Richard Matheson

Richard Matheson

Richard Matheson (1926-2013) was a prolific speculative fiction author and screenwriter who wrote novels, short stories, movie screenplays, and scripts for television. He is perhaps best known for I Am Legend, a novel that was translated to the silver screen twice-once starring Charlton Heston, and once starring Will Smith. His screenplay The Incredible Shrinking Man, based on a prior novel, won the Hugo Award in 1958. Several other novels of Matheson's have been adapted to film, including What Dreams May Come, A Stir of Echoes, Duel, and Hell House. The movie version of Duel, based on a Matheson short story of the same name, was directed by Steven Spielberg. He is also known for writing dozens of episodes for The Twilight Zone, including the iconic "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," and several popular Star Trek episodes, including "The Enemy Within."

In addition to the Hugo Award, Richard Matheson was the recipient of the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement (1984) and an Edgar Award for a teleplay written for The Night Stalker. He was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2010.

Featured Books By Author

The Shrinking Man

In Matheson’s legendary tale, family man Scott Carey finds himself shrinking, slowly, day-by-day, inch-by-inch. While on vacation, he gets exposed to a radioactive cloud, the cause of this bizarre event. Scott once had an everyday existence as a husband and father, but now his shrinking shows no end in sight. He becomes a national spectacle, something worthy of newspaper headlines. As Carey shrinks smaller and smaller, his family become more and more unreachable giants, and the family cat becomes a predatory menace. In this world of disproportion, which grows more and more perilous with each passing day, Scott struggles to survive. He is pushed to the very limits of fear and existence.

s the story continues, Carey meets up with some circus performers and attempts to rebuild some semblance of a life. But since his shrinking never stops, all ideas of normal fade, and the threats never stop growing.

In 1958, The Shrinking Man won the Hugo award for that year’s best science fiction or fantasy dramatic presentation. It was also adapted into the film The Incredible Shrinking Man.

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Hunger and Thirst

Hunger and Thirst is Richard Matheson's first and until now previously unpublished novel, written fifty-plus years ago when Matheson was only twenty-three-years old. Matheson's agent told him it was unpublishable due to its length and so to that end, Matheson put the manuscript in a drawer and left for California where his writing career changed dramatically. The action in Hunger and Thirst centers around Erick, who lies paralyzed on his bed after being shot during a botched bank robbery. As he lies there, Erick contemplates the mess that his life has become and holds out hope to be saved.
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7 Steps to Midnight

Government mathematician Chris Barton lives a routine life—until, at the end of an ordinary workday, he finds his car missing from the employee parking lot. When he finally arrives home, there is a stranger living in his house—a man who claims to be him. Thrust suddenly into a surreal world where the evidence of his senses cannot be trusted and strangers are trying to kill him, Chris must avoid violent assassins while following a trail of cryptic clues to regain his life.
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Richard Matheson