Author Richard Matheson has passed away at the age of 87. Details are currently few, but Matheson’s daughter, Ali, said the following according to author John Shirley’s Facebook page:
“My beloved father passed away yesterday at home surrounded by the people and things he loved…he was funny, brilliant, loving, generous, kind, creative, and the most wonderful father ever…I miss you and love you forever Pop and I know you are now happy and healthy in a beautiful place full of love and joy you always knew was there…”
Matheson’s novels include iconic works like I Am Legend, The Incredible Shrinking Man, What Dreams May Come, Hell House and A Stir of Echoes while his short story output has been adapted as everything from episodes of “The Twilight Zone” to the recent big screen sci-fi tale Real Steel. Among his countless contributions to genre storytelling, Matheson penned the original “Star Trek” episode “The Enemy Within” and supplied the screenplay for Steven Spielberg’s early telefilm Duel.
“If men only felt about death as they do about sleep,” Matheson himself commented in his 1978 novel “What Dreams May Come,” “All terrors would cease… Men sleep contentedly, assured that they will wake the following morning. They should feel the same about their lives.
He will be greatly missed.
