Matheson’s I Am Legend — better read the book

Friday, Nov. 9 2007 | Author: Mel

Richard Matheson’s novel I Am Legend is one of the most seminal horror/science fiction stories of all time. The story of the only man left alive on earth as he struggles to survive amidst a world overrun with vampires is one that always sends chills up my spine. This is the vampire story to beat. Matheson’s story has become the inspiration for many other stories and movies that tried to capture myriad of emotions and the subtle creeping horror that the original brought out in readers. Most notable of these is Charlton Heston’s The Omega Man, one of my favorite science fiction movies.

This year, Matheson’s novel gets the big budget Hollywood treatment with a movie that stars Will Smith. I do not have high hopes for this movie — in fact, I am pretty sure that they will screw this up bigtime. For the definitive I Am Legend experience, just check out the novel or at least the first comicbook adaptation of the novel, which borrowed heavily from the book.

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5 Responses for "Matheson’s I Am Legend — better read the book"

doughnut

November 9th, 2007 at 3:50 am
1

I had no idea it was a book. I’ll definitely be getting a copy of it to read before I see the movie.
jellybeen

November 9th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
2

yno if you live in sligo,ireland you could take such a piss from that title.
(i am a ledge)
lp

November 12th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
3

just started this book on your suggestion, thanks! I’ve been enthralled from paragraph one.
punkmommy

November 16th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
4

I read this book several years ago. It drew me in & I finished it very quickly. It’s a great story. I am interested in how the movie is going to be though.
Ben

November 25th, 2007 at 12:33 am
5

I became a Sci Fi junkie when I was about 11 years old, which was in 1959. I remember because it was the IGY (International Geophysical Year). I found the book I Am Legend on one of my Mom and Dad’s bookshelves, which was surprising because I had no idea they were into Sci Fi..

You have to understand, it was a time of far less distractions, the birth of the TV age on last gasp of big time radio. We were a very literate society. People hadn’t really developed serious boob tube habits… no wonder, the thing went off before midnight, no cable, no video games and to go to see a film was a big deal. I was a time for what Marshall McLuan would come to call “Cool Media,” that describing media like books and radio where your mind provided the heat. Not like film, which grabbed you by the colar and fired your imagination.

So, to get totally lost in a novel was an expenditure of time engaged in by my entire family. In fact, at 11 when my intellect was just awakening, I developed the habit of reading 4 and 5 books simultaneously; Reading one for a chapter or two and then moving to another and so on until I got back to the 1st. I Am Legend was one of the most absorbing reads I’ve ever engaged, a point of view I still hold these many years later. It takes you and an excruciatingly lonely journey into the mind and thoughts of a man in a situation that only occupies the furthest reaches of the average person’s fantasies. Only after we become fully aware of the life, circumstances and routines of the main character, Neville, do other characters come into play.

Of the hundreds of Sci Fi books I consumed in my misspent youth, only a few stand out by title and/or author. Many of the works of Robert A. Heinlein, Theorder Sturgeon, Arthur C. Clarke, Fredrick Pohl and Brian Aldiss come to mind, but foremost among these are tales like Beyond The Sealed World, which provided the core ideas for stories like Logan’s Run all the way through to the more modern The Island, and I Am Legend, to which the makers of all of the Living Dead and many of the Vampire films must bend the knee.

Chilling stuff. Not sure if today’s Hollywood can do it justice. Even in the hands of a good actor, which Will Smith is after you forgive him for all of his catoonish action roles and look at his more serious work like his breakthrough film Six Degrees of Separation. However one wonders whether or not the writing and time constraints of the medium will allow the story to be done justice. Omega man did just fine, but that was a tightly written piece of work that, in my opinion, is a classic.

We shall see.

Do read the book!

Ben