Richard Matheson, screenwriter and novelist, a contemporary master of the suspense story, was born in Allendale, New Jersey, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. After serving in the Army in France and Germany during WWII, he studied journalism at the University of Missouri at Columbia, where he earned his bachelor of journalism degree in 1949. While in Columbia, Matheson wrote fiction for a campus magazine and music reviews for the Columbia Missourian. He began his professional writing career, while working at night as a linotype machine operator, with the sale of his story "Born of Man and Woman" to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Since then he has published more than eighty-five stories in magazines, six story collections, and ten novels, and he has written extensively for both movies and television. Matheson lives in Woodland Hills, California, with his wife Ruth. Their four children are grown...