Richard Matheson was born in 1926. He began publishing SF with his short story 'Born of Man and Woman' in 1950. I Am Legend was published in 1954 and subsequently filmed as The Omega Man (in 1971), starring Charlton Heston, and I Am Legend (in 2007), starring Will Smith. Matheson wrote the script for the film The Incredible Shrinking Man, an adaptation of his second SF novel The Shrinking Man. The film won a Hugo award in 1958. He wrote many screenplays as well as episodes of The Twilight Zone. He continued to write short stories and novels, some of which formed the basis for film scripts, including Duel, directed by Steven Spielberg in 1971. A film of his novel What Dreams May Come was released in 1998, starring Robin Williams. Stephen King has cited Richard Matheson as a creative influence on his work.

Photo by JaSunni at PicasaWeb [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Praised by his friend and colleague Stephen King as "a very talented journalist," Stanley Wiater is a widely acclaimed observer of the dark side of popular culture. He has interviewed more major horror and suspense authors, filmmakers, actors, and artists than any other journalist, living or undead, for nearly five decades.

He is the creator and host of DARK DREAMERS (tm)--available here on DVD--a widely praised television series profiling many of these personalities, the first two seasons of which were syndicated nationwide in Canada and the United Kingdom. The 26 episode series includes exclusive interviews with such masters of unease as Clive Barker, Richard Matheson, Wes Craven, Gahan Wilson, Peter Straub, Richard Laymon, Bernie Wrightson, and Harlan Ellison. A single disc BEST OF DARK DREAMERS is also now available, while the complete series remains as a permanent companion volume.

Rue Morgue magazine has hailed Wiater as "the top horror journalist in North America for the past twenty-five years."

He has won the coveted Bram Stoker Award three times, and been nominated for the International Horror Guild, Hugo, Rondo, Eisner, Harvey, Locus, and Readercon awards, among other nominations. Wiater's more than 750 interviews, profiles, exposes, essays, reviews, DVD liner notes, bad puns, short stories, five collections of exclusive interviews, as well as his literary biographies of Brian Lumley, Stephen King, and Richard Matheson have been translated into more than a dozen languages.

An initial collection of his award-winning short stories, INTIMATE STRANGERS, has been fully dramatized by Voices In My Head Productions (tm) and is available here as an audio book. The four tale collection includes "The Toucher" which was the sole winner of a competition judged by Stephen King in 1980.

Wiater can also be reached at www.stanley-wiater.com or on the Facebook Pages "Stanley Wiater" and "Dark Dreamers" and the "Dark Dreamers Group."

He is currently developing through ShadoWind, Inc a Podcast entitled--shockingly enough--DARK DREAMERS (tm).

"Are you a Dark Dreamer?"