Number 16 is I Am Legend and other stories by Richard Matheson. I've seen both I Am Legend, starring Will Smith, and Omega Man, starring the late Charlton Heston, but I've never read the novella both were based upon. I think I hadn't read it mainly due to the subject matter; based on the movies, I had thought I Am Legend dealt with a post-apocalyptic world filled with zombies, and I don't deal well with post-apocalytpic worlds filled with zombies. It's the one horror genre that consistently freaks me out. I don't like the nihilism of it, for even if the film ends with 'hope', I can never get past the idea that any small victory is still a phyrric victory; can the survivors really ever win? Anyway, despite this, I decided to pick up the actual story and read it, mainly based on a fact I'd never realized before; the creatures that Robert Neville, as the last, surviving human faces, are not zombies, but vampires. For some reason, this simple shift in monster made the tale a little more palatable for me.

So, the two movies based on this story are there in spirit, but there are quite a few differences of course. We see Matheson's Neville in different snapshots of his solitary life, the first being three months after the last of the plague victims have turned and risen again, the second a year later, and the final one, three years later. We see him at differing points of despair, loneliness, hope, isolation and then resignation. In the beginning, he drinks a lot, hunts the victims of the plague (whom we learn are of two varities, those who are out and out vampires, and those who simply carry the disease and are really still technically 'alive'), but he must return to his barracaded home every night, to wait out the darkness for that is when the vampires come looking for him. They taunt him to come outside, and sometimes, he wonders why he holds on and doesn't simply join them, die and hopefully be reunited with his dead wife and daughter. But something keeps Neville going, and he begins to research the whole 'plague', which was actually spread by real vampires, and finds out it is caused by a bacteria in the blood stream, that needs blood to survive. Neville tries and tries to figure it out, but he (unlike Will Smith's version) is not a scientist, so he finds his ability to figure out a cure is limited.
The second time we see Neville, not much has changed, except his drive to figure out how to save humanity is obviously what saved him from drowning himself in alcoholic self-pity, but suddenly Neville finds himself consumed with a task; he discovers another survivor, and he must convince this survivor to come to him. The survivor is a mangy dog, who has obviously been on his own for quite some time, and doesn't trust his former 'masters', who, if he was caught by them, would be consumed by them for his blood. But Neville is desperate for the company, and tries again and again to have the dog befriend him. The relation between human survivor and canine survivor was an excellent part of the Will Smith movie, and in the book, it is just as heart wrenching, and it ends just as sadly.
The third time we see Neville, its has been three years since he last saw a person who didn't want to drain him of blood. He has hit a wall; he is (due to lots of experimentation on the afflicted) quite sure of what causes the plague and how it is transmitted, but he still has not been able to cure it. We learn more of Neville's background through flashbacks, but the caring, loving man he once was has disappeared; he has been alone for so long, he's forgotten a lot of those feelings. This is displayed in spades when he sees the last thing he ever thinks he'll see, a woman, in daylight, aparantly healthy. At first he is so shocked (as is she) that he's quite sure she isn't real, but when he figures she is, he chases after her, for she flees him, equally unsure of him. He brings her home, but he is instantly wary of her story, that she and her husband had survived, that he was killed only a week ago, and she had been roaming ever since. Relying on his survival instincts for so long, Neville cannot put them aside and enjoy the company of another person.
I don't want to give away too much, for the ending of the story is at once very different, and in some ways, slightly similar to the Will Smith movie. It is a phyrric victory ending though, leaving me feeling definitely uncomfortable.
The funny thing about this story though, is that reading this, I could easily understand the casting of Charlton Hestin as Neville in Omega Man; Matheson's Neville had a very Hestin-like quality to him.

I also enjoyed the other stories in this collection, especially Prey (which I actually recall seeing a movie version of when I was younger, and the sight of the protaganist hudled in the bathroom while the tribal doll tries to get at her from underneath the door has stayed with me till this day. I got a very delicious tremor of fearful recognition when I realized this was the same story), Dance of the Dead, The Funeral (I loved the notion of vampires and their horror monster collegues wanting to have funerals for themselves) and From Shadowed Places, a lovely collision of Western and African sensibilites that was also a very powerful story on prejudice.

After reading all these, I can easily see why Stephen King lists Richard Matheson as a major influence on his writing.