Matheson kept busy with TV and film writing-just three years before his death, he helped write a hilarious episode of the TV show Family Guy.įamous fans. I Am Legend alone was adapted for the cinema five times: in 1964, 1967, 1971, and twice in 2007. He penned episodes of The Twilight Zone and wrote the stories on which the films The Incredible Shrinking Man, Real Steel, Duel, Jaws 3-D, and What Dreams May Come were based. Even if you’ve never heard of Richard Matheson, you’re probably familiar with his work.

The most famous writer you’ve never heard of.

Matheson died in Los Angeles in 2013, just days before he was due to receive the Saturn Award, one of the science fiction community’s most prestigious honors. Matheson remained a prolific, highly-respected sci-fi writer throughout the second half of the 20th century his short story “Duel” formed the basis for an early Steven Spielberg film of the same name, and his novel I Am Legend (1954) has been made into a film at least five times. Additionally, Matheson wrote more than a dozen episodes of the classic 1950s TV show The Twilight Zone, including the famous “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” (the one where William Shatner sees a monster on the wing of his plane). Matheson’s 1956 novel The Shrinking Man was adapted into The Incredible Shrinking Man, one of the most iconic sci-fi films of the 1950s. Throughout the 1950s, Matheson remained a prolific author, and many of his stories and novels were adapted into films and TV episodes. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, he began writing science fiction stories, and succeeded in publishing some in sci-fi magazines. Richard Matheson grew up in Brooklyn, and later attended the University of Missouri, where he majored in journalism.

I am legend what are the monsters