The book is definitely more sci-fi than horror: it was one of the first to treat vampires 'scientifically,' with Neville carefully deducing by means of research and experimentation the reasons why vampires are bulletproof but harmed by sunlight, why they are repelled by crosses and garlic, and how the plague transmits itself. But in the book, Richard Neville was just a blue collar worker who discovered the bacteriological origins of the vampirism plague on his own, because he had nothing better to do.

2007's I Am Legend (starring Will Smith) makes Neville a scientist (as in The Last Man on Earth). In 1971's The Omega Man (starring Charlton Heston), Robert Neville, the last man on Earth, is an Army officer who fights albino mutants. The difference is that The Passage is already a big, bloated entertainment blockbuster of pop culture, so Hollywood probably won't do too much damage to it.ġ964's The Last Man on Earth (starring Vincent Price) was probably closest to the novel, plotwise, though it changed the name of the main character. I imagine that The Passage (the other vampire apocalypse novel I reviewed recently) will probably be made into a movie as well. Written in 1954, I Am Legend been made into a movie three times, and like all such classics, you really should read the original to appreciate what Hollywood got right and (mostly) wrong. His influence on a generation of bestselling authors-including Stephen King and Dean Koontz-who first read him in their youth is, well, legendary. Employing a stark, almost documentary style, Richard Matheson was one of the first writers to convince us that the undead can lurk in a local supermarket freezer as well as a remote Gothic castle. He is the legendary monster who must be destroyed because he is different from everyone else. He alone appears to be immune to this disease, but the grim irony is that now he is the outsider. A terrible plague has decimated the world, and those who were unfortunate enough to survive have been transformed into blood-thirsty creatures of the night. As Richard Matheson's third novel, it was first marketed as science fiction (for although written in 1954, the story takes place in a future 1976). One of the most influential vampire novels of the 20th century, I Am Legend regularly appears on the '10 Best' lists of numerous critical studies of the horror genre.

Start with the original vampire apocalypse, Richard Matheson's I Am Legend. Vampire lovers, reclaim the night! Throw off the chains of shitty YA romances, cast off your sparkly blinders, and see these creatures for what they really are: literary representations of humanity's oldest fears. One-sentence summary: A plague turns everyone on Earth into vampires except for one man.

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