Nightmare at 20,000 Feet » (Unabridged)

Richard Matheson is The New York Times bestselling author of I Am Legend, Hell House, Somewhere in Time, The Incredible Shrinking Man, A Stir of Echoes, The Beardless Warriors, The Path, Seven Steps to Midnight, Now You See It . . . , and What Dreams May Come. A Grand Master of Horror and past winner of the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement, he has also won the Edgar, the Hugo, the Spur, and the Writer's Guild awards.


He lives in Calabasas, California.

Richard Matheson has been called "one of the most important writers of the 20th century" by Ray Bradbury, and his work has inspired many other notable authors. Stephen King cites Matheson as "the author who influenced me most as a writer," and Dean Koontz says, "We're all a lot richer to have Richard Matheson among us." But it's the impact that his work has had on the popular consciousness that gives weight to Bradbury's praise. Even if you've never heard of him, you've almost certainly seen some of his work.

In addition to novels in the mystery, science fiction, horror, fantasy, and western genres, Matheson has been a prolific writer of film and television scripts. He wrote the script for some of the most memorable episodes of The Twilight Zone, including "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" (you remember -- William Shatner sees a gremlin on the wing of the plane . . .), "The Invaders," and "Little Girl Lost." He also wrote episodes of Have Gun, Will Travel, Night Gallery, and Star Trek (among them "The Enemy Within," in which Kirk is split into good and evil halves).

Several of Matheson's novels and stories have been made into films, includingThe Shrinking Man (filmed as "The Incredible Shrinking Man" in 1957), I Am Legend (filmed twice, once as "The Last Man on Earth" starring Vincent Price in 1964, and again as "The Omega Man" starring Charlton Heston in 1971), and Bid Time Return (filmed as "Somewhere in Time" starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour in 1980). Matheson also wrote the scripts for Stephen Spielberg's first feature film, Duel; the TV-movie The Night Stalker, which drew a record 75 million viewers on its first broadcast; and several of Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe films, including House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), and The Raven (1963).

Over a career spanning five decades, Matheson has won numerable prestigious awards, including the World Fantasy Convention's Life Achievement Award, the Bram Stoker Award for Life Achievement, the Hugo Award, the Edgar Allan Poe Award, the Golden Spur Award, and the Writer's Guild Award. Born in New Jersey in 1926, Matheson has lived and worked in California since 1951.

Stephen King was born in Portland, Maine in 1947. In the spring of 1973, Doubleday & Co., accepted the novel Carrie for publication, providing him the means to leave teaching and write full-time. He has since published over 40 books and has become one of the world's most successful writers. Stephen lives in Maine and Florida with his wife, novelist Tabitha King. They are regular contributors to a number of charities including many libraries and have been honored locally for their philanthropic activities.

With the success of the movie blockbuster I Am Legend, Richard Matheson is being discovered by a new generation of horror fans. Here is the classic tale that was a landmark episode of The Twilight Zone.

Much of Richard Matheson's work has found its way into pop culture: the title story became a memorable episode of television's The Twilight Zone, and more recently Will Smith starred in the blockbuster movie I Am Legend. Stephen King has declared that Matheson is one of his favorite writers. Find out why in this classic horror story of a man who peers out of his airplane window to see a gremlin destroying the wing of the plane.

Publishers Weekly

Although Matheson (I Am Legend; Hell House; etc.) needs no introduction to most horror fans, Stephen King provides one for this collection of classic weird tales in which he appreciatively remembers his mentor's "gut-bucket short stories that were like shots of white lightning." Spanning almost half a century, the influential contents are as much a roadmap to the direction horror fiction has taken since the 1950s as to Matheson's own legacy of spare, scary chillers. In lieu of pedantic priers into the Unknown, he offers sympathetic everymen, like the husband in "First Anniversary," who finds hints of the unearthly suddenly seeping through his comfortably complacent marriage. Matheson strips away horror's traditional gothic clutter to expose ordinary landscapes that perfectly take the imprint of his characters' paranoid fixations: that life's petty annoyances are part of a universal conspiracy to drive a person mad in "Legion of Plotters," and that dangerously malfunctioning household items are channels for a man's self-destructive anger in "Mad House." The agents of horror in these stories are less often the usual supernatural bogies than malignantly endowed everyday objects, like telephones, television sets and home appliances that are all the more frightening for their ubiquity. The well-known title tale about a nervous air traveler is a showcase for the author's trademark less-is-more prose style, which suspensefully delineates a psychological tug-of-war between man and a monster that may be purely imagined. Timeless in their simplicity, these stories are also relentless in their approach to basic fears. (Feb. 9) FYI: A Grand Master of Horror and winner of a Stoker for Lifetime Achievement, Matheson has also won Edgar and Hugo awards. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.