My "to-read" pile isn't exactly in a particular order, but I have a vague idea of when I want to get round to something. Richard Matheson's Nightmare at 20,000 Feet was due about six weeks ago but reading a story about a gremlin on an aeroplane wing while I was flying across the Atlantic didn't appeal too much so I left it for a while. I've read a ( Read more... )

Although mainly known as a horror writer, Richard Matheson plays around in a couple of different genres, and his 1995 novel Now You See It... is a particularly bonkers version of a locked room mystery. Once a big name, now a failing magician, The Great Delacorte gets his wife, assistant, and agent into his study where a seemingly endless ( Read more... )

When I was reading The Turn of the Screw a couple of weeks ago I got the idea that it might be fun to write a ghost story play. I have lots of other ideas I want to work on first but it sounded interesting enough that I thought I'd read a couple of classic ghost stories to get some ideas. I bought some MR James the other day but in the meantime I ( Read more... )

Once again I'm catching up on Richard Matheson's novels, this time a romance/afterlife fantasy, What Dreams May Come. Chris dies in a car accident and relates his experiences in "Summerland," a kind of heaven, as he waits for his wife to join him. However when she commits suicide she's sent to her own private limbo, and Chris decides instead of ( Read more... )

Continuing to read Richard Matheson's classic horror/fantasy/sci-fi novels, my latest was 1971's Hell House, the archetypal hanuted house story. The basic plot is like any number of scary movies, as a group of "experts" have to investigate a haunted house to claim a huge reward. Unlike most of those films Matheson goes for a subtler approach, with ( Read more... )

Continuing reading the cheap copies I got a few months ago of books by classic US horror writer Richard Matheson, his short 1958 novel A Stir of Echoes is a fairly low-key ghost story in which the narrator, Tom Wallace, acquires psychic abilities after being hypnotised. Matheson concentrates on the human element of the story, making his characters ( Read more... )

I read Richard Matheson's I Am Legend a couple of years ago and enjoyed it (and have avoided the recent film version largely 'cause I'm sure they'll have changed the brilliant ending, thus making the title meaningless.) A couple of months ago I bought some SF Masterworks in a 3-for-2 offer at Forbidden Planet, and Matheson's 1956 novel The ( Read more... )