Richard Matheson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
For the writer of Scars and Other Distinguishing Marks, Dystopia, and Created By, see Richard Christian Matheson.
Richard Matheson
Richard Matheson.jpg
Matheson in 2008
Born Richard Burton Matheson
(1926-02-20) February 20, 1926 (age 87)
Allendale, New Jersey, USA
Pen name Logan Swanson
Occupation Novelist, Short story writer, Screenwriter
Nationality American
Period 1950–present
Genres Science fiction, fantasy, horror
Signature

Richard Burton Matheson (born February 20, 1926) is an American author and screenwriter, primarily in the fantasy, horror, and science fiction genres. He is perhaps best known as the author of The Shrinking Man, Hell House, What Dreams May Come, Bid Time Return (filmed as Somewhere in Time), A Stir of Echoes, and I Am Legend, all of which have been adapted as major motion pictures, the last at least three times. Matheson also wrote several television episodes of The Twilight Zone for Rod Serling, including "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" and "Steel". He later adapted his 1971 short story "Duel" as a screenplay which was promptly directed by a young Steven Spielberg, for the TV movie of the same name.

Contents

Personal life

Matheson was born in Allendale, New Jersey,[1] the son of Norwegian immigrants Fanny (née Mathieson) and Bertolf Matheson, a tile floor installer. Matheson was raised in Brooklyn and graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School in 1943. He then entered the military and spent World War II as an infantry soldier. In 1949 he earned his bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and moved to California in 1951. He married Ruth Ann Woodson on July 1, 1952 and has four children, three of whom (Chris, Richard Christian, and Ali Matheson) are writers of fiction and screenplays.

Career

Matheson's first published short story was "Born of Man and Woman" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Summer 1950, the new quarterly's third issue.[2] It is the tale of a monstrous child chained by its parents in the cellar, cast as the creature's diary in poignantly non-idiomatic English. Later that year he placed stories in the first and third numbers of Galaxy Science Fiction, a new monthly.[2] Between 1950 and 1971, he produced dozens of stories, frequently blending elements of the science fiction, horror and fantasy genres. He was a member of The Southern California Writing Group in the 1950s-1960s, which included Charles Beaumont, William F. Nolan, Ray Bradbury, Jerry Sohl, George Clayton Johnson, and others.[3] Matheson appears in two documentaries related to this era: Jason V Brock's Charles Beaumont: The Life of Twilight Zone's Magic Man,[4] and The AckerMonster Chronicles!, which details the life of agent and editor Forrest J Ackerman.

Several of his stories, like "Third from the Sun" (1950), "Deadline" (1959) and "Button, Button" (1970) are simple sketches with twist endings; others, like "Trespass" (1953), "Being" (1954) and "Mute" (1962) explore their characters' dilemmas over twenty or thirty pages. Some tales, such as "The Funeral" (1955) and "The Doll that Does Everything" (1954) 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" (1954) and "Steel" (1956), 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. Still others, such as Hell House (1953), "The Curious Child" (1954) and perhaps most of all, "Duel" (1971) are tales of paranoia, in which the everyday environment of the present day becomes inexplicably alien or threatening. "Duel" was adapted into the TV movie of the same name.

He wrote 14 episodes for the American TV series The Twilight Zone, including "Steel" (mentioned above), and the famous "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet", plus "Little Girl Lost", a story about a young girl tumbling into the fourth dimension. On all of Matheson's scripts for The Twilight Zone, he also wrote the introductory and closing statements spoken by host Rod Serling.[5] He adapted the works of Edgar Allan Poe for Roger Corman, and Dennis Wheatley's The Devil Rides Out for Hammer Films. He also contributed a number of scripts to the Warner Bros. western series Lawman between 1958 and 1962. He wrote the Star Trek episode "The Enemy Within", considered one of the best.[citation needed] In 1973, Matheson earned an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for his teleplay for The Night Stalker, one of two TV movies written by Matheson that preceded the series Kolchak: The Night Stalker. Matheson also wrote the screenplay for Fanatic (US title: Die! Die! My Darling!), starring Tallulah Bankhead and Stefanie Powers.

Matheson's first novel, Someone Is Bleeding, was published by Lion Books in 1953.[2] His early novels include The Shrinking Man (1956, filmed in 1957 as The Incredible Shrinking Man, again from Matheson's own screenplay) and a science fiction vampire novel, I Am Legend, (1954, filmed as The Last Man on Earth in 1964, The Omega Man in 1971, and I Am Legend in 2007). Other Matheson novels turned into notable films include What Dreams May Come, A Stir of Echoes (as Stir of Echoes), Bid Time Return (as Somewhere in Time), and Hell House (as The Legend of Hell House), the last two adapted and scripted by Matheson himself. Three of his short stories were filmed together as Trilogy of Terror (1975), including "Prey" (initially published in the April 1969 edition of Playboy magazine) with its famous Zuni warrior doll. Matheson's short story "Button, Button", was filmed as The Box in 2009, and was previously adapted for a 1986 episode of The Twilight Zone.

In 1960, Matheson published The Beardless Warriors, a non-fantastic, autobiographical novel about teenage American soldiers in World War II. It was filmed in 1967 as The Young Warriors though most of Matheson's plot was jettisoned. During the 1950s he published a handful of Western stories (later collected in By the Gun); and during the 1990s he 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.[6]

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 on the same day as the Kennedy assassination. (However, there are similarities with William M. Robson's script of the July 15, 1962 episode of the radio drama, Suspense, "Snow on 66".[citation needed]) 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. Bid Time Return 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. In the introduction to Noir: 3 Novels of Suspense (1997), which collects three of his early books, Matheson has said that the first chapter of his suspense novel Someone is Bleeding (1953) describes exactly his meeting with his wife Ruth, and that in the case of What Dreams May Come, "the whole novel is filled with scenes from our past."

According to film critic Roger Ebert, Matheson's scientific approach to the supernatural in I Am Legend and other novels from the 1950s and early 1960s "anticipated pseudorealistic fantasy novels like Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist."[7]

Awards

Matheson received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 1984 and the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Horror Writers Association in 1991. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame inducted him in 2010.[8][9]

At the annual World Fantasy Conventions he won two judged, annual literary awards for particular works: World Fantasy Awards for Bid Time Return as the best novel of 1975 and Richard Matheson: Collected Stories as the best collection of 1989.[8][10]

Influence

Other writers

Stephen King has listed Matheson as a creative influence and his novel Cell is dedicated to Matheson, along with filmmaker George A. Romero. Romero has frequently acknowledged Matheson as an inspiration and listed the shambling vampire creatures that appear in the first film version of "I Am Legend" as the inspiration for the zombie "ghouls" he envisioned in Night of the Living Dead.[11]

Anne Rice stated that when she was a child, Matheson's short story "A Dress Of White Silk" was an early influence on her interest in vampires and fantasy fiction.[12]

Tributes

Richard's son, Richard Christian Matheson, wrote a novel Created By, in which the hero's father is named Burt, a reference to Matheson senior's middle name.

Richard Christian Matheson adapted his father's short story "Dance of the Dead" for the TV series Masters of Horror. It was directed by Tobe Hooper and starred Robert Englund and Ryan McDonald.

He Is Legend: An Anthology Celebrating Richard Matheson edited by Christopher Conlon was released in a limited hardcover edition in February 2009. This book is an anthology of 16 original stories inspired by Matheson's works. Contributors include Nancy A. Collins, Joe R. Lansdale, Whitley Strieber, F. Paul Wilson, and Stephen King collaborating with his son, horror author Joe Hill. On Sep 14, 2009, it was released in paperback.

Richard Christian Matheson penned the screenplay for "Battleground" for the first segment of Stephen King's Nightmares & Dreamscapes. He paid homage to his father by including the Zuni fetish doll from the last segment of Trilogy of Terror in a scene.

A character named "Senator Richard Matheson" appeared in several episodes of The X-Files. The series' 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).

Works

Novels

Short stories

  • "Born of Man and Woman" (1950)
  • "Third from the Sun" (1950); adapted as a Twilight Zone episode (1960)
  • "The Waker Dreams" (AKA "When the Waker Sleeps") (1950)
  • "Blood Son" (1951)
  • "Through Channels" (1951)
  • "Clothes Make the Man" (1951)
  • "Return" (1951)
  • "The Thing" (1951)
  • "Witch War" (1951)
  • "Dress of White Silk" (1951)
  • "F---" (AKA "The Foodlegger") (1952)
  • "Shipshape Home" (1952)
  • "SRL Ad" (1952)
  • "Advance Notice" (AKA "Letter to the Editor") (1952)
  • "Lover, When You're Near Me" (1952)
  • "Brother to the Machine" (1952)
  • "To Fit the Crime" (1952)
  • "The Wedding" (1953)
  • "Wet Straw" (1953)
  • "Long Distance Call" (AKA "Sorry, Right Number") (1953)
  • "Slaughter House" (1953)
  • "Mad House" (1953)
  • "The Last Day" (1953)
  • "Lazarus II" (1953)
  • "Legion of Plotters" (1953)
  • "Death Ship" (1953); adapted as a Twilight Zone episode (1963)
  • "Disappearing Act" (1953); adapted as a Twilight Zone episode (1959)
  • "The Disinheritors" (1953)
  • "Dying Room Only" (1953)
  • "Full Circle" (1953)
  • "Mother by Protest" (AKA "Trespass") (1953)
  • "Little Girl Lost" (1953); adapted as a Twilight Zone episode (1962)
  • "Being" (1954)
  • "The Curious Child" (1954)
  • "When Day Is Dun" (1954)
  • "Dance of the Dead" (1954)
  • "The Man Who Made the World" (1954)
  • "The Traveller" (1954)
  • "The Test" (1954)
  • "The Conqueror" (1954)
  • "Dear Diary" (1954)
  • "The Doll That Does Everything" (1954)
  • "Descent" (1954)
  • "Miss Stardust" (1955)
  • "The Funeral" (1955); adapted as story segment for Rod Serling's Night Gallery
  • "Too Proud to Lose" (1955)
  • "One for the Books" (1955)
  • "Pattern for Survival" (1955)
  • "A Flourish of Strumpets" (1956)
  • "The Splendid Source" (1956); the basis of the Family Guy episode "The Splendid Source".[13]
  • "Steel" (1956); adapted as a Twilight Zone episode (1963); loosely filmed as Real Steel (2011)
  • "The Children of Noah" (1957)
  • "A Visit to Santa Claus" (AKA "I'll Make It Look Good," as Logan Swanson) (1957)
  • "The Holiday Man" (1957)
  • "Old Haunts" (1957)
  • "The Distributor" (1958)
  • "The Edge" (1958)
  • "Lemmings" (1958)
  • "Mantage" (1959)
  • "Deadline" (1959)
  • "The Creeping Terror" (AKA "A Touch of Grapefruit") (1959)
  • "No Such Thing as a Vampire" (1959)
  • "Big Surprise" (AKA "What Was in the Box") (1959)
  • "Crickets" (1960)
  • "Day of Reckoning" (AKA "The Faces," "Graveyard Shift") (1960)
  • "First Anniversary" (1960); adapted as an Outer Limits episode (1996)
  • "From Shadowed Places" (1960)
  • "Finger Prints" (1962)
  • "Mute" (1962); adapted as a Twilight Zone episode (1963)
  • "The Likeness of Julie" (as Logan Swanson) (1962); adapted into "Julie" in the 1975 TV film Trilogy of Terror
  • "The Jazz Machine" (1963)
  • "Crescendo" (AKA "Shock Wave") (1963)
  • "Girl of My Dreams" (1963)
  • "'Tis the Season to Be Jelly" (1963)
  • "Deus Ex Machina" (1963)
  • "Interest" (1965)
  • "A Drink of Water" (1967)
  • "Needle in the Heart" (AKA "Therese") (1969); adapted into "Millicent and Therese" in the 1975 TV film Trilogy of Terror
  • "Prey" (1969); adapted into "Ameilia" in the 1975 TV film Trilogy of Terror
  • "Button, Button" (1970); filmed as a The Twilight Zone episode in 1986; filmed as The Box (2009)
  • "'Til Death Do Us Part" (1970)
  • "By Appointment Only" (1970)
  • "The Finishing Touches" (1970)
  • "Duel" (1971); filmed as Duel (1971)
  • "Big Surprise" (1971); adapted as story segment for Rod Serling's Night Gallery
  • "Where There's a Will" (with Richard Christian Matheson) (1980)
  • "And Now I'm Waiting" (1983)
  • "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" (as The Twilight Zone episode in 1963; as segment four of Twilight Zone: The Movie, 1983; first published in 1984)
  • "Getting Together" (1986)
  • "Buried Talents" (1987)
  • "The Near Departed" (1987)
  • "Shoo Fly" (1988)
  • "Person to Person" (1989)
  • "Two O'Clock Session" (1991)
  • "The Doll" (as Twilight Zone episode, published as a story in 1993)
  • "Go West, Young Man" (1993)
  • "Gunsight" (1993)
  • "Little Jack Cornered" (1993)
  • "Of Death and Thirty Minutes" (1993)

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) Published as Shock 4 in the UK (1980)
  • Button, Button (1970)
  • Richard Matheson: Collected Stories (1989)
  • By the Gun (1993)
  • Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (2000)
  • Pride with Richard Christian Matheson (2002)
  • Duel (2002)
  • Offbeat: Uncollected Stories (2002)
  • Darker Places (2004)
  • Unrealized Dreams (2004)
  • Duel and The Distributor (2005) Previously unpublished screenplays of these two stories
  • Button, Button: Uncanny Stories (2008) (Tor Books)
  • Uncollected Matheson: Volume 1 (2008)
  • Uncollected Matheson: Volume 2 (2010)
  • Steel: And Other Stories (2011)
  • Bakteria and Other Improbable Tales (2011) (e-book exclusive)

Movies

Television

Nonfiction

  • The Path: Metaphysics for the 90s (1993)

Additional reading

[clarification needed]

Jad Hatem, Charité de l'infinitésimal, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2007[clarification needed]

See also

  • Iris centralheterochromy.jpgSpeculative fiction  portal

References

  1. ^ Parisi, Albert J. "New Jersey Q & A: Richard Matheson; An Influential Writer Returns to Fantasy", The New York Times, April 10, 1994. Retrieved March 31, 2008. "THE author Stephen King has said that Richard Matheson is the one author 'who influenced me the most as a writer.' Such an accolade is humbly received by Mr. Matheson, a native of Allendale, but he adds that influencing people is what good writing is all about."
  2. ^ a b c Richard Matheson at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB). Retrieved April 13, 2013. Select a title to see its linked publication history and general information. Select a particular edition (title) for more data at that level, such as a front cover image or linked contents.
  3. ^ Conlon, Christopher "Southern California Sorcerers", [1], October, 1999. Retrieved October 31, 2012.
  4. ^ French, Lawrence "Richard Matheson remembers his good friend Charles Beaumont", [2], March 24, 2010. Retrieved October 31, 2012.
  5. ^ Alexander, Chris (March 2011 No. 301). "The Legend of Richard Matheson". Fangoria (New York City: The Brooklyn Company, Inc.): 47. "... the things Serling said at the beginning and the end, in the wraparounds, which I wrote. I wrote all the wraparounds to my Twilight Zone episodes." 
  6. ^ What Screams May Come: A Look at the Legendary Richard Matheson
  7. ^ Roger Ebert. Roger Ebert's Movie Home Companion, 1990 Edition. Andrews and McMeel, 1990, p. 419.
  8. ^ a b "Matheson, Richard". The Locus Index to SF Awards: Index of Literary Nominees. Locus Publications. Retrieved April 13, 2013.
  9. ^ "Science Fiction Hall of Fame". [Quote: "EMP|SFM is proud to announce the 2010 Hall of Fame inductees: ..."]. Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame (empsfm.org). Archived March 25, 2010. Retrieved March 19, 2013.
  10. ^ "Award Winners and Nominees". World Fantasy Convention. Retrieved February 4, 2011. 
  11. ^ Deborah Christie, Sarah Juliet Lauro, ed. (2011). Better Off Dead: The Evolution of the Zombie as Post-Human. Fordham Univ Press. p. 169. ISBN 0-8232-3447-9, 9780823234479.
  12. ^ Entertainment Weekly. August 7, 2009.  page #? title??? link???
  13. ^ Steel: And Other Stories Product Description

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Richard Matheson
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Richard Matheson
  • v
  • t
  • e
Richard Matheson
Novels
Short stories
Screenplays
Adaptations
by others
  • v
  • t
  • e
Series
Key people
See also
Authority control