Bloodlines: Richard Matheson's DRACULA, I AM LEGEND, and Other Vampire Stories is not the first Richard Matheson book my name can be found in, but it was the first I Am Legend related title with which I was involved.
When I became aware that a small press publisher was working on a new book related to I Am Legend, including the first publication of Matheson's original screenplay adaptation, I reached out offering to assist the publisher (and separately the editor, Mark Dawidziak) in any way possible.
I was tasked with soliciting appreciations from people, including a request that they sign the lettered edition of the book. Some had already been arranged (Ray Bradbury, Mick Garris, Frank Spotnitz, Rockne O'Bannon), and the others were going to be derived from my suggested list (including George Romero, John Carpenter, Brian Lumley, Steve Niles), and the publisher's wish list (J.J. Abrams, Kiefer Sutherland, Wesleys Snipes). I was initially discouraged regarding Romero, but I made a case that there was no bad blood between he and Matheson. Given that his Night of the Living Dead remains the one film to best capture the tone of the book (which he acknowledged as an inspiration), I felt that an appreciation from George would be completely appropriate. Unfortunately, Romero's representative ignored my query, so it didn't really matter. Oddly enough, I did hear back from J.J. Abrams' and Kiefer Sutherland's representatives, each graciously declining the invitation due to their work schedules. I never heard back from Wesley Snipes, though his people probably thought the request was as off the wall as I did. Fortunately, the others I approached all agreed (though Brian Lumley ultimately bowed out when agreeable terms could not be reached with the publisher).
I also suggested the inclusion of R.C. Matheson's write-up on his father's novel that had been published in Horror: 100 Best Books. Everyone agreed, and I ended up re-typing the piece myself for inclusion in the book.
I also provided a gallery of photos from The Last Man on Earth, The Omega Man, and Romero's Night of the Living Dead.
For my efforts, I requested one of the advanced review copies, one complimentary PC copy of the limited edition, and the opportunity to purchase one of the deluxe editions, which is the version being highlighted here.
The lettered edition was presented in a laser-engraved wooden box. It's worth noting that I was so impressed with this enclosure that we hired the same manufacturer to create the laser-engraved wooden boxes for our deluxe edition of The Art of Ralph McQuarrie the following year.
The dust jacket is quite striking, with the look of a distressed antique leatherbound volume with a bat (see the image at the top of the post for the full wraparound). I've told the artist.
Harry O. Morris, that I wish the design could be realized in a true leather edition. Morris also provided illustrated endpapers (below).
All editions were signed by Matheson and editor Dawidziak. I have to say, I really enjoyed working with Mark, and I did so again, providing
I Am Legend cover art and movie stills when Matheson's screenplay was re-released as a trade paperback some years later. Mark was also a key contributor to our blog on the
Kolchak: The Night Stalker TV series, a show he literally wrote the book on!
The deluxe edition also contains a tipsheet signed by the contributors who provided appreciations.
Ray Bradbury's signature appeared on a separate page. (I believe the publisher had plenty of existing signed Bradbury pages for a variety of publishing projects.)
I was quite touched that Mark very kindly mentioned my (minor, in the grand scheme of things) contributions in the acknowledgements.
When I received a last minute request from the publisher to proof the portion of the book reprinting the novel, I of course agreed to take on that task. Over the next few days, I found myself doing a page-by-page comparison to the original
Gold Medal paperback. I remember being on a return flight from a work trip and finding a typo (a missing section break) that I would soon discover had infected nearly every English language version of the book published since the Walker edition in 1970 (the particular section break fell between two pages in both the 1964
Bantam paperback and 1970
Walker hardcover). I was quite pleased to have discovered that issue (along with numerous straightforward typos), and so I was heartbroken when the advance copy arrived and none of the fixes I had spent time reporting were included. I wrote it off, assuming that the number of people who were going to read the novel in this version of the book was minuscule, so it really didn't matter. Flash forward 16 years, while working on this post, and I discover that the fixes I provided, while not included in the ARC, were made to the text before the hardcover was published. After my initial disappointment, I never bothered to check the finished book when it arrived!
As the book neared publication, I had pitched Mark an appreciation of my own, which he not only welcomed, but advocated for with the publisher. It was an honor to be able to address the book's importance to me in what was the last deluxe volume containing the novel that Matheson lived to see published.
Check back next week for another item from the
I Am Legend Archive — one that has a special connection to this one!
