Born in New Jersey and raised in Brooklyn, Richard Burton Matheson first became a published author while still a child, when his stories and poems ran in the "Brooklyn Eagle". A lifelong reader of fantasy tales, he made his professional writing bow in 1950 when his short story "Born of Man and Woman"? appeared in "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction"; Matheson turned out a number of highly regarded horror, fantasy and mystery stories throughout that decade. He broke into films in 1956, adapting his novel "The Shrinking Man" for the big-screen The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957).Richard Matheson has written novels and short stories, as well as screenplays for both film and television. He has sometimes written under the pen name, "Logan Swanson". His prose has often been adapted for the screen by others and sometimes by Matheson, himself. Notably, he is among the few writers who contributed to Rod Serling's classic television series, The Twilight Zone (1959) (1959-1964) almost as prolifically as Serling, himself. He wrote about fifteen scripts for the original series and also contributed to Rod Serling's Night Gallery (1969) (1972), Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) and the television reboot of The Twilight Zone (1985) (1985-1989). His novels include, I Am Legend (2007) (1954), "The Shrinking Man" (1956), Stir of Echoes (1999), "Ride the Nightmare" (1959), "The Beardless Warriors" (1960), "Bid Time Return" (1975), (later known as Somewhere in Time (1980)), and What Dreams May Come (1998) (1978). His short stories include "Born of Man and Woman" (1950), "Third From the Sun" (1950), "The Waker Dreams" (1950), "Blood Son" (1951), "The Thing" (1951), among others.