A-Z Wednesday: I Am Legend

A-Z Wednesday is hosted by Reading at the Beach.

Here are the rules: Go to your stack of books and find one whose title starts with the Letter of the Week and post the following:

1. A photo of the book
2. Title and synopsis
3. A link (Amazon, B&N, etc.)
4. Come back here and leave your link in the comments

If you’ve already reviewed this book, post a link to the review as well. Be sure to visit other participants to see what books they have posted and leave them a comment (we all love comments, don’t we?) Who know? You may find your next “favorite” book.

THIS WEEK’S LETTER IS: I

My “I” Book is:

I Am Legend
by Richard Matheson
(New York: Berkley Book, 1979)
Paperback, 174 Pages, Fiction
ISBN: 9780425040539, US$1.75

From the Cover: Daytimes are okay. It’s at night that the horror begins … at night, when the empty streets begin to fill with the lurching, bone-white shapes of the walking dead, creeping toward the fortress-house of the last man alive on Earth, howling for the precious substance they crave … blood.

My Thoughts: I reviewed I Am Legend back in December of 2007 (HERE) and I stand by that review, but I guess I have a few more things to say about it. This is, as I said in my review, a landmark book in horror fiction.

In terms of Weird Fiction, while it is not a book in the classic mode of the genre, it (with a couple of other books that came out around the same time) signals a new iteration of the style of horror fiction that was championed by such greats as Lovecraft, Machen, and Hope Hodgson. Legend took an old theme (vampirism) and gave it a slick and shiny new coat of varnish. It looked at vampirism not in the light of supernaturalism, but rather in the light of science and reason. It sought to explain vampirism through science and in that explanation find a new kind of terror and horror.

If your only experience with Matheson’s classic is through either the 1964 Vincent Price, 1971 Charlton Heston or 2007 Will Smith versions (personally I endorse the ’64 Price as the best), then please get thee to a bookstore or library and find out what all the fuss is about.