About the Author
Richard Matheson (1926-2013) is the author of many classic novels and short stories. He wrote in a variety of genres including terror, fantasy, horror, paranormal, suspense, science fiction and western. In addition to books, he wrote prolifically for television (including The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, Star Trek) and numerous feature films. Many of Matheson’s novels and stories have been made into movies including I Am Legend, Somewhere in Time, and Shrinking Man. His many awards include the World Fantasy and Bram Stoker Awards for Lifetime Achievement, the Hugo Award, Edgar Award, Spur Award for Best Western Novel, Writer’s Guild awards, and in 2010 he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.
Product Description
The New York Times bestselling classic tale of the last man on Earth, I Am Legend by Richard Matheson--one of genre literature's most honored storytellers. Now a major motion picture starring Will Smith!
Robert Neville is the last living man on Earth...but he is not alone. Every other man, woman, and child on Earth has become a vampire, and they are all hungry for Neville's blood.
By day, he is the hunter, stalking the sleeping undead through the abandoned ruins of civilization. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for dawn.
How long can one man survive in a world of vampires?
Review
“One of the most important writers of the twentieth century.” ―Ray Bradbury
“I think the author who influence me the most as a writer was Richard Matheson. Books like I Am Legend were an inspiration to me.” ―Stephen King
“Matheson is one of the great names in American terror fiction.” ―The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Matheson inspires, it's as simple as that.” ―Brian Lumley
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
PART ONE: January 1976
CHAPTER ONE
On those cloudy days, Robert Neville was never sure when sunset came, and sometimes they were in the streets before he could get back.
If he had been more analytical, he might have calculated the approximate time of their arrival; but he still used the lifetime habit of judging nightfall by the sky, and on cloudy days that method didn’t work. That was why he chose to stay near the house on those days.
He walked around the house in the dull gray of afternoon, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, trailing threadlike smoke over his shoulder. He checked each window to see if any of the boards had been loosened. After violent attacks, the planks were often split or partially pried off, and he had to replace them completely; a job he hated. Today only one plank was loose. Isn’t that amazing? he thought.
In the back yard he checked the hothouse and the water tank. Sometimes the structure around the tank might be weakened or its rain catchers bent or broken off. Sometimes they would lob rocks over the high fence around the hothouse, and occasionally they would tear through the overhead net and he’d have to replace panes.
Both the tank and the hothouse were undamaged today.
He went to the house for a hammer and nails. As he pushed open the front door, he looked at the distorted reflection of himself in the cracked mirror he’d fastened to the door a month ago. In a few days, jagged pieces of the silver-backed glass would start to fall off. Let ’em fall, he thought. It was the last damned mirror he’d put there; it wasn’t worth it. He’d put garlic there instead. Garlic always worked.
He passed slowly through the dim silence of the living room, turned left into the small hallway, and left again into his bedroom.
Once the room had been warmly decorated, but that was in another time. Now it was a room entirely functional, and since Neville’s bed and bureau took up so little space, he had converted one side of the room into a shop.
A long bench covered almost an entire wall, on its hardwood top a heavy band saw, a wood lathe, an emery wheel, and a vise. Above it, on the wall, were haphazard racks of the tools that Robert Nevi
