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megansss's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.0
jamesball's review against another edition
dark
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
3.0
lapingveno's review against another edition
4.0
Not bad, but a few of the stories didn't quite resonate with me on a "Best of" frequency.
parodyerror's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
macheath's review against another edition
dark
tense
fast-paced
4.0
A pretty extensive selection edited by Victor LaValle. Some stories were rereads for me ("Prey," "Duel" and "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet"), some were first reads. Matheson was a master of the type of fiction published in the genre magazines in the 1950s and 1960s, with all the positives and negatives that mastery implies: he was a slicker read than Bradbury, for example, but was less fanciful or poetic. When Matheson tries to do Bradbury-style sentimentality and nostalgia he falls flat; he's much better when he's barreling toward a nasty shock ending. A few of Matheson's stories verge on the experimental, and those were the ones I thought most highly of ("Born of Man and Woman" and "Dance of the Dead," for example). There were a few too many EC Comics-style "surprise vampire" stories for my taste. Worth reading if you're familiar with Matheson's novels or the stories he adapted for The Twilight Zone.
david_agranoff's review against another edition
5.0
It is not Hyperbole to say that Richard Matheson is one of the most important writers of the 20th Century. Ray Bradbury said that and I want to expand on the point. It is not just the novels, or the films and the TV shows. It is all of them. Neil Gaiman nailed it when he said you know his stories even if you don't know him. Weather it is I Am Legend, The Night Stalker, Somewhere in Time or one of his many Twilight Zone episodes. I have met most of my professional heroes and the only time I was ever star stuck in my life was the three times I met Richard Matheson. I often tell that story and people often tell me "I never heard of him," then I say his titles and they know them. Many of them are classics.
Matheson was a hero to me growing up. I started to read him shortly after I discovered Clive Barker and Stephen King. As a young horror reader, I was reading everything I could get my hands on by those two giants. I lived in the used section of Cavet Emptor the used book store in a old house turned into a jam packed used backstore. The store has moved but still exists. When I was young the horror section was in a small room just bigger than a closet.
Richard Matheson had a shelf to himself, his name caught my attention because I knew it, from years of watching the Twilight Zone. I proceeded to buy every book I could. I loved Matheson right away in part because he was a pure story-teller. I loved that he wrote Twilight Zones, novel and movies. He wrote weird but didn't create things so out there that a young reader like me couldn't get it. That was a problem I sometimes had with Clive Barker at the time. He didn't waste words like Stephen King.
So how does one compile a best of book for a author with a long productive lifetime of writing short stories. I am sure it was a huge challenge. It fell on the shoulders of Victor Lavalle (author of The Changling and the Ballad of Black Tom)who is certainly one of the IT writers of the day. He responded by reading everything and choose thirty-two classics.
LaValle's introduction was good, he gave a personal story that set the tone. I had read a good many of these stories before. Several of them you will know from the Twilight Zone, and if you don't know them you need to know them. The selection of stories is thoughtful and shows a good range of what RM could do as a writer. If this is your introduction it is a good place to start.
Stories that stood out for me in this reading include "Shipshape Home" about a apartment building with a mystery. Deus ex Machina that had a great emotional core and the Twilight zone Classics "Button, Button" and "Third From the Sun." Some of the best stories like Duel did less for me because I just watched the film (That Matheson wrote himself) and Nightmare at 20,000 Feet as it is also too well known.
Content wise this is a no brainer 5/5 book that should be required reading not just for genre fans but anyone wanting to understand 20th century American fiction. There are a few little things I wish they had added to the book, and I understand I might be asking for things outside of the Penguin classic Formula. Listing the year of publication under the title of each story and maybe editor commentary after each title. maybe even a paragraph. I would like to know more about the selection process.
Must have read and now that I know about The Charles Beumont Peguin Classics I have to read that too.
Matheson was a hero to me growing up. I started to read him shortly after I discovered Clive Barker and Stephen King. As a young horror reader, I was reading everything I could get my hands on by those two giants. I lived in the used section of Cavet Emptor the used book store in a old house turned into a jam packed used backstore. The store has moved but still exists. When I was young the horror section was in a small room just bigger than a closet.
Richard Matheson had a shelf to himself, his name caught my attention because I knew it, from years of watching the Twilight Zone. I proceeded to buy every book I could. I loved Matheson right away in part because he was a pure story-teller. I loved that he wrote Twilight Zones, novel and movies. He wrote weird but didn't create things so out there that a young reader like me couldn't get it. That was a problem I sometimes had with Clive Barker at the time. He didn't waste words like Stephen King.
So how does one compile a best of book for a author with a long productive lifetime of writing short stories. I am sure it was a huge challenge. It fell on the shoulders of Victor Lavalle (author of The Changling and the Ballad of Black Tom)who is certainly one of the IT writers of the day. He responded by reading everything and choose thirty-two classics.
LaValle's introduction was good, he gave a personal story that set the tone. I had read a good many of these stories before. Several of them you will know from the Twilight Zone, and if you don't know them you need to know them. The selection of stories is thoughtful and shows a good range of what RM could do as a writer. If this is your introduction it is a good place to start.
Stories that stood out for me in this reading include "Shipshape Home" about a apartment building with a mystery. Deus ex Machina that had a great emotional core and the Twilight zone Classics "Button, Button" and "Third From the Sun." Some of the best stories like Duel did less for me because I just watched the film (That Matheson wrote himself) and Nightmare at 20,000 Feet as it is also too well known.
Content wise this is a no brainer 5/5 book that should be required reading not just for genre fans but anyone wanting to understand 20th century American fiction. There are a few little things I wish they had added to the book, and I understand I might be asking for things outside of the Penguin classic Formula. Listing the year of publication under the title of each story and maybe editor commentary after each title. maybe even a paragraph. I would like to know more about the selection process.
Must have read and now that I know about The Charles Beumont Peguin Classics I have to read that too.
kt677's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
funny
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.5
This was my first novel of his, and I have to say I quite enjoyed this. I also have to credit him as an immensely creative person, if all of these short story were originally his idea. If you read this book, you feel like you have heard or know about at least one of them or the concept. Maybe they were depicted in movies or books or similar. If all of these stories were originally his, because I'm not fully sure of that, then I have to give a huge credit to him to partially form the film and book industry today. The only thing I can really complain about as someone whose first language is not English, this book was a challenge. The writing style was... weird. Even though the sentence structure was pretty easy to understand, and the vocabulary was not entirely from another platen (haha get it?) it was still hard to wrap my head around. I had to read a sentence twice, sometimes three times, to unterstand. It seemed to me, that RM used an unnecessary complex sentence to describe something very simple, and if your native tongue is not English, you want to bang your head on the table at first. But for all my not native English-speaking people out there, don't worry you'll get into it, maybe take a break if you need to.
aclamadoautor's review against another edition
4.0
Richard Matheson is a horror legend, but in this book there are many genres.
My favorite stories were:
Prey
A woman comes home with a box containing a birthday gift for her anthropology-loving boyfriend: an extremely rare Zuni fetish doll.
Counterfeit Bills
A humorous story, really short (two pages long) that pays off on the very last sentence. I just love these kind of stories.
The Prisoner
A man finds himself on death row in 1954 and claims to be a nuclear physicist from 1944.
Nightmare at 20,000 Feet
One of the most well-known and widespread stories of Richard Matheson, about an airline passenger doubting his sanity when he alone sees a gremlin on the wing, damaging one of the engines.
Third from the Sun
A space test pilot’s last hours, as he plans to fly his family and his neighbor’s family to another planet, in order to avoid the total destruction of the upcoming war and continue life and the human race.
No Such Thing as a Vampire
In a small town in Transylvania, a doctor's wife discovers puncture marks on her neck. Everyone fears she is being attacked by a vampire.
Death Ship
The crew of a ship flying over a planet to take some specimens back to Earth – so it can be evaluated if the planet has conditions to be colonized, as Earth is overcrowded – spots something shining and decide to investigate what it is.
Mute
A small boy is found on the woods by the local sheriff after his house was devastated by a fire and his parents killed. The boy is mute, although no problem can be found to justify it. The sheriff and his wife adopt him until the day a stranger comes to the small town looking for the boy.
Where There’s a Will
A man wakes up to find himself buried alive. This is tale of how he escapes through mere perseverance. A beautifully original buried alive tale.
Highly recommended.
My favorite stories were:
Prey
A woman comes home with a box containing a birthday gift for her anthropology-loving boyfriend: an extremely rare Zuni fetish doll.
Counterfeit Bills
A humorous story, really short (two pages long) that pays off on the very last sentence. I just love these kind of stories.
The Prisoner
A man finds himself on death row in 1954 and claims to be a nuclear physicist from 1944.
Nightmare at 20,000 Feet
One of the most well-known and widespread stories of Richard Matheson, about an airline passenger doubting his sanity when he alone sees a gremlin on the wing, damaging one of the engines.
Third from the Sun
A space test pilot’s last hours, as he plans to fly his family and his neighbor’s family to another planet, in order to avoid the total destruction of the upcoming war and continue life and the human race.
No Such Thing as a Vampire
In a small town in Transylvania, a doctor's wife discovers puncture marks on her neck. Everyone fears she is being attacked by a vampire.
Death Ship
The crew of a ship flying over a planet to take some specimens back to Earth – so it can be evaluated if the planet has conditions to be colonized, as Earth is overcrowded – spots something shining and decide to investigate what it is.
Mute
A small boy is found on the woods by the local sheriff after his house was devastated by a fire and his parents killed. The boy is mute, although no problem can be found to justify it. The sheriff and his wife adopt him until the day a stranger comes to the small town looking for the boy.
Where There’s a Will
A man wakes up to find himself buried alive. This is tale of how he escapes through mere perseverance. A beautifully original buried alive tale.
Highly recommended.