The legend of horror and science fiction writing, Richard Matheson, has passed away. Matheson’s work included I Am Legend, The Shrinking Man, Hell House, and several of the most memorable episodes of The Twilight Zone. Arlen Schumer provided his own eulogy on the TheoFantastique Facebook page:

R.I.P. RICHARD MATHESON–the Lou Gherig of The Twilight Zone to Rod Serling’s Ruth–just passed away. He wrote the 2nd-most episodes after Serling in quantity, but their quality was more uniform than the erratic Serling’s, who wrote the best AND some of the worst episodes. Of all of Matheson’s great ones–from William Shatner in “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” to Ages Moorehead in “The Invaders”–the one that is most ur-Twilight Zone to me is Matheson’s first-season “A World of Difference,” in which an actor (Howard Duff, husband of fellow TZ actor & director Ida Lupino, giving one of those stark-ravingly believable Twilight Zone performances) who believes he is the man he plays (while the movie crew thinks he’s off his rocker) discovers, “How thin a line separates that which we assume to be real with that manufactured inside of a mind”–presaging the later-Sixties psychedelic reaction to life being like a movie, while raising age-old questions about destiny and pre-destiny, and about man’s free will in a benevolent or malevolent universe (and the basis for the 1998 film The Truman Show). Thank you, Mr. Matheson, for that and so much more! Your work will live forever!

See TheoFantastique’s past interview with Matthew R. Bradley on his book Richard Matheson on Screen for more on this great writer.