Firstly, Neville focuses his violent experiments on female undead – exclusively, as far as we see. It’s all hand-waved at best – the book is far more interested in Neville’s state of mind and struggle with despair than its own nominal context.īut – inevitably – both of my major issues are founded in the book’s treatment of women. We learn in an aside (blink and you miss it) that there was a war, which caused dust storms that spread the infection. That said, we see the creatures only through Neville’s eyes and it’s clear that however expert he becomes in the disease itself (another niggle: it’s frankly unbelievable what he works out with a bit of library reading) he never really understands what he’s seeing.īut the rest of the world-building is nothing but tinsel either. And they’re the same people – Ruth lives near enough that Neville kills her husband (…which begs the question of where she was that day, but we’ll skip that for now). The next niggle follows hard on the heels of the first: sometimes, the vampires kill each other. I never quite made sense of this. They are portrayed as feral, which I can’t reconcile with the society that emerges at the end. Needless to say, this didn’t win me over. He in turn obsesses over his sexual frustrations (we eventually find out it’s been about 5 months since his wife died). Because it’s the 50s, the female vampires spend their nights exposing themselves and making ‘lewd gestures’ to try and tempt Neville out. We meet him making stakes – lots of stakes – and obsessing about garlic but it’s a while before we confirm who haunts his nights. He survives behind shutters, a generator keeping his lights on and music playing, running a freezer full of food to keep him going. Now, his state of mind is fragile at best, clinging on to life if not hope. Robert Neville was a damaged man before his now undead neighbours began clustering on his lawn each night, baying for his blood. On the good side, Matheson does an excellent job of building tension and playing his narrative cards close to his chest. There’s aspects of I Am Legend that I really like (at least in principle) there are others that are painful hallmarks of its time. It’s also Golden Age scifi, and… that shows too. The book is a classic – with reason (that ending!) – but it’s a debut novel and I think it shows in the shoddy world-building and dodgy characterisation. I have to assume that many fans were deeply disappointed but I’m a Bad SF Fan – I couldn’t remember either story well enough to have an opinion. This month sees the first film adaptation that largely throws the book out the window after stealing its title, which makes it a tricky candidate for The Book Was Better. Instead, I’m going to take another look at it side by side with the Will Smith adaptation (as a Bad SF Fan, I haven’t seen the Vincent Price and Charlton Heston versions). I nearly chose I Am Legend for a Confession, but I’ve read it before – however little I remembered beyond the ending.
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