I Am Legend

Listen- if you could take away the corny vampires wiggling outside the house, Robert Neville’s almost annoying horniness, and the “I was loving you bit.” I would’ve said this was a great book. Upon re-read, I can say I no longer HATE it as I did the first time. However, I just cannot get past the vampires and their seduction~

Compelling story with the best kind of twist. I wish I could say that the prose was better. But overall a good horror Sci-Fi read. It’s a page turner and won’t take you long.

When the modern film adaptation I Am Legend came out in 2007, many people were annoyed or angered by the movie. I heard things like, its nothing like the book, the ending sucks and it misses the point. Now I know why. Let me just tell you, the movie does miss the point, particularly with the theatrical ending. That version of the film misses the point like the missing the broad side of a barn with a tactical nuke at point-blank range. Thats not to say I dislike the movie. I thought that, with the alternate ending, it was pretty good. I still think that. However, reading the original story has changed my feelings about it a bit, namely that I like certain things about it less than the novel. Now, I dont remember if the credits say based on I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, but if they do, I believe they definitely commit the crime of false advertising. The most it should say is inspired by... The only similarities I can think of between the book and what I remember of the movie are: The main character is named Robert Neville There is a plague of vampires that led to the collapse of civilization The main character is a human man, ostensibly the last on earth, who is immune to the disease The main character lost his wife and child after/during the outbreak of the disease There is a dog There is a woman There is science But enough about the film! Overall, I enjoyed the novel. I was not initially aware that the novel I purchased contained I Am Legend in addition to several short stories, because it was not clearly advertised on my edition. Thus, I was surprised that the story was as short as it was. I only read I Am Legend from the bunch, because that is the reason I purchased it. I feel like Matheson could have made the book longer, and fleshed out the world, the situations, and Nevilles past quite a bit more. One thing about the story that I wasnt a huge fan of was how little actually happened in the book. A big portion of the narrative was devoted to the more mundane events and inner monologues in the post-apocalyptic life of Robert Neville. On the other hand, much of the narrative dealing with Nevilles inner thoughts helped vastly with the world-building. Through Nevilles erratic, desperate, hopeless thoughts, the reader developed a taste for what it felt like to be the last man on earth, living a daily battle for existence in the midst of a plague of vampires, having lost everyone and everything you once loved. However, that brings me to my next point -- Neville was surprisingly unfeeling. I dont know if the reader was supposed to chock that up to him being a man who doesnt want to display feelings, his being a man that has given up hope, or what. He faced situations with very little sympathy, or even horror, and seemed largely apathetic about what was happening to him and what he was doing. Throughout several places in the story, I got the idea that Matheson has issues with women. I know that authors dont always write their thoughts into their characters, but it didnt seem like Neville was supposed to be especially misogynistic, because the author wrote it strictly as if his thoughts were fact and entirely acceptable. There were some things I really liked about I Am Legend. First off, it is number one on my list for most scientific books about vampires I have ever read. As a biology major and pharmacy student, I found it incredibly interesting to read about Nevilles discoveries and experiments as he uncovered the origin of the disease. That Matheson invented a somewhat scientifically sound background for the existence of vampires, debunking some elements of mythology and supporting others was original and pleasing to me. The thing I liked most about the novel (especially compared to the movie) was the ending. The events of the ending portion of I Am Legend really came out of left field for me. I wasnt expecting what happened, at all. It is very much the most important part of the novel. It leaves us with a message, questioning what we have known and what we believe. I thought it was poignant and powerful, and it certainly left me thinking. It is an unimportant detail, but I also enjoyed that the last line of the novel was I am legend. I love when books really come full circle, and when they have their title worked into them somehow. Matheson managed to do both, and it brought a smile to my face.

I Am Legend is an amazing story describing a plague that turns the entire world into Vampires, with the exception of one man, who spends the rest of his life simply existing and fighting to maintain his life by killing vampires. It is a very interesting story and I was intrigued by the day to day events the protagonist goes through and the effect the plague has on his sanity. The storytelling is not chronological and jumps right into things, with the protagonist recalling how the plague started and events that happened before it became full blown. The story is amazing and I was very intrigued at how Mattheson can make simple day to day chores interesting. Its an amazing concept and doesnt seem dated at all, even though the story was written over 50 years ago (it takes place in the future of 1970). My main problem with this book was that it ended halfway through. Apparently its a collection of short stories, and I Am Legend only takes up about 170 pages. I read about half of the other stories and they are okay, but nothing too good and I lost interest quickly. Some are a few pages and some are several chapters. I got bored with them quickly and theyre pretty much your typical science fiction from the 50s, although some were written later. I do think the I Am Legend story alone is worth the price of the book.

The book is dark. And I love that. People could easily get rejected thinking oh its a horror but its not. I would sound probably cocky or something if say I can relate to this book a lot but it is not because I think too highly of my self and it does not have any connection with the title, but it is because I had difficult times in my youth growing up through the surrounding that was really dark and people were really a mental wreck. And I could relate to Robert Nevilles emotional difficulties and how hard it feels to meet that normal person that is almost impossible to find. Thats what kept me through the book that I read 1-2 chapters a day. But seeing how he became a legend it left a mark on me of how through all those things he went through the book, he never changed his core self. And probably because its a book and not a movie, it somehow stays so deep within you. It is awesome.

This is a fantastic novella from a brilliant writer. It was way ahead of its time and Matheson inspired so many giants in the horror field, including Stephen King. This book in particular is one of the main contributing forces that gave rise to the zombie genre. I wouldnt say this is a literary masterpiece so much as an amazing story that is solidly written. The premise is dazzling and it kept me turning the pages. I will refrain from giving it the fifth star because some of Nevilles thinking got a touch repetitive for me and I was actually a little confused about what constituted a (WARNING, mild spoiler) vampire or another kind of undead type of vampire being that isnt quite a vampire. I honestly cant spoil it too bad because I dont clearly understand that part. One of the things I really enjoyed about this book was that I have seen two film versions of I Am Legend and this still felt original. I think its because the main character is a truly human character. We get a front row seat to those flaws in the book and we get to do it as he battles vampires from a last man on earth perspective. It was a fun read. I will try more of Mathesons written work. (He also wrote many screenplays.)

I over the movie and wanted to read a different perspective. I wanted to know the authors original concept. This book was interesting, and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys sci-fi

Besides a rather misogynistic viewpoint, the protagonist was fascinating. You really empathize with his terror, loneliness, and heartbreak. SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS I didnt feel I got to know the character of Ruth quite so well. She is introduced so late into the story. Its interesting that she justifies the new societys desire to kill Neville as a threat, when they made no effort to communicate with him about their cure etc. The horror is not that the last human dies, its that the society left has no real desire to be truly human nor humane. Not withstanding Ruths actions, theyve shown that they feel neither compassion nor any true empathy for each other or other beings. Its purely survival on an individual basis, since they feel no remorse in killing their own as a food supply.

I bought this a few months ago, before the movie came out, although it had been on my wish list forever. I read Hell House years ago and it was one of my favorite horror novels, so Ive wanted to read I Am Legend for a long time. I read it before the movie came out, but the movie was so different that it really didnt matter. The book was written in the early 1950s and I think it was pretty innovative for that time. Apparently it was first marketed as sci-fi, and only later became known as a horror classic. Robert Neville is - he believes - the sole survivor of some kind of worldwide plague that has killed off most of humanity, and doomed a small portion of it to a vampiric, raging, bloodthirsty existence. For some reason Robert is immune to the disease for reasons he doesnt understand, and everyone he ever knew and loved is either dead or stalking him. The atmosphere is very tense right from the beginning, when were introduced to the horrible simplicity of Roberts everyday survival: wake up, re-fortify the protections on his house, go out and hunt for supplies, kill a few vampires to lessen their appalling numbers, get home before sundown, eat from his dwindling food supplies, and then wait, with dread and fear, until nightfall when the others come and torment him from outside, all night long. His alone-ness is stark and terrifying, and you feel the kind of deadened desperation he must live with as someone who has nothing to live for, yet cant allow himself to die. The book is very short - a novella, really - and ends much more ambiguously than the the movie. Even if youve seen the movie, I recommend the book. It has quite a different feel to it.

First and foremost, this isn’t a novel about vampires so much as it is a novel about loneliness. Robert Neville is isolated for years without any outside contact as the vampire hoard lurked outside his door. The shifts in his mood between apathy, anger, depression, desperate hope, and at times seeming madness and cruelty made his character feel real and believable. The chapter about the dog was so human it was painful. I thought that Neville’s exploration and experimentation in order to understand what the vampires were exactly and how the world was taken so swiftly was interesting. I appreciated the scientific elements that tried to explain well established tropes about vampires, either explaining how they could be possible or separating the ones that were no more than superstition. Many of the assumptions made in the novel were actually reasonable. The experiments that he carried out on those afflicted with vampirism, both alive and dead, made him a monster. The glee with which he executed or experimented on vampires showed his devolution from human to something else. This is where the novel hits kind of a tail spin. I get where the author is going with the evolution of humanity and how moral Neville’s thirst for knowledge and understanding was, but I feel like the novel got a little bit contrived around the end. Most of the novel was spent wondering where it was going, seeming just a bit confused and lacking any real direction. This made the second half of the novel feel forced and left me feeling like I had whiplash. Even so, I Am Legend stands as a classic because it was influential in the development of the zombie genre and the concept of a world wide apocalypse caused by the spread of disease and I can completely understand why. Even though the affliction is officially branded vampirism and explains vampire lore, the creatures in the novel are different from the types of vampires one is used to from other works of fiction and I found it refreshing.