I saw I am Legend when it first came out. The theater was packed with people, and we all jumped and gasped during the movie. It was the most terrifying movie I had seen since 28 Weeks Later. So when I saw the original 1954 novel on the shelf at my new favorite used bookstore, I snagged it. As many horror fans know, Matheson’s I am Legend has now been made into three different movies. I haven’t seen the first two, but the Will Smith version was good enough for me.
I’ve read that I am Legend is also one of the inspirations for the zombie genre. I can well believe it now. It’s got all the elements: mass infection, seemingly invulnerable walking corpses, a few survivors holed up in fortified buildings, tensions about the fate of mankind. This book has all of these. And its all packed into a little more than a hundred pages. I’d read descriptions and such, but it seemed (before I read the book) like a lot of material to get through. Plus, I’m used to movies only showing or telling you half of the story.
I am Legend is also a very sparely written book. Even though you get the main character, Robert Neville, thinking and talking about whether or not he should just give up, if there’s anything worth fighting for, etc., this book is mostly about Neville’s day to day life: repairing his defenses, finding food, and so on. In retrospect, Will Smith’s Neville seems a lot more human, more emotive, than Matheson’s original. The original Neville is kind of hard to like, because he’s been through so much horror and because he’s had a lot of hard decisions to make. He also doesn’t get many moments to show his humanity to the reader, where Smith had several episodes added into the movie script for that purpose.
Another thing that interested me in this book is now Matheson and Neville use science to explain the infection, with some of the original vampire legends thrown in. The bacteria that causes vampirism in this novel reminds me a lot of Max Brooks’ zombie virus. At one point, Neville raids the Los Angeles Public Library to learn all he can about hematology and bacteriology and, through his research, you learn a lot about how the epidemic spread. (I also appreciated the shout out to libraries there.)
As I was reading the book, I realized that with a lot of these end of the world stories and movies, you rarely get one that’s set entirely in the epidemic. You get flashbacks and hints, but I don’t know about one that just does the outbreak. Curious. I’m trying to think right now of a book or movie that qualifies, but I’m coming up blank. Maybe Darwin’s Radio? I don’t know, but I think it would be interesting to read one since one of the things that draws me into these books is the mentions of what happened. I really like trying to piece those together.