Richard Matheson

The news has been released by Ali Marie Matheson, daughter of the famous writer. “My beloved father passed away yesterday, in the family residence, surrounded by the people he loved. He was funny, brilliant, loving, generous, creative and the most wonderful father in the world (…). I know that you are happy and healthy now in a wonderful place full of love and joy,” he wrote on the social network Facebook. According to some publications, the novelist had been fighting a long illness for some time.

Born in Allendale, New Jersey, on February 20, 1926, Richard Burton Matheson was the son of Norwegian immigrants. After fighting as an infantryman during World War II, he received a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri.

Richard Matheson got his start in the field of fantasy by publishing the horror short story “Born of Man and Woman” in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, about a deformed boy locked in the basement by his parents. Shortly after, the writer settled in California, where he married Ruth Ann Woodson on July 1, 1952. The couple had four children, three of whom (Chris, Richard Christian and Ali) are also writers and screenwriters.

Between 1950 and 1971, Matheson lavished himself on the writing of short stories, almost always of the horror-fantasy genre. After making his debut in the field of the novel, with “Someone is Bleeding”, from 1953, he achieved enormous success with the second, The Incredible Shrinking Man , which gave rise to the first feature film based on one of his texts, directed by Jack Arnold , which featured Matheson himself to write the adaptation.

As a screenwriter, he was the author of The Fall of the House of Usher , an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe ‘s story that Roger Corman filmed , with Vincent Price . He reprized with Corman-Price in The Pendulum of Death , Horror Stories and The Raven (1963) , also from the Poe series. On television he became a myth with his episodes for the iconic In the limits of reality , and also for the chapter “The enemy himself”, from Star Trek: the original series , where a failure of the teleporter divided Captain Kirk in two versions of himself, one good and one evil.

His most covered book on the screen is I Am Legend , which apart from the adaptation starring Will Smith gave rise to The Last Man on Earth , with Vincent Price , and to the excellent The Last Man… Alive , with Charlton Heston . John Hough made The Legend of Hell’s Mansion a movie , with Pamela Franklin and Roddy McDowall as parapsychologists in a haunted mansion.

One of his stories gave rise to The Devil on Wheels , the legendary initiation film by a very young Steven Spielberg , which featured him as a screenwriter. Interestingly, Matheson also had a hand in the script for Jaws 3-D: The Great Shark , the unworthy sequel to Hollywood’s well-known King Midas aquatic horror film. In addition, three of his stories were adapted in the series produced by this filmmaker , Amazing Tales .

Robin Williams starred in Beyond Dreams (1998) , by Vincent Ward , an adaptation of his novel about a man who, after dying, lives in a paradise in the form of one of his wife’s paintings, from whom he does not want to be separated. The failed Richard Kelly ‘s The Box , part of one of his short stories, as well as the entertaining Pure Steel , a robot fighting film starring Hugh Jackman .