Photo © RC Matheson
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Guest of Honour
IN KEEPING with our primary theme of "The Next Generation", we are delighted to welcome living legend RICHARD MATHESON and his son RICHARD CHRISTIAN MATHESON as author Guests of Honour to World Fantasy Convention 2013.
RICHARD MATHESON was born in New Jersey in 1926. He is a master of modern science fiction, fantasy and horror, and Stephen King credits him with single-handedly regenerating a stagnant genre. Matheson's first published story, 'Born of Man and Woman' appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1950 and was the title story of his first collection, published four years later.
His work has subsequently been collected in such volumes as The Shores of Space, four volumes of Shock, the Bram Stoker and World Fantasy Award-winning Richard Matheson: Collected Stories, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet: Horror Stories by Richard Matheson, Duel: Terror Stories by Richard Matheson, Off Beat: Uncollected Stories, Button Button: Uncanny Stories, and Steel and Other Stories.
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His best known novels include the influential I Am Legend, The Shrinking Man, A Stir of Echoes, Hell House, The World Fantasy Award-winning Bid Time Return and What Dreams May Come, all of which have been turned into movies.
More recent titles have included a series of Westerns, plus 7 Steps to Midnight, Now You See It..., Camp Pleasant, Hunted Past Reason and Come Fygures Come Shadowes. His latest novel, Other Kingdoms (2011), is about witchcraft and fairies in a rural English village, as narrated by an ageing horror writer.
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Not only did Richard Matheson script fourteen episodes of Rod Serling's iconic The Twilight Zone TV series (including the classic 'Nightmare at 20,000 Feet'), along with episodes of Thriller, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Star Trek, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., Night Gallery, Amazing Stories and The Martian Chronicles mini-series, but his produced movie scripts include The Fall of the House of Usher, Pit and the Pendulum, Master of the World, Night of the Eagle (aka Burn, Witch, Burn), Tales of Terror, The Raven, The Comedy of Terrors, The Last Man on Earth (as "Logan Swanson"), Fanatic (aka Die! Die! My Darling!), The Devil Rides Out (aka The Devil's Bride), De Sade, Duel, The Legend of Hell House, Dying Room Only, Scream of the Wolf, Dracula (1974), The Stranger Within, Trilogy of Terror, The Strange Possession of Mrs. Oliver, Dead of Night, Somewhere in Time, Twilight Zone: The Movie, Jaws 3-D, The Dreamer of Oz, Twilight Zone: Rod Serling's Lost Classics, Trilogy of Terror II and the two 'Kolchak' TV movies, The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler.
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Other film and TV adaptations based on his stories and novels include The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Omega Man, What Dreams May Come, Stir of Echoes, I Am Legend, The Box and Real Steel, along with episodes of Late Night Horror, Journey to the Unknown, the new Outer Limits, Masters of Horror and and even an episode of Family Guy.
Photo © RC Matheson
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More recently, in collaboration with his son Richard Christian Matheson, he sold three spec scripts to Universal and Warner Bros., along with an upscale horror film to Ivan Reitman.
Richard Matheson was awarded the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1984 and the World Horror Convention's Living Legend Award in 2000. In 2006, he was presented with The Legend Award by Ray Bradbury in Los Angeles.
