Is I Am Legend a horror story? Science fiction? Both?
The protagonist, Robert Neville, is a solitary figure, the last man alive on Earth. But he is not entirely alone; he is tormented by what others have become. The classic monster of myth and horror stories – vampires. Human shaped but without humanity.
They come to his home at night, a home that he has turned into a fortress against them. They taunt and tease him in any way they can in their desire for his blood. The female vampires even exploiting his sexual frustrations and loneliness – playing out erotic displays on the lawn – to try and draw him out.
By day, Robert can roam as far as he can during daylight hours. But, at coming night, he must return to shelter, or meet violent death.
So then, a horror novel? One man against vampires thirsty for his blood?
There are moments of horror and suspense. As when Robert realises, out on errands during the day, that his watch has stopped and he has stayed out later than he ought. A race with monsters at his heels follows. However, this book is not as simple as all that.
In Matheson's book, the vampire is not a creature of myths and folklore, some gothic creation of the supernatural. It is the language of science that is used to explain the origins and traits of the vampire here. Bacteria and psychology, not evil and the unexplained. If certain of these phenomena did not fit in with the bacilli, he felt inclined to judge their cause as superstition.
Matheson brought horror and sci-fi together here, producing something hybrid perhaps, or something else entirely.
With his main character apparently a sole human survivor of apocalyptic catastrophe, this novel is Matheson's deep exploration of loneliness and loss. Neville had not always been alone, his family lost to the contagion and to death. And this is not a story of his struggle against demons at his door, but the demons in himself.
It is the story of a lonely man trying to hold himself together, trying to find reason in a brutal world. Striving to stay human in more ways than one.
Sometimes, in the long and lonely evenings and nights, Robert has found relief in too much whisky. Letting a veil of inebriation soften the hard edges of the cruel world outside his door. And the reader is witness to the conscious efforts that this character makes to abstain. How easy, he considers, it might be to give in and slide into oblivion.
But one form of oblivion can lead to another, a much more permanent oblivion, and our protagonist isn't ready for that yet.
As with the best horror and science fiction stories, this novel uses the fantastic as the framework for a very human story, and ask human questions. What is the point of carrying on in the face of the unimaginable? What else is lost when one loses human connection? And what can a person abandon, and what must they hold on to, before they lose their humanity?
It is the loneliness that is the real horror in this story. It exacerbates every other torture that Robert endures, and leads to self-torture too. Robert's isolation, depression, and desperate want for escape is the horror, not the vampires outside.
After the last page has turned and the book is closed, it is not the pathetic vampires which stayed in my mind, but the image of a solitary man doing what he can to stave off despair. Sometimes sadly over too many glasses of whisky. And sometimes throwing himself into studies of his enemies. Vacillating between despair and hope.
This is a slow study of loneliness and depression looking for hope.
So, horror? Science-fiction?
I Am Legend is a bit of both, but really it's neither.
What it has definitely become is influential. Published in 1954, it has been an influence on many post-apocalyptic stories that followed, with its tale of humanity wiped out by contagion and infected survivors becoming something monstrous. These sorts of stories are much more commonplace than they were before Matheson's novel, and many of them owe a debt to Legend.
George A. Romero and Stephen King, amongst others, have acknowledged Matheson and this novel as a major influence.
By the way, there is another monster in this novel. A monster that hides in plain sight, but which is not seen because of our point of view. A creature not of the world in which the novel is set.
It is the presence of this monster, revealed in the final pages, which might really rock the reader. That might leave the reader considering just how much the world, and a way of life, can change.
To sum up, a novel that uses horror to get at what's human. To consider the fragility of life.
You can purchase a copy of I Am Legend by Richard Matheson here.
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