It is one of the few stories I wrote in the form of dialogue.
Another was a story published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction entitled “Through Channels.”
Somewhere—undoubtedly in Bill the Collector’s vault—sits a recorded (tape) enactment of the story by Bill and myself. I portrayed the boy, Bill played the detective or policeman or whatever authority he was supposed to be.
We recorded it at an evening of what came to be called The California Group. Not bad either. I have always maintained that writers could very well be actors if they wanted to try their hand at it.
Indeed, Bill played a key role in Chuck Beaumont’s film The Intruder.
And I acted in many plays performed by our community theater, not to mention my two-word role in Somewhere in Time.
MAYBE YOU REMEMBER HIM surprised Bill because he had no idea I was a baseball fan.
I was and still am and I wonder why I didn’t write more baseball stories. Hell Stadium? The Shrinking Shortstop? What Hits May Come?
Just as well I wrote only this one baseball story.
MIRROR MIRROR . . . I have no memory whatsoever of where this story idea came from and when I chose to write it.
I have always fancied the notion of ending a story with the identical words that the story begins with, their meaning totally opposite.
As far as I recall, this was the only time I ever did it.
Writers like to experiment with structure. An example: a half-hour western I wrote for the series Lawman. The title of the story was “Thirty Minutes” and, of course, the story took place in thirty minutes.
Another aspect of “Mirror Mirror . . .” I rarely indulged in was telling a story by having it recounted by a narrator who has no personal involvement in the described events.
Fun if you can make it work.
TWO O’CLOCK SESSION was, as I indicated, part of an anthology in which a number of writers including myself took a shot at attempting to write a “Bradburyesque” type story.
I doubt if any of us managed to equal the quality of Ray’s writings. We tried though. The homage was well-intentioned and admiring if far less than the work of the writer we all admire so much.
AND IN SORROW has been published in a “chapbook” by Gauntlet Press—as has “The Prisoner.”
Once more, no recollection exists as to when or where the ideas occurred to me.
I hope they are good stories. At the time I wrote them, no magazine cared to purchase them.
Finally though, they are in print, and, I trust, enjoyable to their readers.
LIFE SIZE is a profile in madness. Reg is losing his mind. His first wife, Sally, is dead and he deeply mourns her. He identifies with his child and her playmates. His new wife makes demands on him that he can’t fulfill. Reg can no longer function. He’s cracking up.
ALWAYS BEFORE YOUR VOICE I wrote in 1955 when my family and I were renting a house in Sound Beach on Long Island.
In between descending to the cellar each morning to describe the adventures of my shrinking man, I wrote this story, imagining the mental distress of the postmistress in the small town square who treated me so nicely and knew, I think, that I was a writer.
I have not written very many “straight” short stories but I am glad I wrote this one. I like it very much.
I hope you did as well.
About the Author
Richard Matheson was born to Norwegian immigrants in New Jersey in 1926 and grew up in Brooklyn. His interest in writing and reading began at an early age: his first published work, a poem, appeared when he was eight, and as a teen he read voraciously. After graduating from high school, Matheson served in the army during World War II, an experience that would form the basis for his novel The Beardless Warriors (1960). Following his military service, Matheson studied journalism at the University of Missouri and began to devote himself to writing.
Matheson first gained widespread exposure and notice with a story published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1950, “Born of Man and Woman,” about a husband and wife who give birth to a monster which they keep hidden in a cellar. It would go on to become the title story of his first collection, which appeared in 1954 during a period of extraordinary creative fertility that also produced several classic novels, I Am Legend (1954), The Shrinking Man (1956), and A Stir of Echoes (1958). Over the course of his long career, Matheson would go on to publish some two-dozen novels and numerous short stories in a variety of genres, including horror, fantasy, suspense, paranormal, science fiction and, later in life, westerns, including Journal of the Gun Years, winner of the Spur Award for Best Western Novel.
Matheson was also a prolific screenwriter for television and film. His television credits include many of the best-loved episodes of The Twilight Zone, as well as popular series like The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and Star Trek, and The Night Stalker (1972), the highest-rated television film of its time. His film scripts include a number of classic Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, as well as screenplays based on his own novels and stories for such films as Duel (1971, directed by Steven Spielberg), The Legend of Hell House (1973), and Somewhere in Time (1980). More recently, Matheson’s works have provided the basis for numerous films, including What Dreams May Come (1998), Stir of Echoes (1999), and I Am Legend (2007).
In addition to his fiction, Matheson was a professional songwriter and also published works on matters of the spiritual and metaphysical, including The Path (1993) and A Primer of Reality (2002).
His many awards include both the World Fantasy and Bram Stoker awards for lifetime achievement, the Edgar Award and multiple Writers Guild Awards, and he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2010. He died in 2013.
Richard Matheson, Offbeat: Uncollected Stories
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