Richard Matheson, the legendary author has passed

[avp60685]

Richard Matheson known for many screenplays that have been adapted into movies and episodes from hit television shows including "Star Trek" has died sadly, he was 87 years old.



Matheson was born on February 20, 1926 in New Jersey to immigrant parents and his father was a tile floor installer. He later joined the military during World War Two as an infantry solider. He married his wife in 1952 and had four children by this marriage.

Here is a list of his various writings according to the Wikipedia page:

Novels

Someone is Bleeding (1953)
Fury on Sunday (1953)
I Am Legend (1954) filmed as The Last Man on Earth, The Omega Man, I Am Omega and I Am Legend
The Shrinking Man (1956); filmed as The Incredible Shrinking Man and subsequently reprinted under that title; also the basis of the film The Incredible Shrinking Woman
A Stir of Echoes (1958); filmed as Stir of Echoes
Ride the Nightmare (1959); adapted as an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and later filmed as Cold Sweat (1970 film)
The Beardless Warriors (1960); filmed as The Young Warriors
The Comedy of Terrors (1964), with Elsie Lee; filmed as The Comedy of Terrors
Hell House (1971); filmed as The Legend of Hell House
Bid Time Return (1975); filmed as Somewhere in Time and subsequently reprinted under that title
What Dreams May Come (1978); filmed as What Dreams May Come
Earthbound (Playboy Publications, 1982), as by Logan Swanson[4] — editorially abridged version; restored text published as by Richard Matheson, 1989[citation needed]
Journal of the Gun Years (1992)
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)
The Path: A New Look at Reality (1999)
Passion Play (2000)
Hunger and Thirst (2000)
Camp Pleasant (2001)
Abu and the 7 Marvels (2002)
Hunted Past Reason (2002)
Come Fygures, Come Shadowes (2003)
Woman (2006)
Other Kingdoms (2011)
Generations (2012)

Short stories

"Born of Man and Woman" (1950)
"Third from the Sun" (1950); adapted as a Twilight Zone episode (1960)
"The Waker Dreams" (a.k.a. "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---" (a.k.a. "The Foodlegger") (1952)
"Shipshape Home" (1952)
"SRL Ad" (1952)
"Advance Notice" (a.k.a. "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" (a.k.a. "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" (a.k.a. "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); adapted as a Masters of Horror episode (2005)
"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".[16]
"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" (a.k.a. "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" (a.k.a. "A Touch of Grapefruit") (1959)
"No Such Thing as a Vampire" (1959)
"Big Surprise" (a.k.a. "What Was in the Box") (1959)
"Crickets" (1960)
"Day of Reckoning" (a.k.a. "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" (a.k.a. "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" (a.k.a. "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 Amazing Storiesin 1986)
"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)

Films

The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)
Beat Generation (1959)
House of Usher (1960)
Master of the World (1961)
The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)
Burn Witch Burn (1962); a.k.a. Night of the Eagle (screenplay co-written with Charles Beaumont and George Baxt based on the novel Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber
Tales of Terror (1962)
The Raven (1963)
The Comedy of Terrors (1963)
The Last Man on Earth (as "Logan Swanson", based on Matheson's novel I Am Legend)(1964)
Fanatic (1965)
The Young Warriors (1967)
The Devil Rides Out (1968)
De Sade (1969)
The Legend of Hell House (based on his novel) (1973)
Somewhere in Time (based on his novel) (1980)
Twilight Zone: The Movie: Fourth segment "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" (1983)
Jaws 3-D (1983)
Loose Cannons (1990)
The Box (2009)
Real Steel (2011)

Television

Buckskin: "Act of Faith" (1959)
Wanted Dead or Alive :"The Healing Woman" (1959)
Twilight Zone: (16 episodes) (1959–1964)
Have Gun Will Travel: "The Lady on The Wall" (1960)
Bourbon Street Beat: "Target of Hate" (1960)
Cheyenne: "Home Is The Brave" (1960)
Lawman (Six episodes) (1960–1962)
Thriller: "The Return of Andrew Bentley" (1961)
Combat!: "Forgotten Front" (as Logan Swanson) (1962)
The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: "Ride the Nightmare" (1962)
The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: "The Thirty-First of February" (1963)
The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.: "The Atlantis Affair" (1966)
Bob Hope Presents The Chrysler Theater : "Time of Flight" (1966)
Star Trek: The Original Series: "The Enemy Within" (1966)
Duel (1971)
The Night Stalker (1972)
Night Gallery (1972): " The Funeral" (1972)
The Night Strangler (1973)
Dying Room Only (1973)
Circle of Fear (originally titled Ghost Story (1973))
Bram Stoker's Dracula (1974)
Scream of The Wolf (1974)
The Morning After (1974)
Trilogy of Terror (1975)
Dead of Night (1977)
The Strange Possession of Mrs. Oliver (1977)
The Martian Chronicles mini-series (1979, 1980)
Twilight Zone: "Button, Button" (as Logan Swanson) (1986)
Amazing Stories: "One for the Books" (1987)
Dreamer of Oz (1990)
Rod Serling's Lost Classics (1994)
Trilogy of Terror II (1996)

Nonfiction

The Path: Metaphysics for the 90s (1993)

Additional reading



California Sorcery, edited by William F. Nolan and William Schafer

Jad Hatem, Charité de l'infinitésimal, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2007

This extraordinary author will be truly missed for his amazing writing. Also he was known under his pen name: Logan Swanson.

Here is a 7 part interview about him and his life that he gave:















Farewell Richard and may your writings continue to live on forever!

[mercurytheatre]

[Mistermoonlight]

I have not responded to this thread before for the reason that I felt overwhelmed. I didn't know where to start.

For me, Richard Matheson was one of those names I learned at 7 or 8 years old, the name of a person who was an Important Science Fiction Writer. I didn't read any of his writing until 2 or 3 years ago, when I realized that his novel I Am Legend was the source for half a dozen movies I'd watched since childhood. I went on to read The Shrinking Man after that, as the movie version from 1957 was a film I'd never forgotten.

Film and television was how I met him. As a boy I devoured anything that was offered as science fiction or horror, and I was lucky enough to see the television series The Twilight Zone in its original airing from the time I was 5 years old on. Of course Matheson wrote for this, but he also wrote books or short stories that became the television shows or movies that sustained me so early in my life. If I were to list them all, it would be about half of the list that AVP provided.

Indeed, his influence continued way after childhood, as I watched the movies Real Steel and What Dreams May Come, then read the superior stories Matheson wrote that were responsible for the films.

We lost Ray Bradbury a short while ago, and I'd say that these are writers cut from the same cloth. I am humbled by both of them, and their loss is immeasurable. But their inspiration will live on long after most of us are gone. I'm thankful for that inspiration.

And now I'm going to delve into that 3 and a half hour interview with Matheson that AVP has kindly included in her post. Thanks so much for that, AVP!

Amen to the tears, Timmy.

[mercurytheatre]

Very well said, Moon!

[mercurytheatre]

...and thank you AVP!

[avp60685]

You both are very welcome! He was an incredible author and I had no idea his work was so vast because I had seen television and a few film adaptations of his work including " the incredible shrinking man" and never realized it was based off his writings!