I Am Legend

I Am Legend is a post-apocalyptic horror novel by the American writer Richard Matheson, published in 1954. It is set in the aftermath of an apocalyptic war that leaves the land scoured by weekly dust storms, and it follows Robert Neville through the months and years that follow the outbreak of a pandemic, from his house on Cimarron Street in Los Angeles.

Carried by the dust storms, the plague wiped out most of humanity, leaving survivors who are pale and nocturnal and who besiege Neville's house every night. He fortifies his house, keeps up the old protections that hold them off, and spends his days driving through a city with nobody else in it, looking for supplies and for a way to understand what everyone else has become. His days and nights are strictly divided by what is safe.

Matheson gives the vampires a scientific explanation rather than a supernatural one, which was unusual at the time and which shaped later work in both vampire and zombie fiction. The novel inspired the modern development of those genres, and it was adapted into several films, beginning with The Last Man on Earth in 1964.

It is a short novel told from Neville's point of view.