I Am Legend
Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, first published in 1954, is the slim, hugely influential novel that essentially invented the modern science fictional vampire and helped create the post apocalyptic plague narrative as we know it. Robert Neville is the last surviving uninfected human in Los Angeles, a former factory worker who has fortified his suburban bungalow against the vampiric victims of a pandemic that swept the world. By day he scavenges for supplies, repairs his garlic ringed defenses, and hunts the catatonic infected as they sleep. By night his old neighbors gather outside his windows, calling his name and trying to lure him out. Across the novel Matheson gradually shifts the question from how does a man survive a vampire apocalypse to whether the survivor's solitary, methodical violence has begun to constitute a kind of monstrosity of its own. The book has been filmed three times, most famously as the 2007 Will Smith adaptation, and remains a foundational text for everything from Romero's Night of the Living Dead to The Walking Dead.
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about I Am Legend
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Robert Neville is, as far as he knows, the last uninfected person on Earth. Each day he hunts in his neighborhood. Each night infected former neighbors come for him. He drinks, he reads, he holds the line.
No. The 2007 Will Smith film changes the ending and the nature of the infected. Earlier adaptations (The Last Man on Earth in 1964, The Omega Man in 1971) take different liberties. The novel's ending is darker and turns on a meaningful interpretation of the title itself.
Richard Matheson's I Am Legend (1954) helped invent the modern apocalypse-vampire/zombie genre. George Romero has cited it as a direct influence on Night of the Living Dead. Matheson's creatures are technically vampires, not zombies, but the framework is foundational.
I Am Legend was written by Richard Matheson, published in 2015 by Orion.
I Am Legend is 102 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, I Am Legend takes most readers about 2 hours to finish.
I Am Legend is a standalone novel by Richard Matheson, not part of a series.
I Am Legend is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.