the almost existential diminishing of horizons. I was initially less horrified as the suburb wasn’t completed and there were tracks of land to explore but those were promptly bulldozed… Which made me hate it even more.

The Sturgeon has made it’s way to the top of my to read pile. Thanks! Tho I should probably read the Moudy while discussion is still relatively fresh. I read Charles V. de Vet’s “Special Feature” a few days ago on the back of its recommendation by one of your readers. It’s definitely up your alley, if perhaps not as wonderfully speculative about urban alienation as some of the stories we’ve read over the years. Sadly, I never had your good fortune to spend some of my youth in the country. I’m a city boy born and bred. Tho maybe I am luckier than you for not having known what I’m missing. Maybe…

De Vet turned the story into a novel — his only solo novel (he wrote a few with Katherine MacLean).

I quite enjoyed this novel when I read it, but it didn’t leave any real impression on me, probably because I had already read much better novels and pieces. It’s far from being great though. I don’t think Matheson is such an imaginative or original author. I know you like it for it’s themes though, but even they weren’t strong enough to take my attention.

I think this novel is the definition of an imaginative and original work. There simply weren’t zombie/vampire novels like this one at all. But the premise definitely is original. Maybe you meant to say its delivery was imaginative or original? Even then I don’t completely buy your argument — this is an intense case study of grief, not something terribly common in genre novels at the time.

It’s delivery probably was imaginative or original, and I think you’re right, there weren’t zombie/vampire novels like this one, and the premise is original, but it Isn’t memorable. It was influential on later SF though, such as George Martin’s “Ferve Dream”, which is also about vampires of a natural origin and contains cutting edge themes

Well, I’m never going to forget the dog chapter…. or Neville relentlessly obsessed with the zombie women outside his door…

FEVER DREAM, by the way, is exceptional. I am not a fan, in general, of vampire novels, but that one is really good.

Like I Am Legend, I don’t think it’s for me. But also like I Am Legend, there’s a chance the stars align and I feel the compulsion to give it a read!

“… And Now The News” is truly a great story, one of Sturgeon’s best. Having MacLyle (famously named for two of Heinlein’s pseudonyms as a nod to the help Heinlein gave Sturgeon) take a train to work is entirely characteristic of many suburban workers at that time (and to a lesser extent up until now.) It is not easy or cheap to park in a city downtown, so you take a train. My own home town (Naperville, IL) is the second to last stop on the Burlington Northern out of Chicago, and many people take the train to work. (The neighboring unincorporated village of Eola (now, I think, incorporated into either Naperville or Aurora) was named such as it was once the “End Of the Line”.)

As one who has lived in suburbs his whole life, and who has generally positive memories of his childhood, I find the somewhat cliched standard criticism of suburbs as soulless and arid etc. etc. to be just that — a cliche, a lazy trope. But Sturgeon’s story (which is about much more than that) remains powerful.

As for I AM LEGEND, I haven’t read it, and have little to say, and indeed I barely remember the Heston movie, THE OMEGA MAN, which I saw at a very young age.

I’ll talk more about the story when I review it.

I don’t find it be a lazy trope. There are of course lazy authors who parrot the basic points without much introspection. This historical background is so fascinating. The suburbs represent white flight and the abandonment of the cities (and the people who lived there), American equation of white home ownership vs. minority ownership, increasingly limited options for women (who were often trapped at home more than before especially if the father took the car to work and there wasn’t public transit), suburbs were 99% white and thus interaction with other races decreased (the race line was real!), etc. There’s so much historical background that it’s ripe for SF to explore. I am, of course, not saying there weren’t some benefits and that some didn’t enjoy them.

I live in the first suburb of Indianapolis (built in the late 1880s) — it’s now part of the larger urban center as the city has grown so much since then. The train (I guess more a trolly) was completely removed at the behest of the car lobby in the early 20th century, and it was a direct route downtown (4 miles) that I wish still existed. Of course, there’s a ton more space in Indianapolis than Chicago. Chicago, New York, etc. = rare American cities with a functional and extensive public transit system. No such thing exists in the rest of the once-industrial Midwest. Parking is never a problem. There is no metro system. There are only in the last few years a dedicated bus lane on one North/South route and one under construction East/West. It’s really really really sad that it’s taken this long.

i.e. maybe Sturgeon is thinking public transit in New York/Chicago vs. the average American suburb in the average American city.

To be clear — there is plenty of criticism — or examination — worthy of being done of suburban life; and most acutely the divisions it exacerbated between white people and black people is one serious issue. And the whole car culture thing is interesting too — and how public transportation was actively suppressed, most famously in LA, but in other places too (and I didn’t know that about Indianapolis) is a scandal.

But my problem is not interrogations of such things. It is the sort of default view — that it seems to me is supposed to be taken as axiomatic, not even worthy of proving — that life in the suburbs is (or was) dehumanizing, and everyone there had no inner life etc. etc. I know I’m exaggerating, and I know I’m oversensitive, but that’s how it seems to me often.

I grew up in a house where I could go out my backyard and over the road behind it and walk, it seemed, all the way to Champaign without hitting signs of civilization — and that’s not possible now — it’s all subdivisions! So I did have access to open country, to creeks and field and copses and all. And lots of people didn’t.

I dunno, guys. Is there anything significant left to be said in 2022 about the soullessness of the American suburbs, given that it’s 1950s-era American mainstream lit’s primary — almost one and only — theme.

From Richard Yates’s REVOLUTIONARY ROAD and John Cheever’s stories like ‘The Housebreaker of Shady Hill’ (all the men ride the train in to Manhattan) at the high end, to Sloan Wilson’s THE MAN IN THE GREY FLANNEL SUIT and J.D. Salinger, and early Vonnegut, it’s almost like they didn’t write really write about anything else. It’s even all over Nabokov’s LOLITA, though a lot more is going on with that novel.

Cheever’s stuff is still great; he was a real artist and a weirdo, with his WASP facade covering his barely repressed homosexuality and serious alcoholism. But a lot of other 1950’s American mainstream lit comes over as a bit of a bore these days. Maybe the most interesting thing about it is what it leaves out — which is the stuff Cheever hinted at.

I came over to the US in the early 1970s because my father went to work for an American corporation. So I saw some of the tail-end years of that generation of ostensibly straight white guy executives and middle-class types. And what struck me was that many of them drank like — well, not like fish, but the three (or five) martini lunchtime every day really was a thing. My sense was that many of these men were either deeply effed-up or there was a void inside, and they drank to repress it or cover it up. In quite a few cases, what they specifically never talked about — and never wanted to talk about — was what had happened to them in WWII and the Korean War, because they had what we’d now recognize as post-traumatic stress disorder. Consider, for instance, Gene Wolfe’s hints about his condition after his return from Korea.

I’ve gone some ways away from I AM LEGEND, I admit. Sorry.

In academic study there’s plenty to be said. I recently read the Dianne Harris’ brilliant Little White Houses: How the Postwar Home Constructed Race in America (2012). And her arguments about how the American consciousness when it came to formulations of ownership were new at the time. https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/little-white-houses

Note: My parents are architects so all this stuff is extra fascinating to me.

The criticism of post-war suburban life as empty and soulless is certainly a cliché if such a “criticism” is left merely at the level of assertion. But being a cliché isn’t proof of its falsehood. Indeed, it’s often demonstrative of precisely the opposite.

I grew up in suburban Sydney in the 1970s and 80s, and by the time I was in my mid to late teens was chaffing at the bit to escape the real boredom that I experienced in this setting. Did I imagine this? Not at all. Indeed, I recall not only its representation in broader culture (this was the time of punk rock after all), but also how this experience was shared not only by many of my teenage friends, but also older and younger siblings and relatives. My experience was of a widespread malaise and frustration with suburban life, particular among youth. Which is not to say I had never enjoyed this life, nor that I had been able to find corners of it that appeared to resist this (to name only two: my nerdish discovery of role-playing games and second-hand bookstores). But such experiences, at least retrospectively, appeared to cut against the grain of suburban experience rather than exemplify it.

I think Joachim’s caveats about the structural problem of the suburb is probably the best way to try and flesh out this claim. Then we can examine suburban development empirically with an eye to its conscious and unconscious results: i.e., how the expansion of suburbs was carried out deliberately, in the sense of various states and instrumentalities trying to sculpt a particular class and racial order, and haphazardly, in the sense of the unforeseen problems that surfaced as a result of just such an ordering (unforeseen, that is, by the self-same states and instrumentalities).

Mark, you are quite right, it was a very ’50s thing — and your suggestion that it was influenced to a perhaps considerable extent by what happened in the war (especially WWII) is intriguing and probably right.

I don’t know the alcoholism stats or any of that but it sure does seem like there was a LOT more drinking in those days. (In a way, did more driving eventually reduce drinking? — much easier to pour yourself into a train car and sleep it off on the way home than to drive home drunk.)

My Dad was in Korea, got there late and spent about three months in combat, in an artillery unit. He didn’t talk much about it — he did say he was offered a chance to go to Officers’ training but he didn’t take them up on it partly because as far as he could tell the casualty rate among newly minted artillery Lieutenants was astronomical (as they were often assigned forward spotter duty.) Of course, as it turned out the War would have been over by the time the training was done, and he’d have been a peacetime Lieutenant for however long they required (I dunno? Three years?) instead of being mustered out right away. And I probably wouldn’t be here!

He was never a drinker to any extent — I saw him drunk once in my life. He would have one martini when he got home from work and that was it, maybe a (crappy — he liked bargains) beer or two on the weekend after mowing the lawn. And I never really tried to draw him out about the war — I wish I had now, but it’s too late. But he was (or seemed to me) a happy man, and stayed active in various things (civic, such as zoning boards or volunteering for the census, plus lots of travel) all his life.

I learned right before my grandfather died that he served in Korea — briefly. He finished training, was sent to Korea, and then the war ended moments later. I never figured out if he went to college because of the GI bill. Maybe his lack of actual service meant he never wanted to talk about it (maybe his friends saw actual combat).

But my grandparents were the definition of a suburban 50s family. Lived outside of Philadelphia, grandmother went to college and shifted majors to home economics (I think at the instigation of her parents but I’m uncertain), got married in college (I think)… she never held a job. Had meals on a week rotation (the 50s classics including salad with cottage cheese and jello), and was profoundly unhappy (I won’t get into it too much). She wrote poetry relentlessly–my dad still has all of her volumes–with her omnipresent box wine and cigarettes.

Born of Man and Women is one of the most brilliant debuts in the genre.

II: Vampires? Carmilla! Am in Love!

I reviewed “Born of Man and Woman” a few years back. I thought it was solid and effectively creepy. https://sciencefictionruminations.com/2015/03/22/book-review-third-from-the-sun-richard-matheson-1955/

To clarifiy about the novels of Katherine MacLean and Charles de Vet — they only actually collaborated on one novel, which I think is best called SECOND GAME. That novel appeared in three versions, each longer than the one before. These were the novelette “Second Game” (Astounding, March 1958), the short novel COSMIC CHECKMATE (Ace, 1962), and the somewhat longer novel SECOND GAME (DAW, 1981).

I don’t know who did what on those three versions, which are all the same basic story, but if I had to guess, MacLean and de Vet collaborated fully on the novelette; and they MAY have collaborated on the expansion to COSMIC CHECKMATE, but mostly likely (and this is purely my speculation) the expansion to the DAW 1981 version, SECOND GAME, was mostly or entirely by de Vet.

The sequel, THIRD GAME (DAW, 1991) was entirely by De Vet.

De Vet, as you note, published one other novel, SPECIAL FEATURE (Avon, 1975).

Thank you for the clarification. I need to read more of MacLean’s short fiction. I adored her novel Missing Man (1975) (an expansion of her Nebula-winning short fiction by the same name): https://sciencefictionruminations.com/2011/10/08/book-review-missing-man-katherine-maclean-1976/

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Richard Matheson ‘I am Legend’ Review

Posted on May 25, 2014 in Authors M-Z // 5 Comments

Written by: Matthew J. Barbour

Richard Matheson is among the most well-known and respected authors within speculative fiction. His contributions, before passing away in June 2013, were many and varied. In addition to horror, this literary master published science fiction, fantasy, and mystery. He wrote short stories, novels, and even screenplays. His works have appeared as motion pictures, such as Stir of Echos and What Dreams May Come , and television episodes of the Twilight Zone and Star Trek . Among his many accomplishments and prolific career, Matheson’s greatest achievement is often cited as the post-apocalypse vampire novel, I am Legend .

Written in 1954, I am Legend follows the rather ordinary Robert Neville as he struggles to survive under some extraordinary circumstances. The old world is gone having been laid waste by a great war and the horrible pandemic which followed in its footsteps. This pandemic has turned the remnants of humanity into vampires. Neville must confront these relics of the past while coming to terms with the future which lies before him. Is there a place for Robert Neville in this brave new world?

Some historians have noted that the framework for the setting in some ways mirrors the First Great War and the subsequent Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918. Others have examined the work in the terms of growing old, technological change, and societal collapse. The story has been referred to as the first modern vampire novel and credited for inspiring the zombie apocalypse subgenre. The novel has even been made into a motion picture on four separate occasions.

However, at its heart, I am Legend is simply a beautiful character portrait of Robert Neville. He is not a genius or a super soldier. Before vampires destroy the world, he is a factory worker. He just manages to survive. Through Robert Neville’s eyes, the reader grapples with the humanity and inhumanity of his situation and actions. Matheson weaves a connection between Neville and reader that few authors have so eloquently done.

Most critics of the novel point to the ending. Yet, the conclusion drawn from the piece is fitting if a bit bleak. It is not surprising that they have changed the ending in three of the four movies. Such an ending probably is not digestible to mainstream America. In many ways, the ending to Night of the Living Dead is thematically more of Matheson had in mind that the films which credit his novel.

I am Legend is a classic and written by a master of the horror genre. It is the measure by which all other post-apocalypse novels are compared. If you have never heard of it, you need to get out from underneath your rock. If you never read it, now is the time to do so. You can order it right here.

Order it here .

Rating: 5/5

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5 comments on richard matheson ‘i am legend’ review.

Excellent review, and just the type of praise the late Richard Matheson deserves for his many great novels and scripts for television.

Thanks. Reading through it now, I notice all the typos, but I am happy it was well received. Hopefully everyone has read this one, but if not, they should.

Hey, sometimes I can’t even write my own name without spelling it wrong.

Cool review here. I too love Matheson. What Dreams May Come is another favorite of mine (not the film though).

Great review of a true classic. I read it some 10 years ago, but I guess it’s time to do it again.

Screen Rant

How i am legend's ending is different in the book.

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Francis Lawrence's 2007 film I Am Legend had not one but two endings, and while both are different from what happens in the original novel by Richard Matheson , the alternate ending not shown in theaters is a lot closer. The movie stars Will Smith as virologist Robert Neville, the apparent sole uninfected survivor in a post-apocalyptic version of New York City where most people are dead, and the remainder have been transformed into monsters that hunt at night.

In the original ending for I Am Legend , Robert is cornered in his basement laboratory along with fellow survivors Anna (Alice Braga) and Ethan (Charlie Tahan), with the hemocytes having broken into the house. When the leader makes the symbol of a butterfly on the reinforced glass, Robert connects it to the butterfly tattoo on the female hemocyte he's been experimenting on. He realizes that the leader only wants the return of his mate, and that the hemocytes - whom Robert believed incapable of higher brain function - can experience attachment, love, and even restrain themselves from committing violence. Looking at the wall of photographs of his past experiment subjects, Robert understands that he is the monster in the eyes of the hemocytes: a predator who has been capturing and torturing them.

Related: Why I Am Legend Is NOT A Zombie Movie

The ending did not go down well with test audiences, who were unhappy with the implication that the hero of the movie was actually a villainous figure. It was replaced in I Am Legend 's theatrical cut with a more traditional Hollywood ending, where the hemocytes remain mindless savage zombies and Robert dies a hero after discovering a cure for the virus. The original ending, however, is much more in line with what happens in the I Am Legend novel. In fact, without the original ending, the movie's title of I Am Legend doesn't actually make much sense. In the book, " I am legend " are the final words that Robert thinks on his deathbed, as he realizes that in death he will become a terrifying legend just like vampires once were.

Yes, in the book version of I Am Legend the hemocytes are explicitly labelled vampires and come packaged with many vampiric traits, including not only a deathly aversion to light but also a fear of garlic and religious iconography. They are also, besides their pale skin, very difficult to distinguish from regular humans. They retain all their intelligence and can still talk, coming out at night to taunt Robert outside his house and tempt him to leave. As in the movie version of I Am Legend , there's a pivotal moment in the book where Robert meets a woman who appears to be another human survivor, Ruth. Her ability to walk around in the sun seems like clear-cut evidence that she's not a vampire, but he becomes suspicious of her aversion to garlic and her unconvincing story about how she's survived all this time.

Sure enough, it's revealed that Ruth is actually a vampire and was sent to spy on Robert after he killed her husband. She reveals that some of the vampires do not die and return as undead monsters, but have discovered a pill that controls their bloodlust and prevents the infection from killing them (though it's implied that this may actually be thanks to a mutation in the bacteria that causes vampirism, rather than the drugs). With their condition stable they have begun to rebuild society and exterminate the undead vampires. In a note, Ruth says that her new species is likely to kill Robert along with the undead and begs him to leave, but instead he stays behind and tries to fight, becoming mortally wounded in the process. Before he dies, he looks out of the bars of his cell and comes to the same conclusion that Smith's version of the character does in I Am Legend 's original ending:

They all stood looking up at him with their white faces. He stared back. And suddenly he thought, I’m the abnormal one now. Normalcy was a majority concept, the standard of many and not the standard of just one man. Abruptly that realization joined with what he saw on their faces - awe, fear, shrinking horror - and he knew that they were afraid of him. To them he was some terrible scourge they had never seen, a scourge even worse than the disease they had come to live with. He was an invisible specter who had left for evidence of his existence the bloodless bodies of their loved ones... Robert Neville looked out over the new people of the earth. He knew he did not belong to them; he knew that, like the vampires, he was anathema and black terror to be destroyed... A new terror born in death, a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever. I am legend.

There's a strong argument to be made that I Am Legend 's alternate ending , in skewing closer to the ending of the book, is better than the version that ended up in theaters. It completes the story's arc from Robert Neville being portrayed as the sole surviving hero in a world of evil, to the revelation that he's actually the boogeyman that has been preying on a new, emerging race of intelligent beings. Many of the best villains in fiction believe that they are the hero, but I Am Legend is a book that makes the reader believe it too.

More: I Am Legend’s Biggest Change From The Book Broke The Movie

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I Am Legend

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I Am Legend – (the best vampire) Book Review

Review of I Am Legend by author Richard Matheson

I think I’m a rarity for the I am Legend audience. I’ve actually never seen either of the movies and knew very little about this book going into it. In full honestly, I thought it was just some last man standing post apocalypse story . I was surprised to find out it’s a vampire book! So I went into this one nice and fresh and was very pleased with the outcome.

Since I knew so little about this one going in it was shocking to discover how many things I now recognize have ripped it off. I had no idea! But now I’m sure to be seeing I am Legend in so many books and movies from now on. I honestly don’t know how this one flew over my head for so long, it’s weird the gaps that we have in our cultural knowledge sometimes.

The premise of the horror novel is simple and familiar. A man is alone after everyone else he knows of has turned into a vampire. He spends his days surviving and his nights trying to drown out the cries of the undead. But there are some key differences which separate the man of this book, Robert Neville, from heroes of other similar stories .

First of all, Neville isn’t actually handling his situation very well. In apocalypse story after apocalypse story we see people summoning all of their strength to become a survival warrior with a master plan. Neville does what he needs to do to keep himself alive but then succumbs to getting absolutely black out drunk to forget the day before starting the next one. Honestly, this is far more realistic.

He’s depressed, lonely, scared, annoyed, likely has survivor’s guilt, and gets angry at himself for not being better or doing more. He talks to himself a lot and has an inner turmoil surrounding his personal ethics in his new world. It’s actually one of the only cases I can think of with a vampire book blatantly addressing the issue of wanting to get laid in an apocalypse but having to talk yourself out of taking advantage of a dead girl. It goes there and I greatly appreciate it.

This kind of honesty seems to be getting rarer and rarer in today’s book market. Everyone wants a best seller and nobody wants to piss anyone off. It’s flaccid creativity and isn’t worth my time. Cross some lines, the books will be better.

Second of all, he struggles with the concepts of myth versus reality. He is fully aware of vampire lore and can see what does seem to be true and what doesn’t. But he wants to know why. He uses the scientific method to figure out why garlic keeps the vampires away and how crosses and mirrors and stakes come into play.

I am Legend is a very short book but it gets deeper into morality, mythology, science, mental health , coping mechanisms, and survival instinct than entire multi book vampire series. It does a lot with only a few pages. In fact, if one part had caught me on a worse day I could’ve cried like a baby. It summons deep emotions, instinctual emotions.

The third reason I am Legend stands out against its “peers” is the ending. It is unexpected, complex, and absolutely perfect. Without spoiling too much it has to do with the evolution of society and how myths become reality or vice versa. How someone can become a legend.

I strongly recommend reading I am Legend regardless of whether or not you’ve seen the movies or think you know all about it already. It’s a vastly underrated classic. It’s so much better than that stupid Dracula. What an absolute bore that one is! And this one is about an eighth of the length!

So go, read I am Legend, you wont be disappointed.

5/5 garlic bulbs 🧄🧄🧄🧄🧄

in order to keep me up to my ears in books please consider using the following amazon affiliate link to purchase this product. it’s at no extra cost to you and would really help me out, thank you and happy reading!

What’s the difference between the I am Legend book and the movie?

With a little help from the internet here’s a short list of differences between Richard Matheson’s novella and the film adaptation starring Will Smith.

Setting : LA, California

Time Period : 1970s

Protagonist : Robert Neville, average middle aged dude

Monster : traditional vampires with supernatural abilities akin to standard lore

Character development : Neville struggles with daily survival, psychological issues, loneliness, alcoholism, and suicidal thoughs

Ending : Neville is executed and will become the new lore for young Vampires to hear stories about

Setting : New York City

Time Period : 2012

Protagonist : Robert Neville, esteemed military scientist and super fit Will Smith

Monster : basic infected fast moving zombie

Character development : action star survives heroically

Ending : hope oriented ending with the possibility of a cure, essentially erases the meaning of the title and the core themes.

I am Legend FAQ (Spoilers, of course)

I am Legend (2007) is based on the novella of the same title, I am Legend. Other film adaptations include The Omega Man (1971) and The Last Man on Earth (1964).

Yes. Unfortunately the dog dies die in the original book. A heartbreaking plot point that makes Neville even more lonely than he was prior to befriending the dog. He tried to make the cure but couldn’t achieve it fast enough to save his friend.

Richard Matheson

The book’s ending is a tragic commentary on scientific advancement and what it means to be “human.” Neville is executed by the vampires for his crimes against them. They are the dominant species now and he has been trying to eradicate them. As he is dying he comes to the conclusion that he will be the villain they tell their children about, he is Legend.