RIP.
I don’t mourn, exactly. He had a good run, and he’s survived by a large and successful family.
His impressive, enormous body of work is still with us, as powerful as when it was written.
He also wrote The Legend of Hell House (book and movie). I don’t have that on DVD, but I do have The Night Stalker, so that will be my memorial tribute this evening.
Richard Matheson didn’t just entertain millions; he provided a living to hundreds of writers for screen and page who, shall we say, “worked with interpretations of” Matheson’s story ideas.
There are a handful of individuals in Western culture who have created the bulk of the plots and situations that fuel popular narrative. Their ideas have been recycled, reworked, and revisited again and again.
Matheson was one of that select company of genuinely original thinkers.
Just so no one else has to look it up, it’s the one where a transporter accident splits Capt. Kirk into good and evil Kirks. I think that’s a pretty good one.