Editing I Am Legend (novel) (section)

==Critical reception==
As related in ''[[In Search of Wonder]]'' (1956), [[Damon Knight]] wrote:

{{blockquote|The book is full of good ideas, every other one of which is immediately dropped and kicked out of sight. The characters are child's drawings, as blank-eyed and expressionless as the author himself in his back-cover photograph. The plot limps.  All the same, the story could have been an admirable minor work in the tradition of ''[[Dracula]]'', if only the author, or somebody, had not insisted on encumbering it with the year's most childish set of "scientific" rationalizations.|Damon Knight<ref>{{cite book|last= Knight |first= Damon |year=1967|title=In Search of Wonder|url= https://archive.org/details/insearchofwonder0000knig |url-access= registration |location=Chicago |publisher= Advent|isbn= 9780911682076 }}</ref>}}

[[Galaxy Science Fiction|''Galaxy'']] reviewer [[Groff Conklin]] described ''Legend'' as:

{{blockquote|a weird [and] rather slow-moving first novel{{nbs}}... a horrid, violent, sometimes exciting but too often overdone tour de force.|Groff Conklin<ref>"Galaxy's 5 Star Shelf", ''[[Galaxy Science Fiction]]'', January 1955, p. 121</ref>}}

[[Anthony Boucher]] praised the novel:

{{blockquote|Matheson has added a new variant on the Last Man theme{{nbs}}... and has given striking vigor to his invention by a forceful style of storytelling which derives from the best hard-boiled crime novels.|Anthony Boucher<ref>"Recommended Reading". ''[[The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction|F&SF]]'', November 1954, p. 99.</ref>}}

[[Dan Schneider (writer)|Dan Schneider]] from ''International Writers Magazine: Book Review'' wrote:

{{blockquote|Despite having vampires in it, [the novel] is not a novel on vampires, nor even a horror nor sci-fi novel at all, in the deepest sense. Instead, it is perhaps the greatest novel written on human loneliness. It far surpasses [[Daniel Defoe]]'s ''[[Robinson Crusoe]]'' in that regard. Its insights into what it is to be human go far beyond genre, and is all the more surprising because, having read his short stories—which range from competent but simplistic, to having classic ''[[The Twilight Zone|Twilight Zone]]'' twists (he was a major contributor to the original TV series)—there is nothing within those short stories that suggests the supreme majesty of the existential masterpiece ''I Am Legend'' was aborning.|Dan Schneider (2005)<ref>{{cite web|url= http://www.hackwriters.com/iamlegend.htm |title=I am Legend by Richard Matheson |last=Schneider |first=Dan |publisher= Hackwriters |date=1953-01-05 |access-date= 2013-06-03}}</ref>}}

In 2012, the [[Horror Writers Association]] gave ''I Am Legend'' the special Vampire Novel of the Century Award.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://horror.org/2011-bram-stoker-award-winners-and-vampire-novel-of-the-century-award-winner/ |title=2011 Bram Stoker Award winners and Vampire Novel of the Century Award winner |work=[[Horror Writers Association]] |date=1 April 2012 |access-date=2024-10-25}}</ref>