Mr. Matheson a self described specialist in the offbeat was one of the most prolific horror and science fiction authors of the 1950s 60s and 70s and many of his stories were adapted for movies and television. Stephen King Anne Rice and Ray Bradbury cited Mr. Matheson as an inspiration for their writing.
His best works were economically told with ripples of subtle tension building to a riveting finale. His plots often ventured into the supernatural but the suspense was grounded in the essential frailties he observed in real people.
Two of his most anthologized works included Born of Man and Woman (1950) about a mutant child chained in the cellar of a young couple s home and The Prey (1969) about a murderous Zuni doll hunting down a woman in her New York apartment.
Mr. Matheson set himself apart from many science fiction and horror writers of a previous generation by examining the anxieties of the modern age which often played out in Darwinian struggles.
The Shrinking Man published in 1956 and filmed the next year as The Incredible Shrinking Man with actor Grant Williams featured a handsome suburbanite who gets one seventh of an inch smaller every day because of exposure to radiation. His confidence and masculinity are tested to the point where everyday surroundings including the pet cat become mortal threats.
Steven Spielberg a devotee of Mr. Matheson s work first gained wide acclaim as a director with his 1971 made for television movie of the author s short story Duel. The Spielberg version starred Dennis Weaver as a California businessman on a road trip who is drawn into a battle to the death by a malevolent tank truck.
Mr. Matheson said the idea for the Duel plot came to him after being traumatized by a tailgating truck. He recalled it so vividly because it happened on the day of President John F. Kennedy s assassination.
Isolation and psychological distress were among the recurring themes in Mr. Matheson s writing. As a result he became one of the most frequent contributors to Rod Serling s television series The Twilight Zone in the late 1950s and early 1960s and in later years for Serling s anthology series Night Gallery.
Mr. Matheson s 1963 Twilight Zone teleplay for Nightmare at 20 000 Feet starring William Shatner as a terrified airplane passenger who is convinced that a monster is trying to shear off the wings is widely regarded as one of the defining episodes. The story was later included in Twilight Zone The Movie (1983).
The idea developed unsurprisingly on an airplane ride. Mr. Matheson told an interviewer with the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Foundation that I looked out and there was all these fluffy clouds and I thought gee what if I saw a guy skiing across that like it was snow because it looked like snow.
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