Biography

Richard Matheson

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Overview

Born
February 20, 1926 · Allendale, New Jersey, USA
Died
June 23, 2013 · Calabasas, California, USA (undisclosed)
Nickname
- Logan Swanson

Biography

Born in New Jersey and raised in Brooklyn, Richard Burton Matheson first became a published author while still a child, when his stories and poems ran in the "Brooklyn Eagle". A lifelong reader of fantasy tales, he made his professional writing bow in 1950 when his short story "Born of Man and Woman"? appeared in "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction"; Matheson turned out a number of highly regarded horror, fantasy and mystery stories throughout that decade. He broke into films in 1956, adapting his novel "The Shrinking Man" for the big-screen The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957).
- IMDb mini biography by: Tom Weaver <TomWeavr@aol.com>
Richard Matheson has written novels and short stories, as well as screenplays for both film and television. He has sometimes written under the pen name, "Logan Swanson". His prose has often been adapted for the screen by others and sometimes by Matheson, himself. Notably, he is among the few writers who contributed to Rod Serling's classic television series, The Twilight Zone (1959) (1959-1964) almost as prolifically as Serling, himself. He wrote about fifteen scripts for the original series and also contributed to Rod Serling's Night Gallery (1969) (1972), Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) and the television reboot of The Twilight Zone (1985) (1985-1989).

His novels include, I Am Legend (2007) (1954), "The Shrinking Man" (1956), Stir of Echoes (1999), "Ride the Nightmare" (1959), "The Beardless Warriors" (1960), "Bid Time Return" (1975), (later known as Somewhere in Time (1980)), and What Dreams May Come (1998) (1978).

His short stories include "Born of Man and Woman" (1950), "Third From the Sun" (1950), "The Waker Dreams" (1950), "Blood Son" (1951), "The Thing" (1951), among others.
- IMDb mini biography by: Miles-10

Family

Spouse
Children

Trivia

Hes claimed that the film that came closest to capturing the spirit of his novel "I Am Legend" was Night of the Living Dead (1968), even though that film was not an intentional adaptation of his book.
According to producer Roger Corman, Matheson's scripts were so good that Corman usually used the first draft with a minimum of rewrites.
One of Stephen King's favorite writers.
Father of Chris Matheson, Ali Marie Matheson and Richard Christian Matheson. He adopted his wife's daughter from a previous marriage named Bettina Louise Matheson (b. 1950).
His short story "Steel" was the first inspiration for the screenplay to Real Steel (2011).

Quotes

[on what the supernatural genre tells us about human beings] I think we're yearning for something beyond the every day. And I will tell you that I don't believe in the "supernatural," I believe in the "supernormal." To me there is nothing that goes against nature. If it seems incomprehensible, it's because we haven't been able to understand it yet.
I wrote about real people and real circumstances and real neighborhoods. 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.