The Best of Richard Matheson

by Richard Matheson, Victor LaValle (Editor)

"The first career retrospective of terrifying stories by "one of the greatest writers of the 20th century" (Ray Bradbury), edited by award-winning author Victor LaValle Among the greats of 20th-century horror and fantasy, few names stand above Richard Matheson. Though known by many for novels like I Am Legend and his sixteen Twilight Zone episodes, Matheson truly shines in his chilling, masterful short stories. Since his first story appeared in 1950, virtually every major writer of science fiction, horror, and fantasy has fallen under his influence, including Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Peter Straub, and Joe Hill, as well as filmmakers like Stephen Spielberg and J.J. Abrams. Matheson revolutionized horror by taking it out of Gothic castles and strange cosmos and setting it in the darkened streets and suburbs we recognize as our own. He infused tales of the fantastic and supernormal with dark explorations of human nature, delving deep into the universal dread of feeling alone and threatened in a dangerous world. The Best of Richard Mathesonbrings together his greatest hits as chosen by Victor LaValle, an expert on horror fiction and one of its brightest talents, marking the first major overview of Matheson's legendary career. "[Matheson is] the author who influenced me most as a writer."-Stephen King "Richard Matheson's ironic and iconic imagination created seminal science-fiction stories. For me, he is in the same category as Bradbury and Asimov." -Steven Spielberg "He was a giant, and YOU KNOW HIS STORIES, even if you think you don't." -Neil Gaiman"--

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction, Science Fiction, Classics, Fantasy, Thriller

432 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 10, 2017

About the author

Born in Allendale, New Jersey to Norwegian immigrant parents, Matheson was raised in Brooklyn and graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School in 1943. He then entered the military and spent World War II as an infantry soldier. In 1949 he earned his bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and moved to California in 1951. He married in 1952 and has four children, three of whom (Chris, Richard Christian, and Ali Matheson) are writers of fiction and screenplays.

His first short story, "Born of Man and Woman," appeared in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1950. The tale of a monstrous child chained in its parents' cellar, it was told in the first person as the creature's diary (in poignantly non-idiomatic English) and immediately made Matheson famous. Between 1950 and 1971, Matheson produced dozens of stories, frequently blending elements of the science fiction, horror and fantasy genres.

Several of his stories, like "Third from the Sun" (1950), "Deadline" (1959) and "Button, Button" (1970) are simple sketches with twist endings; others, like "Trespass" (1953), "Being" (1954) and "Mute" (1962) explore their characters' dilemmas over twenty or thirty pages. Some tales, such as "The Funeral" (1955) and "The Doll that Does Everything" (1954) incorporate zany satirical humour at the expense of genre clichés, and are written in an hysterically overblown prose very different from Matheson's usual pared-down style. Others, like "The Test" (1954) and "Steel" (1956), portray the moral and physical struggles of ordinary people, rather than the then nearly ubiquitous scientists and superheroes, in situations which are at once futuristic and everyday. Still others, such as "Mad House" (1953), "The Curious Child" (1954) and perhaps most famously, "Duel" (1971) are tales of paranoia, in which the everyday environment of the present day becomes inexplicably alien or threatening.

He wrote a number of episodes for the American TV series The Twilight Zone, including "Steel," mentioned above and the famous "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet"; adapted the works of Edgar Allan Poe for Roger Corman and Dennis Wheatley's The Devil Rides Out for Hammer Films; and scripted Steven Spielberg's first feature, the TV movie Duel, from his own short story. He also contributed a number of scripts to the Warner Brothers western series "The Lawman" between 1958 and 1962. In 1973, Matheson earned an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for his teleplay for The Night Stalker, one of two TV movies written by Matheson that preceded the series Kolchak: The Night Stalker. Matheson also wrote the screenplay for Fanatic (US title: Die! Die! My Darling!) starring Talullah Bankhead and Stefanie Powers.

Novels include The Shrinking Man (filmed as The Incredible Shrinking Man, again from Matheson's own screenplay), and a science fiction vampire novel, I Am Legend, which has been filmed three times under the titles The Omega Man and The Last Man on Earth and once under the original title. Other Matheson novels turned into notable films include What Dreams May Come, Stir of Echoes, Bid Time Return (as Somewhere in Time), and Hell House (as The Legend of Hell House) and the aforementioned Duel, the last three adapted and scripted by Matheson himself. Three of his short stories were filmed together as Trilogy of Terror, including "Prey" with its famous Zuni warrior doll.

In 1960, Matheson published The Beardless Warriors, a nonfantastic, autobiographical novel about teenage American soldiers in World War II.

He died at his home on June 23, 2013, at the age of 87

http://us.macmillan.com/author/richar...

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Best of Richard Matheson is a collection of 32 of Matheson's best.

Around the turn of the century, I was enduring the agonizing gulf between Dark Tower books four and five when the local bookstore owner turned me on to Richard Matheson, saying he was one of Stephen King's biggest influences. After devouring one of his westerns and I Am Legend and Other Stories, I was hooked.

After a creepy introduction by Victor LaValle, we're treated to many of Matheson's iconic tales, some of which were turned into Twilight Zone episodes or adapted to TV or film in other ways. Many of the greats are here: Button, Button, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, Duel, Third from the Sun, as well as others I'd never read before, like The Prisoner, Big Surprise, and Mute.

It's funny that Matheson's is one of Stephen King's influences in that their writing isn't all that similar. Where King's prose is overly verbose at times, Matheson's is more like a sharpened knife. He cuts you hard and deep, knowing just how to hurt you the most. He knew just how to let the suspense build, like a pressure cooker. It's no wonder many of his stories were adapted for the Twilight Zone and other shows. Richard Matheson was the master of the twist ending.

The Best of Richard Matheson is a must read for anyone who likes suspenseful short stories, fans of the Twilight Zone, or Stephen King fans interested at getting a peek at some Kingly lineage. Four out of five stars.

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Almost precisely two years ago, I had some words to say about a then-new anthology that had been released by Penguin Classics: "Perchance to Dream," a 300+-page collection of short stories by the author Charles Beaumont. Flash forward two years, and I am now here to tell you of a 2017 Penguin release that almost serves as a companion volume to that earlier book: "The Best of Richard Matheson," a generous, 400+-page whopper that should come as a welcome treat for fans of the late, great author. I say "companion volume" for several reasons. The authors were good friends, for starters, and both are popularly known for their screenplays for episodes of the cult TV program "The Twilight Zone" (Beaumont contributed 22 such scripts; Matheson, 15; and host Rod Serling, an astounding and practically superhuman 89, of the five seasons' 151 episodes). Plus, of course, the fact that both authors wrote in a bewildering number of genres, as both anthologies make abundantly clear. So is the new volume "The Best" of this beloved author? Naturally, opinions will always vary. Personally, I feel that any "Best of Matheson" that fails to include his uber-scary story "Slaughter House," as well as the sci-fi masterpiece "Steel" (later adapted as one of those 151 "TZ" eps) cannot fairly claim that title, although I will admit that the book's editor, Victor LaValle, had his work cut out for him in winnowing down Matheson's lifetime output to the 33 stories presented here. Regardless, what we have been given is a generally pleasing and wide-ranging collection, and I was happy to note that only three stories overlap with another Matheson collection that I had recently enjoyed, "The Shores of Space."

As for the stories here themselves, let's deal first with those you may be familiar with, by dint of their later adaptations as various television entertainments. Four of those "TZ "adaptations are here in their original forms. There is "Death Ship," in which the three-man crew of a space vehicle lands on an unknown world and discovers a wrecked craft containing...their own corpses; the tension-filled "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," a marvelously ambiguous story in which a man sees (or seems to see) a gremlin perched on the wing of his airplane in flight (readers will marvel at the ease with which the tale's protagonist, Wilson, manages to bring a gun aboard that plane!); "Third From the Sun," which gives us two families attempting to steal a spaceship and fly to another planet, capped by a wonderful twist ending; and "Mute," a beautifully written, moving tale--the longest in this anthology--about a 7-year-old boy who has been raised by his scientist parents to be a telepath, and what happens when those parents suddenly perish. Also included here is the frightening tale "Prey," in which a woman does battle with a grim-visaged, knife-wielding Zuni fetish doll in her locked apartment; a tale that was later adapted by Matheson as the third chapter in the fondly remembered TV movie "Trilogy of Terror," starring Karen Black. And then there's the remarkably suspenseful story "Duel," in which a driver does battle on the open road with a maniac trucker; a story that was later turned into another TV movie, this one directed by some first-timer named Steven Spielberg. All six of these tales should surely prove of great interest to fans of those later TV incarnations.

For the rest of it, I suppose the Horror category comprises the largest segment of the remaining stories. In "Blood Son," a strange young boy wishes that he were a vampire, with unfortunate (?) results. (I must deduct a few points from this story for the egregiously misplaced modifier in the sentence "An only child, they noticed his flaws quickly.") "Where There's a Will" is a deliciously morbid tale of premature burial, wrapping up with a conclusion straight out of the old EC Comics. In "Button, Button," a married couple is told that a strange gizmo that they are given, if pressed, will result in a stranger's death somewhere in the world...and $50,000 for them. What would you do? "Day of Reckoning" gives us the truly unpleasant story of a young mother's revenge on her unwanted child, while "Haircut" depicts the plight of a zombie who just happens to need a little taken off the top. And then there's "Long Distance Call," in which a spinster invalid keeps getting hang-up phone calls that grow increasingly frightening in nature. In "Deus Ex Machina," a man cuts himself while shaving one morning, only to discover that he's actually a wire-filled robot! And in the remarkably clever "No Such Thing as a Vampire," the wife of a 19th century Transylvanian doctor is slowly being drained by one of the living dead. (Trust me, you'll want to reread this story as soon as you finish it, to better appreciate its ingenious qualities.) And finally, there is "Shock Wave," the collection's last offering, in which a church organ rouses to malicious life.

Matheson, of course, was a celebrated author of science fiction novels as well as horror, and this collection gives us a good half dozen in the sci-fi vein. In "Shipshape Home," a young wife discovers that her building's super has an eye in the back of his head, and that the entire building itself is actually a rocket ship! "Dance of the Dead," surely one of the more disturbing tales here, written in a hyperstylized, beboppish lingo, tells of two couples on a double date in a post-apocalyptic society, and of the very bizarre nightclub entertainment that they witness. The humorous "Man With a Club," told via heavy Brooklyn slang by its narrator, deals with an Alley Oop-sort of caveman who is inexplicably dumped into the heart of Times Square. "The Prisoner" is another time-travel story, in which a nuclear physicist from the 1940s is somehow catapulted a decade forward, and into the body of a convict on Death Row. Some predicament! "The Last Day" is a wonderfully moving tale of Earth's final 24 hours, and one man's attempt to see his mother and sister in Brooklyn one more time. And then there's "One For the Books," in which a university janitor discovers himself absorbing the knowledge of every volume that he comes in contact with...automatically! But how much knowledge can this poor man take, and why is this happening, anyway?

"The Best of Richard Matheson" also offers the reader three tales in the category of Suspense. In "Dying Room Only," a young couple stops at a lonely diner in the desert Southwest; when the husband enters the Men's Room to freshen up and then promptly disappears, his wife is thrust into a virtual nightmare amongst that eatery's creepy inhabitants. In the strangely titled "Now Die In It," the husband in another youngish couple is told by a mystery phone caller that he is about to be murdered...only to have that caller show up at the house a few minutes later. And in the tense "A Visit to Santa Claus," an unhappily married man (named Ken Burns!) plots to have his wife killed while he and his son are visiting St. Nick in a department store. (Unfortunately, most readers will have anticipated a more clever ending than the one that Matheson actually gives us here.)

The collection also offers up two tales of outright Humor. In the short short "Counterfeit Bills," a ribald bit of cloning culminates in a pun of excessive groanability. And in "The Funeral," a vampire organizes a service for himself at a staid mortuary, with hilarious results. And there is also one decidedly Western story presented here, "The Conqueror"; a tale so well told that it has made me want to seek out Matheson's Western novel "Shadow on the Sun" one day.

Anyway, that's the good news, all 27 pieces of it. This collection, unfortunately, also contains a half dozen tales that just did not work for this reader, either because they were too skimpy to make any genuine impact, or too ambiguous for a full comprehension, or just too lightweight and inconsequential in general. Thus, we have the slim "Born of Man and Woman," in which a mutant baby tells of his rage in semiliterate fashion. "Witch War" gives us seven little girls with peculiar mental abilities who are used by one country's army in its military battles; another very brief tale that might have been expanded for better impact, I feel, and yet is, strangely enough, editor LaValle’s favorite in this anthology. "Dress of White Silk" is also narrated by a very strange youngster, and is a story that, I have to confess, I could not understand at all. Likewise, "The Holiday Man" gives us a character who either causes and/or merely observes all the fatalities during a U.S. holiday weekend. Again, ambiguousness reigns here. In "Big Surprise," a young boy's digging for gold leads to another EC Comics-type of ending, in this little piffle of a tale. And finally, in "Finger Prints," a man is sexually molested on a bus (I think) by a lonely and frustrated woman, in still another story that will make the reader think, "Yeah, so what? What's the point?"

Still, six clinkers out of 33 isn't exactly a bad ratio, is it? If only three of those clinkers had been excised completely, and the other three substituted with "Slaughter House," "Steel" and perhaps "Little Girl Lost" (another future "TZ" adaptation), this volume really might be "The Best of Richard Matheson," rather than "A Whole Lot of Great Stuff and a Few Bombs by Richard Matheson." Nevertheless, this new collection from Penguin does come highly recommended by yours truly....

(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at http://www.fantasyliterature.com/ ... a most ideal destination for all fans of Richard Matheson....)

[Christopher Conlon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Choosing the “best” of a writer—especially a prolific writer—is by its nature problematic. Once editors get past the obvious classics, their choices inevitably become subjective and thus open to criticism, especially from the writer’s most passionate and well-informed fans. In fact, even the inclusion of a writer’s classics can become a bone of contention, as happened two years ago with Penguin’s unfortunate Charles Beaumont volume, “Perchance to Dream”—an anonymously-edited “Selected Stories” in which the stories were mostly incompetently selected, reprinting numerous dated and unremarkable tales while inexplicably omitting much of Beaumont’s best work, including “The Hunger,” “The Crooked Man,” “Miss Gentilbelle,” and what many Beaumont fans consider his single greatest story, the astonishing “Black Country.” And so when Penguin announced “The Best of Richard Matheson,” readers couldn’t help but feel some trepidation. Matheson and Beaumont, close friends in life, are inextricably linked in many fans’ minds through their various writing collaborations as well as their unforgettable teleplays for Rod Serling’s “Twilight Zone.” Would this volume, like the Beaumont, also be curated by some anonymous hack who clearly possessed little knowledge of the subject at hand? What would the final result be like?

Happily—and perhaps due in part to the criticism the Beaumont book received—Penguin has chosen another tack with Matheson, whose oeuvre constitutes over sixty years of top-flight work in nearly every genre and whose short stories are considered among his finest accomplishments. As editor Penguin has enlisted the services of that fine fantasist Victor LaValle, perhaps best known for his wonderful short novel “The Ballad of Black Tom,” a variation on Lovecraft’s “The Horror at Red Hook.”

The vast majority of the stories editor LaValle has chosen will certainly be welcomed by any Matheson fan as representing this great writer’s “best.” Matheson’s first published tale, the groundbreaking “Born of Man and Woman,” is here, along with “Prey” (the TV movie version with Karen Black being chased by a Zuni fetish doll is as well-remembered as the story itself), “Duel” (filmed unforgettably by Steven Spielberg at the beginning of his career), and five pieces that were turned into memorable episodes of “The Twilight Zone”—“Death Ship,” “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” “Third from the Sun,” “Long Distance Call,” and “Mute.” “Button, Button” is here too, and “Witch War,” and “Dress of White Silk,” along with over twenty more tales—all wrapped up in a handsome package, with the distinguished Penguin Classics label lifting Matheson’s stories permanently out of the realm of mere pulp fiction and placing them where they have always really belonged, on the shelf marked American Literature. Could a Matheson fan possibly ask for anything more?

Well, as a matter of fact, yes.

To be clear: “The Best of Richard Matheson” is a fine collection, surely the best one-volume introduction available to Matheson’s stories—and it certainly beats “Perchance to Dream” by miles in terms of the wisdom and appropriateness of its selections.

And yet…the truth is, this book might have been better. For all his editorial acumen, LaValle has made a mistake by including several of the author’s “rarities”—i.e., trunk stories—that were not published until many decades after their original composition. In each case (“Man With a Club,” “The Prisoner,” “Counterfeit Bills,” “Haircut”) it’s quite obvious why these pieces went unpublished at the time. Simply put, they’re not very good. They certainly have no place in a volume purporting to represent the cream of Matheson’s particular crop, especially when by taking up space they bump other, far superior tales. Of course any editor is limited by a publisher’s maximum word count for a project, but it’s still a little startling to see a book called “The Best of Richard Matheson” that doesn’t include “The Distributor,” “The Children of Noah,” “Mad House,” or, most egregiously, what is perhaps Matheson’s single most emotionally wrenching story, “The Test.” Cutting the unimpressive “rarities” would have made room for at least one or two more of Matheson’s truly indispensable tales.

The editor’s introduction is also, unfortunately, something of a loss. While LaValle makes some perfectly valid points regarding Matheson’s influence—“He’s in the DNA of too many other writers to count”—a large chunk of the essay is taken up with a lengthy personal narrative about LaValle’s own youth, detailing a series of events which he claims led to his own “Matheson moment” but which in fact (spoiler alert) has absolutely nothing to do with Richard Matheson. This kind of self-indulgent logorrhea should have been removed by the publisher before the book ever went to press—and trimming this tedious, overlong piece might have made sufficient room for one more Matheson masterpiece.

But whatever this collection’s problems, they are relatively minor in comparison to the riches that await both experienced and novice readers of Richard Matheson in these pages. While it’s not quite all it could have been, “The Best of Richard Matheson” stands as a worthy tribute to a writer whose importance to the American literary landscape only seems to grow with each passing year.

- This review originally appeared, in slightly different form, on “Twilight Zone Vortex,” 10/10/17

[Paul O’Neill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ashamed to admit this was first Matheson experience. It won't be my last. A masterful collection of his best short stories. I can see why he's cited as an inspiration for Stephen King and the like. Truly astounding work in here.

My faves were Duel, Dance of the Dead, Mute, Now Die in It, The Holiday Man, A Visit to Santa Claus, The Last Day, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, and The Prisoner, just to name a few.

There are some scares in here mixed with moving, emotional tales.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Matheson's credits include 16 episodes of Twilight Zone, many television movie films. many short stories and novels and was a huge influence on Stephen King. After finishing this book I certainly can see why. He essentially takes normal people and places them in strange events or situations when he isn't doing swerve or trick endings to his stories.
This book contains 33 of his short stories and among my favorites are "Prey" which was adapted years later into the made for tv flick "Trilogy of Terror" and called "Amelia" after the Karen Black character who purchases a Zuni hunter doll/statue that comes to life, "Duel" which turned into a 1971 tv movie starring Dennis Weaver as the regular guy being chased by an oil truck driver, and "Nightmare at 20,000 feet" which was the famous Twilight Zone episode in which William Shatner's character sees the very thick and big foot-like gremlin on the wing of the plane he is on.

[David Agranoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is not Hyperbole to say that Richard Matheson is one of the most important writers of the 20th Century. Ray Bradbury said that and I want to expand on the point. It is not just the novels, or the films and the TV shows. It is all of them. Neil Gaiman nailed it when he said you know his stories even if you don't know him. Weather it is I Am Legend, The Night Stalker, Somewhere in Time or one of his many Twilight Zone episodes. I have met most of my professional heroes and the only time I was ever star stuck in my life was the three times I met Richard Matheson. I often tell that story and people often tell me "I never heard of him," then I say his titles and they know them. Many of them are classics.

Matheson was a hero to me growing up. I started to read him shortly after I discovered Clive Barker and Stephen King. As a young horror reader, I was reading everything I could get my hands on by those two giants. I lived in the used section of Cavet Emptor the used book store in a old house turned into a jam packed used backstore. The store has moved but still exists. When I was young the horror section was in a small room just bigger than a closet.

Richard Matheson had a shelf to himself, his name caught my attention because I knew it, from years of watching the Twilight Zone. I proceeded to buy every book I could. I loved Matheson right away in part because he was a pure story-teller. I loved that he wrote Twilight Zones, novel and movies. He wrote weird but didn't create things so out there that a young reader like me couldn't get it. That was a problem I sometimes had with Clive Barker at the time. He didn't waste words like Stephen King.

So how does one compile a best of book for a author with a long productive lifetime of writing short stories. I am sure it was a huge challenge. It fell on the shoulders of Victor Lavalle (author of The Changling and the Ballad of Black Tom)who is certainly one of the IT writers of the day. He responded by reading everything and choose thirty-two classics.

LaValle's introduction was good, he gave a personal story that set the tone. I had read a good many of these stories before. Several of them you will know from the Twilight Zone, and if you don't know them you need to know them. The selection of stories is thoughtful and shows a good range of what RM could do as a writer. If this is your introduction it is a good place to start.

Stories that stood out for me in this reading include "Shipshape Home" about a apartment building with a mystery. Deus ex Machina that had a great emotional core and the Twilight zone Classics "Button, Button" and "Third From the Sun." Some of the best stories like Duel did less for me because I just watched the film (That Matheson wrote himself) and Nightmare at 20,000 Feet as it is also too well known.

Content wise this is a no brainer 5/5 book that should be required reading not just for genre fans but anyone wanting to understand 20th century American fiction. There are a few little things I wish they had added to the book, and I understand I might be asking for things outside of the Penguin classic Formula. Listing the year of publication under the title of each story and maybe editor commentary after each title. maybe even a paragraph. I would like to know more about the selection process.

Must have read and now that I know about The Charles Beumont Peguin Classics I have to read that too.

[Richard · Rating 2 out of 5]

Having read, and liked hugely, two of Matheson’s novels ( The Shrinking Man and I Am Legend ), it seemed like a good idea to tackle a stack of his short stories.
    The thirty-three here are mostly suspense-style tales I guess, with a little mild horror and science fiction mixed in. Written between 1950 and 2003, several were turned into Twilight Zone episodes and one, Duel, was later filmed by Steven Spielberg. To be honest, the latter was the only one here I liked a lot, although both Death Ship and Nightmare at 20,000 Feet stood out too.

[Otherwyrld · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of people (myself included) probably think of Matheson as the author of I Am Legend and little else, though possibly they might also come up with The Shrinking Man. We tend to forget that he was a notably successful screenwriter, with stories for The Twilight Zone and Star Trek amongst others. Some of the short stories in this collection were adapted for the screen such as "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" and "The Duel", a TV movie which was an early success for Steven Spielberg. Both of the latter appear in this collection, along with a number of much less know stories.

As a screenwriter, the author was used to writing in a wide variety of genres, which is well represented in this collection. Whatever their genre though, they all seem to have the hallmark of a rising sense of tension (and dread in the more horror orientated stories) which comes to a sudden and sometimes shocking denouement.

All in all, this was a good collection, but not a great one. Some of the stories have not aged well, particularly in the way in which women are written. One of the issues I had with this collection is that there is no feeling of continuity or development of the author over a period of time. The stories were written over a 30 year period from the 50s to the 80s but you can't tell because there is no listing of when they were written. This seems to be a curious omission for a "best of" collection, especially as the compiler takes the time to mention which publication each story appeared in, so why not go one step further and add the date. You can find the information easily enough on the Wikipedia page, which lists all the short stories in chronological order (you can find it at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard...), and it seems a shame that a similar format wasn't adopted for this collection.

[Jersy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A mix of science fiction and horror, of old-fashioned, Twilight Zone -esque stories and really disturbing tales. Great ideas, pretty forceful, but these stories work better for me if I read them individually in an anthology than collected in one collection.

[Samichtime · Rating 4 out of 5]

Truly deserving of its title! 🍿Ray Bradbury meets Steven King. 🚀Individual reviews below.

Born of Man and Woman: 6/5. Right off the bat we start with a banger. In the audiobook, the narrator actually sounds like he has Downs! Wow. This was super edgy!! 🎸😱

Prey: 3.5. Um… whatever. 🤷

Witch War: 1/5… wtf?

Shipshape home: 5/5 trippy.

Blood son: 5/5 epic. 🦇

Where there’s a will: 5/5. Epic, again!

Dying Room Only: 4. Decent

Counterfeit bills: 2.5 what?

Death ship: 3.5… meh.

Dance off the dead: 4/5. disturbing

Man with a club: 4/5 I don’t get it but its good

Button button: 6/5. Banger. I’ve definitely heard variations of this story.

Duel: 5/5. Reads like a stephen king story

Day of Reckoning: 4/5. Decent.

The Prisoner: 2/5. Snoozefest.

Dress of white silk: 4. mentally ill… a genre?

Haircut: 4. Umm…. what? 🤷

Nightmare at 20,000 feet: 4. Decent… maybe the most well known on here… but I expected more.

Funeral: 3… decent premise, but boring.

Third from the sun: 4. Not bad. Very much Ray Bradbury-like, the last sentence makes this a banger.

The last day: 5… slow start, but goes full rogue one at the end 😢

Long distance call: 3.5… decent but why do I care…

Deus Ex Machina: DNF- skipped. Since I also use a straight razor, I don’t want to read a bleeding thriller about it! (This is not a spoiler, you learn that on the first sentence.)

One for the Books: DNF… Completely unrealistic… the man says something in french, the woman speaks it back to him, how an english speaker would READ that word, rather than try to pronounce a HEARD word… lazy writing!!!! 🤦

Now Die In It: 2… Boooooring…. I do not care about the characters and they b*tch and moan too much!!

The Conqueror: Booooring…. for f’s sake, are all the stories in the back of the book gonna suck????? 🤦

Lost interest in the book at this point. 5 lame stories in a row. I don’t doubt that this is the best collection of Richard Matheson stories… and I enjoyed about 15 of them. Not bad! 🍿

[Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read, if you like short stories. Vampires, witches, gremlins and a psychotic juggernaut driver. What's not to like?

[fonz · Rating 3 out of 5]

No me extraña que Richard Matheson fuese el cuentista favorito de J.G. Ballard, porque leyendo esta antología se constata más de un punto en común entre la obra de ambos escritores por muy diferentes que parezcan en un principio. Y es que las historias de Matheson, como las de Ballard, hablan de la vida cotidiana de la sociedad norteamericana de consumo del siglo XX que tomó forma en los años de postguerra, donde el nivel de vida alcanzado por el petróleo barato y abundante, los automóviles, el futurismo, los electrodomésticos y la vida ordenada en suburbios geométricos, no parecía que podrían dejar espacio a lo sobrenatural. Y como Ballard, Matheson se las apaña para explorar los miedos, ansiedades y traumas subconscientes, introduciendo en esa modernidad de los años cincuenta norteamericanos lo extraño, lo sobrenatural, lo terrorífico, el substrato de psicologías alteradas que bullen bajo una cotidianeidad abundante en paradojas. Los mejores y más conocidos relatos atienden a esta tesis; "Nightmare at 20.000 ft" (me ha sorprendido que sea un relato mucho más ambiguo que su adaptación cinematográfica, abriendo una interpretación psicológica mucho más interesante), "The Prey" (un relato que es la base para "Muñeco diabólico", resulta que el guionista de la franquicia de terror flipó con una adaptación televisiva de este relato), "Duel", "Born of Man and Woman", "The Last Day"... Por otro lado el estilo de Matheson se ajusta perfectamente a esta concepción de lo fantástico en el espacio contemporáneo de las décadas centrales del siglo XX, como escribía Houellebecq comparándole con Lovecraft en "Contra el mundo, contra la vida", qué lejos esta Matheson del de Providence, escribiendo con la economía, elegancia y precisión del mejor diseño industrial.

Por otro lado no recomendaría esta edición, no hay ningún tipo de información sobre la fecha de publicación de los relatos, la introducción es de todo menos informativa y la selección es extremadamente irregular.

[James Morpurgo · Rating 4 out of 5]

After finally reading 'I am Legend' recently I just knew that I had to read more works from Richard Matheson. This collection is a fantastic showcase of his storytelling range with plenty to enjoy and dive into. It's amazing how many of his stories have been adapted into films and TV episodes and it was surprising how many in this collection were instantly familiar to me. As with many short story collections, even if titled as a best of, there will be a range of hits and misses but on the whole this was a solid collection well worth checking out.

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been a fan of Matheson for a long time and decided to read this collection before I read one that is other authors writing stories in his world. I’d read some of these before but there were some that were new to me too. Matheson is really a master of short stories and these are a testament to that. Very worth reading.

[Leslie Jonsson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Truly remarkable stories that even if you don’t know the name you are familiar with.

[Rusty Berr · Rating 4 out of 5]

After finishing this book of short stories I now realize how much Richard Matheson influenced Stephen King's writing. As someone who had grown up in the 60s and 70s, the golden days of television, many of these stories gave me a sense of deja vu, I knew them or had experienced them even though it was the first time reading them. An enjoyable read for anyone with a penchant for the weird strange and unsettling.

[DJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5 Rating Orignialy posted at MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape as part of the Time Traveler's Almanac group read.
Follow along with #TimeTravelThursday

Great start to the anthology!

I think telling someone the genre of a story is "time-travelling" is actually a spoiler itself. Time-travel isn't always used as the big twist - sometimes a story starts by saying they have the technology - but when you read an anthology where the bases of every story is going to be time-travel, well, the author is going to have to be creative if they want to use time-travel as the main twist.

Mason is part of a three-man spaceship crew with Mickey and their captain, Ross. As they are flying over the earth of a new planet, Mason sees something shine out of the corner of his eye, and captain Ross lands the cruiser to see what this mysterious object is. Upon further investigation, the crew realizes that is a crashed ship, and is one of their own. Going inside the craft to find some answers as to what happened, they discover the three-man crew dead. Finding the dead bodies themselves isn't the biggest shock; the biggest shock is that those three dead bodies are actually their own...

As I was saying: reading a time-travel anthology, I am already expecting time-travel to be in there somewhere, so it may be harder to trick me. From the little plot synopsis to start, you might think you know what is going to happen. I know I did, and you know what? The story tricked me!

Matheson is a great writer, and reading his prose was effortless. A couple of times I had problems understanding which "he" was talking, but probably personal issues. This story was written in 50's and has that classic sic-fi feel to hit, but, man, was this thrilling and intense!

The story doesn't travel outside of the crew being in the two ships, but the strength lies in the dynamic of the crew, and how Matheson plays on that. While we are in the mystery of trying to figure out how in world their dead bodes - if the are actually their own - got there, there is slowly, what I thought of as, a psychological thriller building up in the background, and it plays extremely well into the story to keep you double guessing as to what you believe actually happened.

The ending, like I said, was something that I did not see coming! However, I didn't know if I was right or wrong... It turns out I was right, but I actually had to Google a reference to make sure it had to do with what I thought. This might be personal or it might be because this story was written in the 1950's.

If I had understood the ending, and wasn't taken out of the story having to do research, I probably would have given this a 4 rating. Even if had known though, I still would have like a little more elaboration of what exactly happened, rather than things wrapping up in one sentence.

Classic sci-fi story feel; nothing blew my mind, but still a fast, fun, and thrilling read! A great start to anthology, and I'm looking forward to see how the rest of these 'experiment' stories use time-travel.

Also, this story is supposed to place in 1997! In the 50's they thought we would already be traveling to other planets already for day jobs... just a little off! :P

Be sure to check out my fellow time-travelers' reviews!
Alesha Escobar
H.M. Jones
Preston Leigh’s Leighgendarium
Timothy C. Ward

3.5/5 Rating

-DJ

[Tom Kristofferson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having really loved I Am Legend, I thought I'd dive into more of his work.

This was pretty good; a couple of standout stories ("Mute" and "Where There’s a Will") and the rest are fine. As might be expected, these generally have that Twilight-Zone feel to them, so your mileage may vary. And the reader does a better job than most audiobooks.

[Paul (Life In The Slow Lane) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of short stories is always going to be like a box of chocolates...

...some will be like that divine Chocolate Caramel while others will be the Tangy Orange Creme (you know – the one that makes you reach for the chunder bucket, or barf bucket or whatever you call it).

Richard Matheson's Best Of is surprising. I found myself thinking Matheson could have done a lot better for the first story in the anthology, “Born of Man and Woman”. In fact, I abandoned that one. (A definite Tangy Orange Creme). Luckily the very next one, “Prey”, was brilliant. Such a well-conceived and scary plot; it should be a movie. In fact it might have been an episode of The Twilight Zone, or The Outer Limits. Many of Matheson's stories were.

There's no doubting Matheson's talent; his subjects are so varied and yet all stamped with his distinctive brand of warped thinking. Anything from being buried alive (Where There's a Will) to being chased by a demon truck (Duel), to the famous concept of being paid $50,000 if you press a button on a box – but it means someone in the world dies (Button Button). Definite Dark Chocolate Caramel Cremes. The reason I bought the collection was just to read “Nightmare At Twenty Thousand Feet”, the screen adaptation of which you can see here: https://uploadstars.com/video/B31XUUA... The remake with John Lithgow was one of my all-time favourite movies. Not all the stories have a scary or dark tone to them; some are quite touching like “Mute”, the sad story of a young boy, raised by his parents as an experiment in telepathy, but starved of the one thing he needed – love.

Sooo folks, get your eye muscles working on this bunch of storyettes. It contains a smorgasbord of emotions, and thought provoking themes. Most of the stories were written in the 50s and 60s and the writing style is a reflection of those simpler times. Yep, there's a few stories you won't like, (I reckon even I could have written a better ending to Shipshape House) but don't let that stop you. A wonderful journey from one of my favourite authors.

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Partial review, having read the following:

Buried Talents 2/5
The Near Departed 2/5
Prey 4/5
Witch War 3/5
Dance of the Dead 3/5
Dress of White Silk 3/5

These pretty much all feel like they could have been episodes of The Twilight Zone, although I don't think any of the above actually were. Matheson did however write 16 episodes. The stories generally have a creepy, supernatural vibe that isn't quite horror, sci-fi, nor fantasy, but somewhere in the dark, grimy cracks between.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

This short story collection certainly took me by surprise! While having great expecations – „I am legend“ and „Duel“ rank among my favorite stories ever told – I did not know what else to expect of Matheson. In these stories, he brings the horror to our door step and into our daily lives, which sometimes is the most terrifying. 4,5*

[Deadohiosky77 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh my goodness, what a wonderful collection of excellent short stories by one of the late greats! Thirty-two stories packed within these 400 pages and almost every single one of them is a gem. If you’re new to Richard Matheson and enjoy short stories then I highly recommend this one!!

[Justin Partridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Silence. Vast brooding silence. Not a breeze, not a drop of rain, not a grumble of distant thunder. The battle is ended.

Motionless trucks—silent tanks, wisps of oily smoke still rising from their shattered hulks. Great death covering the field. Another battle in another war.

Victory—everyone is dead.

The girls stretched languidly. They extended their arms and rotated their round shoulders. Pink lips grew wide in pretty little yawns. They looked at each other and tittered in embarrassment. Some of them blushed. A few looked guilty.

Then they all laughed out loud. The opened more gum packs, drew compacts from pockets, spoke intimately with schoolgirl whispers, with late-night dormitory whispers.

Muted giggles rose up fluttering in the warm room.

“Aren’t we awful?” one of them said, powdering her pert nose.

Later they all went downstairs and had breakfast.”

Just cover to cover, fucking outstanding.

And it’s funny, LaValle even brings it up in his stellar opening to the collection he himself edited, you KNOW so, so many of these stories already. Even if you don’t have an explicit knowledge that you do, you absolutely do. He’s just one of those writers who has been permeating everything you’ve watched and read and played for years even when you WEREN’T a dork.

Twilight Zone, the very firmaments of short fiction, countless television/movie scripts and comic adaptations of the stories and on and on and on and on. He’s an absolute monopoly. He’s a genre unto himself. Even the people in his wake and shadow, it’s so obvious and right there on the page, you would have to be actively ignoring it not to see it.

But the real kicker is, actually sitting down with all these in their purest form, actually experiencing the original twists and the consequences of those twists and the molten hot language and the power and speed of the stories. Holy shit, it’s just the best kind of reading to me. It’s like it vibrated in my hand and I just had to keep making excuses for “one more story. One more chapter.” It’s like you KNOW he’s good. You KNOW he’s this massive part of so many things you love.

But you don’t REALLY, really know until you get there. I’ve finally gotten there. I know now. And I’m a much better Monster Kid with the knowledge. These might have to become a yearly thing. Or maybe just a Matheson every yearly programming. He’s too goddamn good to not come back around to.

[Evione]

Elolvastam kilenc novellát ebből a válogatásból, illetve belekezdtem a tizedikbe, de eddig nem találtam egy olyat sem, ami tetszett volna. Van, amikor alapból nevetséges az egész novella (alapötlet, felépítés, befejezés, minden); olyan is van, amikor jól indul, érdekes, de aztán valami baromsággal agyonüti a végén. Itt-ott sikerül hatásos légkört építenie, hogy aztán a következő pillanatban ugyancsak valami baromsággal agyonüsse. Karakterépítés semmi. És senki ne jöjjön azzal nekem, hogy ez novellában nehéz feladat. Lehet, hogy nehéz, de vannak írók akik képesek rá. Ott van pl. Nathan Ballingrud, aki képes két mondattal erős atmoszférát teremteni és emlékezetes karaktereket is felvázolni.
Szóval ez a válogatás nekem nagyon nem, nem is látom értelmét tovább erőltetni. Egyébként meg, ha arra gondolok, hogy Mathesontól már a Hell House sem tetszett, lehet végképp elengedem a szerzőt, és többet egy írását sem veszem elő.

[Mark Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

A superb collection of Matheson’s best. It’s easy to see why he’s consider and modern master when you read these back to back. A handful of tales didn’t quite hit the mark for me but out of 33 stories that’s pretty damn good!

[Anna Kushnir · Rating 4 out of 5]

Непогано, але коли читала в 20 років, вражало якось більше.

[John Mendenhall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great little gems of sci fi and horror that set the model for many modern novelists and screenwriters. The little mid-century period references were especially fun.

[Theresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you’re in the mood for something a bit more classic this season, Penguin has released a new collection of Richard Matheson short stories curated by Victor LaValle (The Ballad of Black Tom, The Changeling.) LaValle, who is as engaging in his academic criticism as he is in his fiction, writes a foreword that instead of just regurgitating biographical facts or obligatory praise, contains an original, creepy-as-hell story from LaValle’s childhood that exemplifies Matheson’s signature motifs of the monstrous hiding in plain sight.

But the praise is still there, as “[Matheson’s] influence exists even for those who have never read him.” You may not have read Matheson before, but you’ve seen Matheson before, whether it was William Shatner –or John Lithgow — screaming about a monster on the wing of an airplane on The Twilight Zone or Will Smith as the last non-vampire on Earth in I Am Legend or a psychic Kevin Bacon solving a murder in Stir of Echoes. Matheson is perhaps only rivaled by Stephen King when it comes to adaptations. Still, LaValle specifically included stories that aren’t as frequently anthologized, though even the one he rightly calls “straight up disturbing” was a Masters of Horror episode called “Dance of the Dead”, starring Robert Englund and directed by Texas Chainsaw Massacre‘s Tobe Hooper. Matheson is a master of horror, but moreso a master of incisive prose and skill.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Born of Man and Woman - 4/5 - Very short and disturbing which encapsulates Matheson very well and is a perfect way to start a collection of his best works

Prey - 4/5 - Story of a haunted tribal doll. A survival story that takes place in a woman's apartment building that possibly might have been a minor inspiration for the movie Child's Play

Witch War - 3/5 - Cool idea but a bit too vague to really grab me

Shipshape House - 4/5 - One of the more Twilight Zone-y Matheson story although it would have been too big a budget for the actual show

Blood Son - 4/5 - Solid vampire story

Where There's A will - 4/5 - Very short story about being buried alive with an effective, albeit predictable, ending

Dying Room Only - 4/5 - Gritty horror story that refreshingly lacks anything fantastical or paranormal

Counterfeit Bills - 5/5 - A science fiction story based on copying oneself. It's a trope I've seen a few times but this might be one of the first uses of it. Darkly funny and the perfect use of the short form

Death Ship - 3.5/5 - Solid lead-up but the ending reveal felt like more of a detriment

Dance of the Dead - 3.5/5 - The story is one of those weird, this is what teens/early 20 year olds of the future will be like in a drug-addled, semi-nihilist society. It's not a trope I generally enjoy as it always is just too absurd. The interesting stuff is the hints we get about why the society is the way it is now as opposed to the college kid stuff

Man with a Club - 3/5 - A guy is recounting an experience with a caveman that traveled to modern times randomly. Story hindered a bit by the stylistic dialogue

Button, Button - 4/5 - One of his more well known stories even though people might not realize it's from him

Duel - 4/5 - Man vs a trucker in a road rage battle. Good stuff

Day of Reckoning - 4/5 - Truly disturbing

The Prisoner - 4.5/5 - A man's consciousness jumps forward in time to him being on death row for a crime he doesn't remember committing. The idea is great, the details are sketchy. I would have been more annoyed about the shaky details if it was a longer story but I'm fine with it in a very short story

Dress of White Silk - 3.5/5 - Short and semi-disturbing. The ending is obtuse but still gives you the willies

Haircut - 4/5 - A short and macabre story

Nightmare at 20,000 Feet - 4/5 - Very good story. Well known as an episode of the Twilight Zone

The Funeral - 3.5/5 - Silly and fun story

Third From the Sun - 4/5 - Good story done in a unique way despite an overall theme that has been done many times

The Last Day - 5/5 - Has some typical Matheson vibes where a man is suffering the mental crisis of living what is known by everyone to be the last day on Earth

Long Distance Call - 4/5 - Enjoyably creepy even if the premise does end up being kind of silly

Dues ex Machina - 5/5 - A man slowly unravels as the world he thought he knew starts falling apart

One for the Books - 4.5/5 - A decent premise that has a great ending

Now Die in It - 4/5 - Solid thriller about a man's secret life coming back to confront him

The Conqueror - 4.5/5 - Western about a young man traveling West with dreams of becoming famous

The Holiday Man - 2.5/5 - A weird premise that suffers from being too short and vague. That said it would probably have felt worse if he tried to explain what was happening within the story

No Such Thing as a Vampire - 4.5/5 - Seems like a standard little vampire story until the end. I didn't see the ending coming

Big Surprise - 3/5 - Weird and inevitably silly story about an old man in a small town

A Visit to Santa Claus - 4/5 - A man using a trip to see Santa with his son as an alibi for hiring a contract killer for his wife

Finger Prints - 3.5/5 - A very odd short story about an unexpected dalliance on between two strangers on public transit

Mute - 5/5 - Probably the best science fiction story about telepathy I've ever read, and that's saying something since seemingly every author in the genre from the 40s-70s wrote at least 1 story with mind readers in them. There an incredible level of depth for what is either a long short story or novella (I don't know what the qualifications are)

Shock Wave - 2/5 - Very bizarre story about a church organ with a mind of it's own, and it's mad. I didn't really like it much but I have to admit it's one of the more unique premises I've ever read

[Sammy Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Best of Richard Matheson was the seventh book I finished in my personal Short Story September challenge. This book was a lot different than the other six I’d read so far for a couple of reasons. For one, this is the first “best of” collection I read this month, which gives it a distinct advantage over the other collections. Secondly, this book is distinctive due to the significant number of stories that have been adapted for television; of the 33 stories, at least eight have appeared on the small screen (and three of those on the big screen as well).

Needless to say, Matheson was a master of short fiction, which is why Rod Serling dipped so often from Matheson’s well for episodes of The Twilight Zone. Of these, Nightmare at 30,000 feet (which also appeared in Twilight Zone: The Movie) is the most famous, but I’d argue that Long Distance Call (about an elderly woman who receives strange phone calls late at night) is the most chilling story to be given the Twilight Zone treatment.

Additionally, the story Button, Button was adapted for the 1980’s Twilight Zone revival series (and was later also loosely adapted into the mediocre Cameron Diaz movie The Box). The story involves a couple who is given a mysterious box with a button; press it, and they will be given half a million dollars, but someone they don’t know will die. Oddly, the original short story has a different (and less satisfying) ending than the Twilight Zone episode.

Also included in this collection is Duel, the story of a traveling man pursued by a malevolent truck which became Steven Spielberg’s directorial debut when he adapted it for television, and Prey, the tale of a woman terrorized by a Zuni fetish doll in her apartment. This story was later adapted as the memorable and horrific third segment in the TV movie Trilogy of Terror starring Karen Black.

The rest of the book is a mixed bag of horror, thrillers, drama, and sci-fi. Some of these stories conclude with the kind of twist ending that made Matheson’s writing so perfect for The Twilight Zone. Others are more interested in studying the human condition and setting a contemplative mood. In this way, I can very much see Matheson’s influence on Stephen King. Both writers excel at telling a tale, although Matheson is definitely less inclined to verbosity than King is. Matheson’s writing is succinct and workman-like.

Of all the stories in the collection, I have to give special attention to Big Surprise. In this tale, an old man named Mr. Hawkins taunts the neighborhood kids with a rhyme as they walk by his property, promising them a big surprise in exchange for digging a hole. Eventually, one of the kids takes him up on this offer. The ending of this story delivers the kind of full-body chills I am always chasing after when I read horror, especially short horror. Other standouts include the tense Where There's a Will (about a man who wakes up buried alive) and the sad The Conqueror (about a young man who wants to be known as the quickest draw in the west).

Bottom line: in the list of the best short horror fiction writers of all time, Matheson solidly deserves his spot. Reading his work now, some of his endings may seem predictable, some of his premises familiar, but one has to remember that many of these stories date back to the 1950s. He was a true original.