Who's Richard Matheson? He Was Legend.

Richard Matheson died yesterday. He was an author far too few people recognize. Many of my age are surprised to learn the same person wrote I Am Legend and What Dreams May Come. He wrote Hell House, one of the most influential ghost stories ever told, and my personal favorite. When you gather up his pseudo-scientific vampires, his new-age Heaven, his house of skeptics chasing ghosts, and add in The Shrinking Man inspiring the film craze of tiny people in peril (it beat Fantastic Voyage by nine years), you begin to realize he kickstarted a great deal of the Science Fiction of the last sixty years.

I Am Legend alone was adapted by Vincent Price (as "The Last Man on Earth"), Charlton Heston (as "The Omega Man") and Will Smith (finally, as "I Am Legend"). If Smith's I Am Legend flick seemed too much like zombie fiction for you, you'll come to realize Matheson not only pushed the modern more secular vampire on us, but a lot of what George Romero pulled out to invent the modern zombie. George Romero says so.

Did you see Real Steel? That was an adaptation of his short story, simply titled "Steel." It had also been adapted for an episode of The Twilight Zone, a show he wrote for frequently. He was often writing the intros Rod Serling's voice made famous. And he's the guy who wrote the gremlin on the wing of a plane that only William Shatner could see.

Do you like old school Star Trek? He wrote for it from the first season, starting with "The Enemy Within." He's the guy who split Kirk into two Good and Evil captains.

Books That Changed How You Saw Fiction

Readers, writers, extraterrestrials – today I have a query for you.

NAME A BOOK THAT CHANGED THE WAY YOU SEE FICTION.

Give us the author, the title, and how. The “how” can be any significant way you choose. Doubtless there are many books that affect you, but pick the one that comes to mind first or that you’d most like to share. If Finnegan’s Wake challenged the validity of linear narratives, or Among Others validated autobiographical fiction, or The Color Purple made you demand authors write deeper women, or Cat’s Cradle left you with an indelible love of tangents – please, share.

I’m fascinated by the lasting effects of literature. We hear about canons, but reading is often a much more individual thing, and we all have books that cast a shadow over libraries. All I ask is that you keep it honest and brief. You can tweet your answer if you like, though some people may want a few sentences. Here’s an example:

Richard Matheson’s Hell House had the gall to seemingly end
and then drop a complete second twist ending in ten pages.
He executed it so quickly that I expected what was still in my right hand would be the typical blank pages and publication notes -
until I read the pages. It played with expectations of what novelists
do in page-lengths in a way that begged me to experiment.

See? Not so tough, though now I’ll have to think up another. In a couple weeks I’ll compile everyone’s answers into a megapost. If you can beat the above for brevity, you’re winning. If we’re lucky, we’ll all walk out of this with a revealing reading list.

Goodreads, circa 1874

So: what book changed fiction for you? And how?