I Am Legend
For the 2007 film, see I Am Legend (film).
I Am Legend is a 1954 science fiction novel by Richard Matheson about the last man alive in a future Los Angeles, California. It is notable as influential on the developing modern vampire genre as well as the zombie genre, in popularizing the fictional concept of a worldwide apocalypse due to disease, and in exploring the notion of vampirism as a disease.
The novel was a success and was adapted to film as The Last Man on Earth in 1964, as The Omega Man in 1971, and again in 2007 as I Am Legend.
Later releases of the novel include several of Matheson's short stories: Buried Talents, The Near Departed, Prey, Witch War, Dance of the Dead, Dress of White Silk, Mad House, Funeral, From Shadowed Places, and Person to Person.
Plot
I Am Legend is the story of Robert Neville - apparently the sole survivor of a Bacterial pandemic apocalypse, the symptoms of which resemble Vampirism. The author details Neville's daily life in Los Angeles from January of 1976 to January of 1979, as he attempts to comprehend, research, and possibly cure the disease that killed mankind, and to which he is immune.
Neville's past is revealed through flashbacks, while his emotional struggle to cope with losing his family is dealt with by going about a daily routine.
Every day, Neville prepares for nightly sieges from a vampire horde. He spends the daylight hours repairing his house: boarding windows, hanging garlic garlands, disposing of vampire corpses and gathering supplies.
Once darkness falls, the infected come out of hiding and lay siege to Neville's house. They taunt him and attempt to entice him out - he recognizes one 'vampire' as his friend Ben Cortman.
After bouts of depression and heavy drinking, Neville decides to find the causes of the disease.
Books and other research materials are obtained from a library, and through painstaking research Neville is able to discover the root of the vampiric disease; a strain of bacteria capable of infecting both deceased and living hosts. However, he does not realize that the living hosts (the infected) are still inherently human, even though they exhibit all the signs of vampirism.
He demonstrates during experiments on an unnamed woman and Ben Cortman that fear of the crucifix is a purely psychological trait. Since Cortman is Jewish, it is the Torah to which he reacts, rather than Christian religious artifacts.
At one point, Neville notices a wounded dog which has somehow survived outside.
Initially wary, after some weeks the dog becomes more responsive, to the point where Neville is able to finally drag it inside his house and treat its wounds. Soon after, it gets infected and dies.
In June 1978, Neville comes across a seemingly uninfected woman abroad in the daylight and captures her.
After the initial shock of seeing another human wears off, Neville becomes suspicious of Ruth and is skeptical of her story. He also notices that she is strongly against the killing of the vampires - he feels that if her story of survival was true, she would have become hardened to their fate.
In it, she tells him that the infected have slowly been able to adapt to their disease to the point where they can spend short periods of time in sunlight and they are even attempting to rebuild society as they now know it. She adds that they have evolved enough to hunt the true vampires (dead bodies animated by the 'germ') and even manufacture pills that keep the baser vampiric instincts at bay.
She warns Neville that their hunters will come for him since they view him as a threat. Eventually the infected come to capture him; Neville watches from his house as they emerge from cars, kill the vampires outside with weapons and storm the house.
She acknowledges the need for Neville's execution, and slips him pills, claiming they will 'make it easier'. When they spot him, he sees the fear, awe and horror in their eyes and he understands to them he is a scourge, just as they were a scourge to him at the beginning of the novel.
He is the only immune human left in the world, the only survivor of the "old race".
He glimpses a future society wherein infection is normal and he, Neville, is a murderous, biologic deviant. As he turns away and swallows the pills, Neville grasps the reversal that has taken place and that, just as vampires were legend in pre-infection times now he, as obsolete exemplar of old humanity, is legend in the eyes of the new race born of the infection.
Influence
First edition cover art
I Am Legend influenced the zombie genre and popularized the concept of a worldwide disease apocalypse.
Though classified and referred to as "the first modern vampire novel", it is as a novel of social theme that I Am Legend impressed itself to the cinematic zombie genre by way of film director George A. Romero, who acknowledged its influence and that of its 1964 adaptation, The Last Man on Earth, upon his film Night of the Living Dead (1968). Moreover, film critics noted similarities between Night of the Living Dead (1968) and The Last Man on Earth (1964).
Stephen King said, "Without Richard Matheson I wouldn’t be around." Film critics noted that the British film 28 Days Later (2002) and its sequel 28 Weeks Later both feature a rabies-type plague ravaging Great Britain, analogous to I Am Legend. The recasting of zombies and vampires as products of infectious disease or radiation is now commonplace, as seen in the Resident Evil series, the Blade trilogy, the 1984 B movie Night of the Comet, Ultraviolet and The Addiction.
Adaptations
I Am Legend has been adapted to a feature-length film three times.
Some vampiric elements are retained, such as sensitivity to UV light and attraction to blood. The ending is completely different, with him discovering a cure and killing himself to allow another immune person to take the cure to a hidden sanctuary.
had signed Will Smith up to make a prequel to the 2007 film.