MSN posted news that Richard Matheson had died today. "Author and screenwriter Richard Matheson, an undisputed giant in the genres of science fiction, horror and fantasy, passed away on Sunday (June 23) at the age of 87." (msn.com/movies)
Stephen King dedicated his novel Cell to Matheson. Clark Collins at EW quotes King, "Without Richard Matheson I wouldn’t be around.”
I first became familiar with Matheson for his work on the original Twilight Zone series (which was in reruns when I saw them).
Famous for several novels and stories, I enjoyed The Incredible Shrinking Man most. When the film version was first released, Matheson didn't like it, feeling the movie drifted too far from his novel.
He told Clark Collins at Entertainment Weekly,
“I wrote about real people and real circumstances and real neighborhoods,” Matheson told me. “There was no crypt or castles or H.P. Lovecraft-type environments. They were just about normal people who had something bizarre happening to them in the neighborhood. I could never write about strange kingdoms. I could never do Harry Potter or anything like that. Even when I did science-fiction I didn’t write about foreign planets and distant futures. I certainly never did fantasies about trolls living under bridges. I had to write about realistic circumstances. That’s the way my brain works. And I think that gave me a sort of place in the field.”
