Editing Richard Matheson (section)

==Style==
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Several of Matheson's stories, including "[[Third from the Sun]]" (1950), "Deadline" (1959), and "Button, Button" (1970), are simple sketches with [[twist ending]]s; others, like "Trespass" (1953), "Being" (1954), and "Mute" (1962), explore their characters' dilemmas over 20 or 30 pages. Some tales, such as "The Doll that Does Everything" (1954) and "The Funeral" (1955), incorporate [[satire|satirical]] humor at the expense of genre clichés, and are written in bombastic prose that differed from Matheson's usual pared-down style. Others, like "The Test" (1954) and "Steel" (1956), portray the moral and physical struggles of ordinary people, rather than those of scientists and superheroes, in situations which are at once futuristic and quotidian. Still others, such as "Mad House" (1953), "The Curious Child" (1954) and "Duel" (1971), are tales of [[paranoia]], in which the commonplace environment of the present day becomes inexplicably alien or threatening.

===Sources of inspiration===
Matheson cited specific inspirations for many of his works. ''Duel'' was derived from an incident in which he and friend Jerry Sohl were dangerously tailgated by a large truck on the same day as the [[assassination of John F. Kennedy]].<ref name="Guardian"/> <!--A scene from the 1953 movie ''[[Let's Do It Again (1953 film)|Let's Do It Again]]'', in which [[Aldo Ray]] and [[Ray Milland]] put on each other's hats, one of which is far too big for the other, sparked the thought, "What if someone put on his own hat and that happened", which became ''The Shrinking Man''. ''Bid Time Return'' began when Matheson saw a movie poster featuring a beautiful picture of [[Maude Adams]] and wondered what would happen if someone fell in love with such an old picture. In the introduction to ''Noir: 3 Novels of Suspense'' (1997), which collects three of his early books, Matheson said the first chapter of his suspense novel ''Someone Is Bleeding'' (1953) describes exactly his meeting with his wife Ruth, and in the case of ''What Dreams May Come'', "the whole novel is filled with scenes from our past".-->

According to [[Film criticism|film critic]] [[Roger Ebert]], Matheson's scientific approach to the supernatural in ''I Am Legend'' and other novels from the 1950s and early 1960s "anticipated pseudorealistic fantasy novels like ''[[Rosemary's Baby (novel)|Rosemary's Baby]]'' and ''[[The Exorcist (novel)|The Exorcist]]''."<ref>{{cite book |last=Ebert |first=Roger |author-link=Roger Ebert |title=Roger Ebert's Movie Home Companion |edition=1990 |publisher=[[Andrews McMeel Publishing]] |isbn=978-0836262407 |year=1989 |page=419] |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/rogerebertsmovie00eber/page/419}}</ref>