 First edition cover | |
| Author | Richard Matheson |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Post-apocalyptic |
| Genre | Horror |
| Publisher | Gold Medal Books |
Publication date | August 7, 1954[1] |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Paperback |
| Pages | 160 (1954 edition) |
I Am Legend is a 1954post-apocalyptichorror novel by American writerRichard Matheson that was influential in the modern development ofzombie andvampire literature, and in popularizing the concept of a worldwide apocalypse due to disease. The novel was a success and was adapted into the filmsThe Last Man on Earth (1964),The Omega Man (1971), andI Am Legend (2007). It was also an inspiration forGeorge A. Romero'sNight of the Living Dead (1968).
Set on Cimarron Street in 1976Gardena, California, after an apocalyptic war that ravages the land with weekly dust storms, the novel details the life of Robert Neville in the months and eventually years after the outbreak of apandemic that has killed the rest of the human population and turned infected survivors into "vampires". The vampires conform remarkably to their stereotypes in fiction and folklore: they areblood-sucking, pale-skinned, and nocturnal, though otherwise indistinguishable from normal humans. Neville, possibly the sole survivor of the pandemic, barricades himself indoors nightly as vampires violently swarm his house. He is further protected by thetraditional vampire repellents ofgarlic, mirrors, andcrucifixes. During the day, the vampires are inactive, allowing Neville to drive around stabbing them with wooden stakes (since they seem impervious to his gun’s bullets), which causes them to liquefy instantly, and scavenging for supplies. Occasionalflashbacks reveal the horrors of how the disease claimed the lives of his wife and daughter.
Suffering from extremeisolation,depression, andalcoholism, Neville determines there must be some scientific reasons behind the vampires' origins, behaviors, and oddly specific aversions, so he gradually researches at his local library, discovering that the root of the disease is probably aBacillus strain ofbacteria capable of infecting both living and deceased ("undead") hosts. His experiments with microscopes also reveal that the bacteria are deathly sensitive to garlic and sunlight. After he painstakingly attempts to win the trust of a stray sickly dog that dies after only a week, Neville, heartbroken, commits himself even more vigorously to his studies. Soon he experiments directly on incapacitated vampires, which leads to a new theory that vampires are affected by mirrors and crosses because of "hysterical blindness", in which the infected now delusionally react as they believe they should when confronted with these items. Neville additionally discovers that exposing vampires to direct sunlight or inflicting wide oxygen-exposing wounds causes the bacteria to switch from beinganaerobicsymbionts toaerobicparasites, rapidly consuming their hosts when exposed to air and thus giving them the appearance of instantly liquefying. However, he discovers the bacteria also produce resilient "body glue" that instantaneously seals blunt or narrow wounds, explaining how the vampires are bulletproof. Lastly, he deduces now that there are in fact two differently reacting types of vampires: conscious ones who are living with a worsening infection and undead ones who have died but been partly reanimated by the bacteria.
After three years, Neville suddenly sees a terrified woman named Ruth in broad daylight. The two cautiously gain each other's trust and even share a romantic embrace. Neville explains some of his findings, including his theory that he developedimmunity against the infection after being bitten by an infectedvampire bat years ago. He prepares to test Ruth to determine if she is infected or immune, vowing to treat her if she is infected, but she knocks him unconscious. Once Neville comes to, he discovers a note from her confessing that she is indeed a vampire herself. Her note suggests that only the undead vampires are pathologically violent but not those, like her, who were alive at the time of infection and who still survive due to chance mutations. These living-infected have slowly overcome their disease and are gradually developing a new society and new medications. Ruth admits she was sent to spy on him by her comrades and that he was responsible for the deaths of many of her fellow vampires, including her husband. Still, Ruth reiterates her romantic feelings for Neville and urges him to flee the city to avoid capture.
Neville ignores Ruth's warning, assuming he will be treated fairly by the new society of living-infected. However, his mind is changed when he watches a group of them annihilate the undead vampires outside his home with fiendish glee, then break down his front door. In a panic, Neville opens fire on them but is in turn shot and subdued. Imprisoned and dying, he is visited by Ruth, who informs him that she is a senior member of the new society, but unlike the others who perceive him as a murderer, she does not resent him. She acknowledges the public need for Neville's execution but, out of mercy, gives him a packet of fast-actingsuicide pills. Neville accepts his fate and asks Ruth not to let this society become too heartless. Ruth promises to try, kisses him, and leaves. Neville goes to his prison window and sees the infected staring back at him with the same hatred and fear that he once felt for them. He realizes that he, a remnant of old humanity, is now a legend to the new race born of the infection. He acknowledges that their desire to kill him, after he has killed so many of their loved ones, is not something he can condemn. As the pills take effect, he is amused by the role reversal of society, and how he has spent the last years of his life hunting what he considers to be 'monsters,' and they did the exact same back to him with an equal viewpoint. As he lays dying, Neville comments how being the last human has reduced him to anurban myth, stating "I Am Legend."
The book initially received mixed reviews. As related inIn Search of Wonder (1956),Damon Knight wrote:
The book is full of good ideas, every other one of which is immediately dropped and kicked out of sight. The characters are child's drawings, as blank-eyed and expressionless as the author himself in his back-cover photograph. The plot limps. All the same, the story could have been an admirable minor work in the tradition ofDracula, if only the author, or somebody, had not insisted on encumbering it with the year's most childish set of "scientific" rationalizations.
— Damon Knight[2]
Galaxy reviewerGroff Conklin describedLegend as:
a weird [and] rather slow-moving first novel ... a horrid, violent, sometimes exciting but too often overdone tour de force.
— Groff Conklin[3]
Anthony Boucher praised the novel:
Matheson has added a new variant on the Last Man theme ... and has given striking vigor to his invention by a forceful style of storytelling which derives from the best hard-boiled crime novels.
— Anthony Boucher[4]
Modern reviews have been more positive, with the novel becoming heavily influential to the genre.Dan Schneider fromInternational Writers Magazine: Book Review wrote:
Despite having vampires in it, [the novel] is not a novel on vampires, nor even a horror nor sci-fi novel at all, in the deepest sense. Instead, it is perhaps the greatest novel written on human loneliness. It far surpassesDaniel Defoe'sRobinson Crusoe in that regard. Its insights into what it is to be human go far beyond genre, and is all the more surprising because, having read his short stories—which range from competent but simplistic, to having classicTwilight Zone twists (he was a major contributor to the original TV series)—there is nothing within those short stories that suggests the supreme majesty of the existential masterpieceI Am Legend was aborning.
— Dan Schneider (2005)[5]
In 2012, theHorror Writers Association gaveI Am Legend the special Vampire Novel of the Century Award.[6]
One major influence upon Matheson and others of the genre is theMary Shelley novel,The Last Man, about an immune person surviving in a plague infested world.
InI Am Legend, the vampires share many similarities withzombies, and the novel influenced the zombie genre which itself later popularized the concept of a worldwidezombie apocalypse.[7]
Although the idea has now become commonplace, a scientific origin for vampirism or zombies was fairly original when written.[8]
According to Clasen:
I Am Legend is the product of an anxious artistic mind working in an anxious cultural climate. However, it is also a playful take on an old archetype, the vampire (the reader is even treated to Neville's reading and put-down ofBram Stoker'sDracula). Matheson goes to great lengths to rationalize or naturalize the vampire myth, transplanting the monster from the otherworldly realms of folklore and Victorian supernaturalism to the test tube of medical inquiry and rational causation. WithI Am Legend, Matheson instituted the germ theory of vampirism, a take on the old archetype which has since been tackled by other writers (notably,Dan Simmons inChildren of the Night from 1992).
— Mathias Clasen[9]
Although referred to as "the first modern vampire novel", it is as a novel of social theme thatI Am Legend made a lasting impression on the cinematic zombie genre, by way of directorGeorge A. Romero, who acknowledged its influence and that of its original cinematic adaptation,The Last Man on Earth (1964), upon his seminal filmNight of the Living Dead (1968).[10][7][11][12][13]
Discussing the creation ofNight of the Living Dead, Romero remarked:
I had written a short story, which I basically had ripped off from a Richard Matheson novel calledI Am Legend.
— George Romero[14]
Moreover, film critics have noted similarities betweenNight of the Living Dead (1968) andThe Last Man on Earth (1964).[15]
Stephen King said: "Books likeI Am Legend were an inspiration to me."[16] Film critics noted that theBritish film28 Days Later (2002) and its sequel28 Weeks Later both feature arabies-typeplague ravagingGreat Britain, analogous toI Am Legend.[17]
Tim Cain, theproducer,lead programmer and one of the maindesigners of the 1997computer gameFallout, citedI Am Legend and the movieThe Omega Man as influences on the game:
This book was how a[n] individual would handle thinking that he was the last survivor on Earth. This is why inFallout 1 when you're voted to leave the Vault, we really wanted that sense of isolationism; that sense of: you are the only person out here on the Wasteland who is, quote, "a normal person", and we wanted you to feel, like, special in that way.[18]
The book has also been adapted into acomic bookminiseries titledRichard Matheson's I Am Legend bySteve Niles and Elman Brown. It was published in 1991 byEclipse Comics and collected into atrade paperback byIDW Publishing.[19][20]
An unrelated film tie-in was released in 2007 as aone-shotI Am Legend: Awakening published in aSan Diego Comic-Con special byVertigo.[21]
A nine-part abridged reading of the novel performed byAngus MacInnes was originally broadcast onBBC 7 in January 2006[22] and repeated in January 2018.
I Am Legend has been adapted into a feature-length film three times, as well as into a direct-to-video feature film calledI Am Omega. Differing from the book, each of them portrays the Neville character as an accomplished scientist. The three adaptations show him finding a remedy and passing it on. Adaptations differ from the novel by setting the events three years after the disaster, instead of happening "in the span of" three years. Also, adaptations are set in the near future, a few years after the film's release, while the novel is set 20 years after its publication date.
Soy leyenda is a short film by Mario Gómez Martín in 1967 intended as astudent film for the SpanishEscuela Oficial de Cinematografía.It has been described as the version most pessimist and faithful to the original novel.[23][24]
In1964,Vincent Price starred as Dr. Robert Morgan (rather than "Neville") inThe Last Man on Earth (the original title of thisItalian production wasL'ultimo uomo della Terra). Matheson wrote the original screenplay for this adaptation, but due to later rewrites did not wish his name to appear in the credits; as a result, Matheson is credited under the pseudonym "Logan Swanson".[25]
In1971, a far different version was produced, titledThe Omega Man. It starredCharlton Heston (as Robert Neville) andAnthony Zerbe. Matheson had no influence on the screenplay for this film,[26] and although the premise remains, it deviates from the novel in several ways, removing the infected people's vampiric characteristics, except their sensitivity to light. In this version, the infected are portrayed as nocturnal, black-robed,albino mutants, known as the Family. Though intelligent, they eschew modern technology, believing it (and those who use it, such as Neville) to be evil and the cause of humanity's downfall.
In 2007, a third adaptation of the novel was produced, this time titledI Am Legend. Directed byFrancis Lawrence and starringWill Smith as Robert Neville, this film uses both Matheson's novel and the 1971Omega Man film as its sources.[27] This adaptation also deviates significantly from the novel. In this version, the infection is caused by a vaccine originally intended to curecancer. Some vampiric elements are retained, such as sensitivity toUV light and attraction to blood. The infected are portrayed as nocturnal, feral creatures of limited intelligence who hunt the uninfected withberserker-like rage. Other creatures, such as dogs, are also infected by the virus. The ending of the film was also altered to portray Neville as sacrificing his life to save humanity, rather than being executed for crimes against the surviving vampiric humans, although a deleted ending for the film was closer in spirit to the book.[7] The film takes place in New York City in 2009 and 2012 rather than Los Angeles in 1975–1977.
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