I Am Legend (novel)
1954 novel by Richard Matheson
I Am Legend is a 1954 horror novel by American writer Richard Matheson. It helped the development of the zombie genre and in popularizing the idea of a worldwide apocalypse due to disease.
The novel was a success. It was adapted to a movie as The Last Man on Earth in 1964, as The Omega Man in 1971, and as I Am Legend in 2007. It also came with a direct-to-video 2007 production capitalizing on that movie, I Am Omega. The novel was also the inspiration behind the 1968 movie Night of the Living Dead.