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Richard Matheson has enjoyed a long career as a writer of films, television scripts, novels, and short stories. His work is characterized by ordinary characters who suddenly find themselves in bizarre, often threatening circumstances. As Gary K. Wolfe notes in Twentieth- Century Science-Fiction Writers, Matheson has "a gift for imagining almost archetypal situations of paranoia and loss of control.... Matheson's technique is to assume a single fantastic premise and explore it with a rigor and logic that belies the sensational aspects of the initial premise." Stefan Dziemianowicz explains in the St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost, and Gothic Writers that "the key to Matheson's fiction and its unsettling effect is his style, which is as plain and simple as the ordinary objects he imbues with malice. His prose is straightforward, and devoid of the portentous descriptions many horror writers use to create atmosphere. The almost clinical quality of his writing actually adds gravity to his horrors by giving them a solid and seemingly irrefutable basis in reality, no matter how outlandish they seem at first." Among the most popular films based on Matheson's screenplays are The Incredible Shrinking Man, The House of Usher, Duel, The Legend of Hell House, Somewhere in Time and Twilight Zone--The Movie.
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