Today, February 20, is the birthday of Richard Matheson (1926-2013).  Matheson was one of the great fantasy writers of the Twentieth Century. I doubt he needs any introduction here.

But why should I let that stop me?

His first published short story, “Born of Man and Woman”, appeared in the Summer 1950 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. It was a chilling look at what happens when a child is born with grotesque mutations. With this story, Matheson set a high standard for himself, as well as other writers. It’s considered by many to ba a classic.

Many writers would be (and are) envious of sush a successful first story. I’m not sure I would want my first published work to be that well-received. (It wasn’t.) How do you follow up with such a strong debut?

Fortunately, Matheson was up for the challenge.

Matheson’s early novels, The Shrinking Man and I Am Legend are considered classics, especially the latter.

The Shrinking Man was filmed as The Incredible Shrinking Man, a title Matheson thought redundant, because isn’t a  man who shrinks incredible enough?

Charlton Heston in The Omega Man

I Am Legend is a vampire novel, about a man who is surrounded by vampires every night. It has been adapted for film at least three times,  with varying degrees of faithfulness: The Last Man on Earth (1964), starring Vincent Price; The Omega Man (1971), starring Charlton Heston, and I Am Legend (2007), starring Will Smith. I’ve only seen The Omega Man, but I liked it quite a bit, even if it did depart from Matheson’s novel.

When Rod Serling was looking for writers to work on The Twilight Zone, Matheson was one of the writers he recruited. (Charles Beaumont was another.) Matheson  either adapted some of his short stories for the original Twilight Zone or adpated his scripts as short stories. (My understanding is he did both.)

One of these scripts/stories in particular deserves a special mention. I’m referring, of course, to the classic “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”. I believe it was also flimed as a segment of the Twilight Zone movie from the 1980s if my memory isn’t playing tricks on me. William Shatner in his pre-Captain Kirk days was the star of that episode.

[SPOILER ALERT] It’s a simple story, A man afraid of flying has a window seat on a night flight. He looks out the window and sees  a creature on the wing. When  he call the stewardess over to show her, the creature is gone. The next time he looks out the window, the creature is back. It begins to take apart the engine. Every time the passenger calls the stewardess over, the creature is gone. He becomes more alarmed and loud, and t he stewardess becomes more irritated with him. The episode ends with the passenger being taken off the plane in restraints and on a stretcher, if I recall correctly, everyone thinking he is nuts and lost it. The final camers shot shows the engine casing removed and part of one of the engines disassembled. [END SPOILER].

If “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” isn’t the most widely known episode of The Twilight Zone, it has to be in the top three.

Another story of Matheson’s that was filmed (1971), was “Duel”, about a traveling salesman playing a lethal game with a homicidal trucker. It predated the concept of road rage.

Matheson continued to work in film, scripting several of the Edgar Allan Poe adaptations for Roger Corman in the early 1960s. In the early seventies, he wrote scripts for Kolchak the Night Stalker.

I could go on, but I’ll spare you further enumerations of Richard Matheson’s accomplishments.

Rasie a glass in his memory.