Influence
Although Matheson calls the assailants in his novel "vampires", and though their condition is transmitted through blood and garlic is an apotropaic-like repellant, there is little similarity between them and vampires as developed by John William Polidori and his successors, which come straight out of the gothic novel tradition. I Am Legend influenced the zombie genre and popularized the concept of a worldwide zombie apocalypse. Although the idea has now become commonplace, a scientific origin for vampirism or zombies was fairly original when written. According to Clasen:
"I Am Legend is the product of an anxious artistic mind working in an anxious cultural climate. However, it is also a playful take on an old archetype, the vampire (the reader is even treated to Neville’s reading and put-down of Bram Stoker's Dracula). 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. With I Am Legend, Matheson instituted the germ theory of vampirism, a take on the old archetype which has since been tackled by other writers (notably, Dan Simmons in Children of the Night from 1992)."
Though referred to as "the first modern vampire novel", it is as a novel of social theme that I Am Legend made a lasting impression on the cinematic zombie genre, by way of director George A. Romero, who acknowledged its influence and that of its 1964 adaptation, The Last Man on Earth, upon his seminal film Night of the Living Dead (1968). Discussing the creation of Night of the Living Dead, Romero remarked, "I had written a short story, which I basically had ripped off from a Richard Matheson novel called I Am Legend." Moreover, film critics noted similarities between Night of the Living Dead (1968) and The Last Man on Earth (1964).
Stephen King said, "Books like I Am Legend were an inspiration to me". 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.
Although never acknowledged by Matheson, it is worth noting that Mary Shelley published a novel entitled The Last Man that told the story of a future world ravaged by a plague and the last solitary inhabitant.
Read more about this topic: I Am Legend (novel)
Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Life is made too easy. Mankind’s moral fibre is giving way under the softening influence of luxury.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)