When Neville wakes, he discovers a note from Ruth confessing that she is indeed a vampire sent to spy on him and that he was responsible for the death of her husband, another vampire. Oh, well, at least they were better than those damned dust storms. He stood before the giant freezer, selecting his supper. He seems to be the last man in a devastated New York City, which has been taken over by a humanity that has mutated into carnivorous night dwellers. For a while he stood on the front lawn looking up and down the silent length of Cimarron Street. Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations, Select the department you want to search in. It seems to run counter to traditional vampire themes of the time, and still seems like a very fresh idea today. Now the smell was in his house and in his clothes, and sometimes he thought it was even in his flesh. Eventually, the two comfort each other romantically and he explains some of his findings, including his theory that he developed immunity against the infection after being bitten by an infected vampire bat years ago. Yet he never seemed to get ahead. All you need is a book’s author, title or ISBN number to find the Lexile text measure of that book. You’ll also find an introduction by comic book writer and novelist Joe Hill – the son of horror maestro Stephen King. Implicitly set in Los Angeles, the novel details Neville's life in the months and eventually years after the outbreak as he attempts to comprehend, research, and possibly cure the disease. By day, he is a hunter, stalking the infected monstrosities through the abandoned ruins of civilization. The singer-songwriter opens up about his new album. A long bench covered almost an entire wall, on its hardwood top a heavy band saw, a wood lathe, an emery wheel, and a vise. After bouts of depression and alcoholism, Neville finally determines there must be some scientific reasons behind the vampires' origins, behaviors, and aversions, so he sets out to investigate. Publisher: The Folio Society Publication Date: May 2018. A man could get used to anything if he had to. In this version, the infection is caused by a virus originally intended to cure cancer. Isn’t that amazing? It's some months since a devastating plague swept through humanity, killing many and turning the rest into vampires. Robert Neville is the last man on … It was a quarter to five. Neville additionally discovers more efficient means of killing the vampires, other than just driving a stake into their hearts. It was all very depressing and it made him resolve to find a better method of disposal. These living-infected have slowly overcome their disease and are attempting to build a new society. Matheson had no influence on the screenplay for this film,[25] 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. Richard Matheson (1926-2013) was The New York Times bestselling author of I Am Legend, Hell House, Somewhere in Time, The Incredible Shrinking Man, Now You See It…, and What Dreams May Come, among others.He was named a Grand Master of Horror by the World Horror Convention, and received the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement. Robert Neville is the only human left in his neighbourhood and possibly in the world. Angrily he jerked a high-legged stool to the sink, got a knife, and sat down with an exhausted grunt. To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number. With a shrug, he moved back across the lawn and into the house, locking and bolting the door behind him, sliding the thick bar into place. After a few minutes he took a long, slow breath and went back into the house. An incurable plague has mutated every other man, woman, and child into bloodthirsty, nocturnal creatures who are determined to destroy him. Today only one plank was loose. Fatally wounded, Neville is placed in a barred cell where he is visited by Ruth, who informs him that she is a senior member of the new society but, unlike the others, does not resent him. Copyright © 2020 Entertainment Focus He was a tall man, thirty-six, born of English-German stock, his features undistinguished except for the long, determined mouth and the bright blue of his eyes, which moved now over the charred ruins of the houses on each side of his. [18], The book has also been adapted into a comic book miniseries titled Richard Matheson's I Am Legend by Steve Niles and Elman Brown. The zombie/vampire classic is added to The Folio Society’s catalogue. The sky was darkening and it was getting chilly. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 10, 2016. This includes exposing vampires to direct sunlight or inflicting wide, oxygen-exposing wounds anywhere on their bodies so that the bacteria switch from being anaerobic symbionts to aerobic parasites, rapidly consuming their hosts when exposed to air, which gives the appearance of the vampires instantly liquefying. The Canadian Country trio releases their new video today. Now he spends each night barricaded into his house, surrounded by all the traditional anti-vampire weapons – garlic, crosses, mirrors – while a growing horde of vampires gathers outside howling for his blood. In 1971, a far different version was produced, titled The Omega Man. In a few days, jagged pieces of the silver-backed glass would start to fall off. Doweling was getting harder to find, too. Next he thawed out the chops and put them under the broiler. Reviewed in the United States on October 14, 2017. [7] The film takes place in New York City in 2009 and 2012 rather than Los Angeles in 1975–1977. But the author makes sure that every word counts and every sentence has earned its place. The generator was at it again. Neville walked into the kitchen and dumped the groceries on the table, his eyes moving to the clock. His experiments with microscopes also reveal that the bacteria are deadly sensitive to garlic and sunlight. It has also been adapted as the Spanish short student film Soy leyenda. Reviewed in the United States on October 12, 2018. He sat down and looked at the red second hand as it swept slowly around the clock face. He knew he should burn up the paper plates and utensils too, and dust the furniture and wash out the sinks and the bathtub and toilet, and change the sheets and pillowcase on his bed; but he didn’t feel like it. I Am Legend Written by Richard Matheson Tor Books. The book is as much a psychological study of the effects of extreme loneliness, loss and grief, as it is fighting off the undead. This shopping feature will continue to load items when the Enter key is pressed. He was putting the food on his plate when he stopped and his eyes moved quickly to the clock. The single is available to download and stream now. Robert Neville appears to be the sole survivor of a pandemic that has killed most of the human population and turned the remainder into "vampires" that largely conform to their stereotypes in fiction and folklore: they are blood-sucking, pale-skinned, and nocturnal, though otherwise indistinguishable from normal humans. Some vampiric elements are retained, such as sensitivity to UV light and attraction to blood. Books like I Am Legend were an inspiration to me.” ―Stephen King, “Matheson is one of the great names in American terror fiction.” ―The Philadelphia Inquirer, “Matheson inspires, it's as simple as that.” ―Brian Lumley. but he is not alone. Neville is prone to depression, taking solace in heavy drinking, and he often has sexual fantasies about the female vampires that he encounters. Taut and well-plotted, I Am Legend keeps the reader in the world of its main character and builds to a final fifty pages that are exhilarating and almost unbearably tense. Top subscription boxes – right to your door, © 1996-2020, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. Please try again. These he held against the whirling emery stone until they were as sharp as daggers. He’s created a mural and hooked up a generator, and has looted not just food and drink but records and books from now-disused stores. He was glad he’d learned early in life, from his mother, to appreciate this kind of music. After discussing the effects of Neville's vampire-killing activities on the new society, she acknowledges the public need for Neville's execution but, out of mercy, gives him a packet of fast-acting suicide pills. The inconsistency of Neville's results in handling vampires also leads him to realize that there are in fact two differently-reacting types of vampires: those conscious and living with a worsening infection and those who have died but been reanimated by the bacteria (i.e. On those cloudy days, Robert Neville was never sure when sunset came, and sometimes they were in the streets before he could get back. It was tiresome, monotonous work, and it filled the air with hotsmelling wood dust that settled in his pores and got into his lungs and made him cough. Four-thirty. 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. Neville accepts his fate and asks Ruth not to let this society become too heartless. Once the room had been warmly decorated, but that was in another time.
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