by Melody Wells and Uchenna Nweze Last updated 11/29/00
Richard Matheson is a renowned science fiction
and fantasy writer. His award winning works have inspired several
films as well as episodes on television series. He was a regularly
featured writer on The Twilight Zone, besides writing numerous screenplays.
Ray Bradbury has called him "one of the most important writers of the 20th
century." Authors like Steven King and Dean Koontz also cite him
as a major influence. Matheson has received prestigious awards such
as the Hugo Award, the Edgar Allen Poe Award, and the Bram Stoker Award
for Life Achievement. Richard Burton Matheson was born on February
26, 1926 in Allendale, New Jersey. He began writing at a young age,
and had stories published in his local newspaper The Brooklyn Eagle.
In 1950, at the age of 25, Matheson had his first professionally published
story, "Born of Man and Woman," depicting the tale of a mutant child born
to regular parents, appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science
Fiction. Matheson has said of the story, "I think I just wanted
to write a story about what would happen to an average set of parents if
they had a monstrosity for a child" (Riordan Interview, 1999). This
marked the beginning of a long and distinguished career in print as well
as film. The first film Matheson was involved in
was the 1957 work, The Incredible Shrinking Man. He wrote
the screenplay based on his novel The Shrinking Man. In the
film, a man grows gradually smaller and smaller and has to defend himself
against his cat and a spider. Phone calls from Sam Arkoff and James
Nicholson, the heads of American International Pictures, soon followed.
Matheson was asked to write for a film based on Edgar Allen Poes "The
Fall of the House of Usher." The movie, starring Vincent Price, was
a smash, and Matheson went on to write scripts for other movies based on
such Poe stories as "The Pit and the Pendulum," "Tales of Terror," and
"The Raven." Matheson has also written several television
scripts for the Rod Serling series The Twilight Zone. In 1959,
he was asked to watch a pilot for the classic TV show, and he ended up
writing memorable episodes like "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" and "The Invaders."
Matheson also wrote an episode of Star Trek called "The Enemy Within,"
in which Captain Kirk was divided into two men, one good and the other
evil. Matheson is also responsible for successful television movies.
One of which was Night Stalker, the highest rated television movie
of the early 1970s. The popularity of this movie resulted in a sequel
and a television show, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, which inspired
Chris Carter to create his popular television series The X-Files.
Later Matheson was responsible for another three part series called Trilogy
of Terror. The film is best remembered for the third installment,
"Amelia," based on the short story "Prey" by Matheson. "Amelia" stars
Karen Black as a lonely woman, frightened by a demon-possessed doll. Mathesons success did not only come from
his work in television. Several of his novels have been made into
movies, and he has written many original screenplays. In 1971, Matheson
wrote a script for a film called Duel. The movie was directed
by a young man by the name of Steven Spielberg. The movie was based
on a real life experience Matheson had following the assassination of President
Kennedy. One of Mathesons most important
novels is I Am Legend. In the
novel, Robert Neville is the last remaining man on Earth, after vampirism
has spread, disease-like, to every member of the human race.
Neville survives on his own, against all odds, for a few years, but, upon
the advent of a "new society," Neville is executed because he is perceived
as a threat. Matheson was inspired to write I
Am Legend after viewing Dracula, starring Bella Lugosi.
He wrote the novel based on the idea that if one vampire were scary, then
an earth populated by them would be truly terrifying. The novel has
been made into two movies. The first version, The Last Man on Earth, was
made in 1964 starring film legend Vincent Price. The second film
based on I Am Legend starred Charlton
Heston, and was called The Omega Man. However, this version
is extremely different from the novel, and Matheson was not pleased with
either interpretation. Initially Matheson was to have written the
script for Hammer Films under the title Night Creatures. However
that project fell through. In 1980, Somewhere in Time was released,
starring Christopher Reeves and Jane Seymour. The film tells the
tale of a man who, upon visiting a 19th century hotel, falls in love with
the picture of a woman. He discovers a method of time travel and
manages to journey back in time to meet the lady. The two fall in
love, but are inevitably separated when Reeves character sees an object
from the 20th century that catapults him back to his original time.
The movie spawned an organization dedicated specifically to it called INSITE
(International Network of Somewhere in Time Enthusiasts). One of Mathesons novels, What Dreams
May Come, was recently made into a film starring Robin Williams and
Cuba Gooding Jr. The novel is another romantic fantasy in the same
genre as Somewhere in Time. The horror film Stir of Echoes,
based on a novel of the same title by Matheson, was recently released starring
Kevin Bacon. The screenplay was written by David Koepp, the mastermind
behind the blockbuster hit Jurassic Park. Matheson was pleased with
Koepps efforts on the movie because Koepp successfully translated Mathesons
ideas onto film. Richard Matheson has enjoyed much deserved
success for his novels, screenplays, and television films. He is
a legendary writer of science fiction and horror. Although he is not well
known for his work in these categories, he has penned novels of romantic
fantasy, mystery, as well as the nonfiction metaphysical work called The
Path. Mathesons work will continue to be popular and relevant to modern
sci-fi readers, and his fans can look forward to novels by Richard Christian
Matheson, his son.