Thursday, September 27, 2012

The Box: Uncanny Stories by Richard Matheson

Sometimes I enjoy taking a break from reading books and turn my attention to listening to audiobooks. I've listened to quite a few audiobooks lately and The Box: Uncanny Stories by Richard Matheson was one of the more intriguing ones.

The Box is a compilation of twelve short stories written by Richard Matheson and they fall into the horror and suspense genre. Grover Gardner did a superb job of reading each story. I enjoyed listening to Mute, Button, Button & Girl of My Dreams the most. However, most of the stories were excellent, with the exception of a couple that didn't interest me much.

The first short story, Button, Button, was actually made into a movie titled The Box starring Cameron Diaz, which I've heard about, but haven't seen.

I've never read anything before by Richard Matheson. Nor was I familiar with his name until recently. I learned from Wikipedia that Richard Matheson is an American author and screenwriter with a long and prolific career. Even if I wasn't familiar with Matheson's name, I am familiar with several movies for which he has written screenplays for like I Am Legend, A Stir of Echoes, and Somewhere in Time. Plus, Matheson wrote 16 episodes for the Twilight Zone television series which ran during the late 1950s, early 1960s.

In 2010, Richard Matheson was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

Since I enjoyed listening to The Box, I plan to seek out other published works by Richard Matheson down the road.

4 comments:

  1. OOOOOOOHHHHHHH!!!!!!

    I love this man! He's a great writer and I've only read 'I Am Legend' - and it spooked me to no end; and yet it was funny in a dark, weird kinda way! :D

    Is this book out in printed form too?

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    1. I Am Legend is still in print as with many other novels written by Matheson. :-) I'm going to have to add another of his books to my wishlist!

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    2. He also wrote 'What Dreams May Come'. I know because I have the movie poster on the wall behind me. :D It's massive and covers the wall complete and I bought it from 'Blockbuster Video' when they were selling them. I bought mine for $40 on layby... but I put money on it and then forgot about it until one day 6 months later, I drove down to the store and they told me I had a layby and they were moving; so I needed to pick it up. I paid the last $30 on it and put the massive block poster (this is when they put a movie poster on a large block of wood) in the boot of my Celica. Boy! Was I glad I had the boot space; as most cars in my family didn't have a big boot like mine. :D As soon as I closed the boot, it poured rain!

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    3. Great story!! It sounds like you saved the poster from destrution just in the nick of time.

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