(Blurb for I Am Legend from Goodreads) Robert Neville is the last living man on Earth… but he is not alone. Every other man, woman and child on the planet has become a vampire, and they are hungry for Neville’s blood.
By day he is the hunter, stalking the undead through the ruins of civilisation. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for the dawn.
How long can one man survive like this?
I Am Legend is an interesting if somewhat depressing novel written by Richard Matheson. Set in Los Angeles, it tells the story of Robert Neville who appears to be the sole survivor of a pandemic which has turned the victims into vampires. At night he locks himself in his home out of reach from the vampires, playing loud music and getting drunk before eventually falling asleep. By day Neville has much to do such as patching up his house after overnight attacks, creating wooden stakes which he uses to kill dormant vampires and scavenging for supplies. Neville uses the traditional means of keeping the vampires at bay: garlic, crucifixes and mirrors.
Although the story is quite short, it’s a fairly difficult read. We learn about Neville’s daughter who had to be taken to the government fires after being claimed by the disease. His wife whom he buried but rose again from the dead as a vampire had to be killed, and his bouts of depression and alcoholism. He attempts to investigate the disease by foraging books from libraries, and microscopes from laboratories theorising that the disease is a strain of bacillus.
Neville does eventually get some company in the shape of a dog and later a female, but they are all too fleeting and the feeling that there is no hope exists throughout. The end of the novel in itself is quite prophetic given the title of the book. For me though, I prefer something less depressing.
I am Legend was written in 1954 and was adapted into three movies The Last Man on Earth (1964), The Omega Man (1971) and more recently I Am Legend (2007) as well as inspiring a host of others including George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. Reading the book you can also see shades of The Walking Dead series.
