Richard Matheson
Richard Burton Matheson (born February 20, 1926, Allendale, New Jersey) is an American author and screenwriter, typically of fantasy, horror or science fiction. Born in New Jersey, Matheson spent World War II as an infantry soldier. In 1949 he earned his bachelor's in journalism from the University of Missouri.
His first short story, "Born of Man and Woman", appeared in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1950. The tale of a monstrous child chained up in its parents' attic, it was told in the first person (as the creature's poignantly misspelled diary) and immediately made Matheson famous. Between the 1950s and 1970s, Matheson produced dozens of stories, frequently blending elements of the science fiction, horror and fantasy genres. Several of his stories, such as "The Funeral" and "The Doll that Does Everything" incorporate zany satirical humour at the expense of genre clichés, and are written in an hysterically overblown prose very different from Matheson's usual pared-down style. Others, like "The Test" and "Steel" portray the moral and physical struggles of ordinary people, rather than the then nearly ubiquitous scientists and superheroes, in situations which are at once futuristic and everyday.
He wrote a number of episodes for the American TV series The Twilight Zone, including the famous Nightmare at 20,000 Feet; adapted the works of Edgar Allan Poe for Roger Corman; and scripted Steven Spielberg's first theatrical feature, Duel, from his own short story. Novels include The Shrinking Man (filmed as The Incredible Shrinking Man), and a science fiction vampire novel, I Am Legend, which has been filmed twice, under the titles The Omega Man and The Last Man on Earth. (A proposed third film version, under the novel's original title and rumored to involve star Arnold Schwarzenegger and director Ridley Scott, hasn't managed to get off the ground.) Other Matheson novels turned into notable films include What Dreams May Come, Stir of Echoes, Bid Time Return (as Somewhere in Time), and Hell House (as The Legend of Hell House), the latter two adapted and scripted by Matheson himself.
In 1960, Matheson published The Beardless Warriors, a non-fantastic, autobiographical novel about teenage American soldiers in the Second World War. During the 1950s he published a handful of Western stories (later collected in By the Gun); and during the 1990s he has published Western novels such as Journal of the Gun Years, The Gunfight, The Memoirs of Wild Bill Hickok and Shadow on the Sun. He has also written a blackly comic locked-room mystery novel, Now You See It..., aptly dedicated to Robert Bloch, and the suspense novels 7 Steps to Midnight and Hunted Past Reason.
Matheson cites specific inspirations for many of his works. Duel derived from an incident in which he and a friend, Jerry Sohl, were dangerously tailgated by a large truck. A scene from the 1953 movie Let's Do It Again in which Aldo Ray and Ray Milland put on each other's hats, one of which is far too big for the other, sparked the thought "what if someone put on his own hat and that happened," which became The Shrinking Man. Somewhere in Time began when Matheson saw a movie poster featuring a beautiful picture of Maude Adams and wondered what would happen if someone fell in love with such an old picture.
A character named "Senator Richard Matheson" appeared in several episodes of The X-Files. The series's creator, Chris Carter, was a fan of Matheson's work on two series that influenced The X-Files (The Twilight Zone and Kolchak: The Night Stalker). Also, the TV series adaptation of "Honey I Shrunk the Kids" had the Szalinski family relocating to the town of Matheson, Colorado.
The telepath "John Matheson" in Crusade was named in honor of Matheson.
Three of Matheson's four children — Chris, Richard Christian, and Ali Matheson — are writers of fiction and screenplays.
Novels
- Someone is Bleeding (1953)
- Fury on Sunday (1953)
- I Am Legend (1954)
- The Shrinking Man (1956)
- A Stir of Echoes (1958)
- Ride the Nightmare (1959)
- The Beardless Warriors (1960)
- Hell House (1971)
- Bid Time Return (also known as Somewhere in Time) (1975)
- What Dreams May Come (1978)
- Earthbound (originally published under the pseudonym "Logan Swanson") (1982)
- Journal of the Gun Years (1991)
- The Gunfight (1993)
- 7 Steps to Midnight (1993)
- Shadow on the Sun (1994)
- Now You See It... (1995)
- The Memoirs of Wild Bill Hickock (1996)
- Hunted Past Reason (2002)
Short Story Collections
- Born of Man and Woman (1954)
- The Shores of Space (1957)
- Shock! (1961)
- Shock 2 (1964)
- Shock 3 (1966)
- Shock Waves (1970)
- Shock 4 (1980)
- Collected Stories (1989)
- By the Gun (1994)
Additional Reading
- California Sorcery, edited by William F. Nolan and William Schafer