I Am Legend

In the horror genre, the vampire novel is an old and established tradition. Ever since Bram Stoker's Dracula, many have decided to tell stories about blood-drinking monsters. Of all those authors, few have succeeded so well as Richard Matheson did with his 1954 novel I Am Legend. In many ways, that novel has set the stage for every vampire novel since, and it has done a great deal to change how we look at the novels that came before it.

I Am Legend itself is a fast read. It's only 160 pages. Matheson hooks you early and doesn't let go. It's the story of Robert Neville, the only man to survive a postwar apocalypse that has turned everyone else into vampires. Neville spends his nights boarded up in his house, garlic and crosses covering every door and window. He spends his days living off the remnants of civilization and killing every vampire he can find.

Aside from being a sound and entertaining horror novel, I Am Legend broke new ground for the vampire genre. Matheson is the first author to develop a completely scientific explanation for the vampires and every facet of the myth. We learn all this progressively, as Neville himself sifts through myth and superstition, eventually finding the truth.

Three times I Am Legend has been made into a film. The most recent, the first adaptation to be called I Am Legend, is due out this summer. From the previews, it looks like a fairly faithful adaptation. They've updated the war and moved the location to downtown New York instead of the suburbs of Los Angeles.

Without question, the most brilliant part of I Am Legend comes at the end. I won't spoil it for all of you. But I will say this. By the end of the novel, Matheson has turned the entire myth, monsters and morality alike, on its head. And we're left wondering who the real myth, who the real monster really is.