I first read I AM LEGEND around 1960 (yes, I am old). There are at least three movie versions: Vincent Price in THE LAST MAN ON EARTH, Charlton Heston in THE OMEGA MAN, and now Will Smith in I AM LEGEND.

The setup is a world-wide plague has killed most humans. Some of the survivors have turned into vampires. One human is immune to the plague and seeks to find a cure: Robert Neville. In the current movie version, Emma Thompson plays a cancer researcher who discovers the Law of Unintended Consequences when she announces a “cure” for cancer that proceeds to go disastrously wrong.

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, there were plenty of short stories and novels about nuclear war (and its aftermath) with the inevitable “last man alive” themes. In fact, Robert Bloch is credited with publishing the shortest horror story ever written: “The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on his door.” Writers like Richard Matheson and J. G. Ballard used other disasters like plagues or global floods as metaphors for the fragility of human existence.

With the prospects of terrorists with dirty bombs and global pandemics like bird flu, the time seems ripe for more stories like I AM LEGEND showing humanity on the edge of extinction.