"Richard Christian Matheson is one of a handful of resourceful, fear-minded authors helping to create a new sensibility in horror fiction that is as frightening and merciless as the modern world itself."
ROLLING STONE
"Miniature masterpieces of compression and tension."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (starred review: "DYSTOPIA")
"Richard Christian Matheson is a great, ingenious horror writer. His works are minor masterpieces."
THE NEW YORK TIMES
"Richard Christian Matheson's short, elegant, and often brutal stories have made his name well-known in the horror genre, but natural short-story writers often find it difficult to make the transition to the marathon represented by the novel. With CREATED BY, Matheson manages the change of gear with such absolute assurance and skill that he seems to have been writing novels all his life. CREATED BY is alert, observant and smart; the writing has the clean immediacy Matheson's stories have taught us to expect from him; above all, the book gets the reader into a wrestler's grip and will not let him go. This is the sort of intelligent, even thoughtful fiction that floats far above the usual categories. No one else could have thought to write this way; no one else would have imagined it possible."
PETER STRAUB New York Times bestselling novelist
"Richard Christian Matheson's DYSTOPIA is utterly hip without being the least bit trendy. If you were to buy one collection this is the one."
RUE MORGUE MAGAZINE
"As a seasoned veteran of prime time television, Richard Christian Matheson knows all too well the highs and horrors of working in one of the bloodiest and bitterest arenas an artist can venture into. In CREATED BY, he emerges with a masterly fable, told with insight, wit and welcome venom. His style, as befits his subjects, is fast and flashy, parodying media-speak one moment, chilling us with visions of empty lives and empty heads the next. This is Hollywood hell, where honor is worthless and only the creative die young. With devastating effect, Richard Christian Matheson puts his bloody paws all over the glossy world of primetime; the ratings will soar."
CLIVE BARKER
"CREATED BY is not only a tale about a writer and his TV creation gone terribly wrong, but it's a tale told with similes and metaphors so engaging and deeply descriptive it put me to shame. I have been writing for over forty years and in my own opinion have never written anything as complex or darkly interesting. I stand in awe of Richard's impressive talent; his unbelievable ability to slam a verb up against a noun, putting words and thoughts together in ways never intended. But somehow, every time, he ends up with nuanced perfection and excels magnificently. I'm jealous."
STEPHEN J.CANNELL bestselling novelist and writer/creator of THE ROCKFORD FILES, BARETTA, THE A-TEAM, WISEGUY and others
"Richard Christian Matheson's powerful novel is a macabre fantasy in the tradition of Edgar Allen Poe, and dead-on in its portrayal of contemporary television. His writing is tight and suspenseful and the book will haunt you, as it did me, long after you've put it down."
WILLIAM FRIEDKEN, Director of THE EXORCIST, THE FRENCH CONNECTION, TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A.
"Richard writes as well as Ray Bradbury. His use of language is astonishing. Every new work by Richard takes on greater depth and uncanny skill with language. It is with a father's great pride and a writer's unanticipated wonderment to realize that, literally, such writing is beyond my ability. He has achieved a high creative plateau. He's brilliant."
RICHARD MATHESON
"There are, occasionally, writers who are able to combine both story and style. They are, of course, the best. You get a spectacular view and you also get to look at it from the backseat of a chauffeur-driven Cadillac. In the field of fantasy those writers able to combine story-as-narration with story-as-style are even rarer. First, there are few writers of purely stylistic fiction to start with, because in genre fiction they rarely get published. But there are a few successful combiners of style and story in this field; the late Theodore Sturgeon, the early Ray Bradbury, Gregory Benford...and Richard Christian Matheson. It's not unusual for writers to gravitate toward stories of the vignette or almost-vignette-length, but it is very unusual to find that rare combination of style and narrative substance in such stories. Richard Christian Matheson is brilliant."
STEPHEN KING
"Richard Christian Matheson is the crack cocaine of horror fiction. Domestic failure, spiritual dissolution, obsessive-compulsive disorders, tints of sci-fi, gothic noir, and an array of supernatural allegory....it's all here, and it's done as well and in most cases better than any writer you've ever read. This book is a virtual Whitman's Sampler of weird fiction composed by a man who knows the power of prose like no other. Matheson puts a tragic cross-hair on everything that's wrong with our society and everything that's real. These aren't just stories tapped out for our macabre entertainment; they're bursts of flash-fiction that elucidate our tremoring times. It's our good fortune that he still takes the time to produce a collection of short fiction that blows most of the competition out of the water. Folks, this is how it's done."
HELLNOTES(DYSTOPIA)
"Richard Christian Matheson's CREATED BY is one of the most exciting books I've read in the last five years. It's a supernatural and psychological thriller but its leading character, a writer/producer, is so real that I know I've met him at least fifty times, and I'm sure I've worked with him many times. Every studio in town should be dying to buy it---if they're not too frightened of the truth."
AARON SPELLING
"I'm a writer who admires writers who write well, I trust it's no great surprise that I admire the work of Richard Christian Matheson enormously. Richard Christian possesses one sterling virtue I particularly covet. What he has mastered is a talent that confounds most of the rest of us. In terms of the written word, he embodies the credo of the great architect Mies van der Rohe: 'less is more.' Matheson is so accomplished he can utilize his compressed space and style to create a genuinely audacious effect. That's the right modifier. Horror and dark fantasy would flourish if more writers could master audacity. It looks so easy to the uninitiated. It isn't. I figure RC's got either really good literary genes or a cushy Faustian contract. Or both. And man oh man, is he audacious."
EDWARD BRYANT
"RC is a master of compression. He knows how to catch a moment in words and convey it straight to the reader's head or heart; often both. What RC does is a lot harder than it looks. I know. I've tried. And over the years, RC has done it countless times."
CLIVE BARKER (DYSTOPIA)
"I bet some very talented short story writers read Richard Christian Matheson's stories, scratch their heads and ask, 'How the hell did he do that?' No one out there is writing short stories like RC. Among those who are talented enough to have mastered the short story, RC's work stands out. No...I take that back. It stands alone."
RAY GARTON best selling novelist
"A man who writes stories like these is a dangerous man."
DEAN KOONTZ
"In Richard Christian Matheson's CREATED BY, the dialogue moves amidst the carnage like an express train, insightful, cynical and funny as hell, a cross between a Woody Allen routine and Robert Altman's THE PLAYER...all served up as an eloquent postscript to Paddy Chayefsky's NETWORK. It's sassy and smart, beautifully plotted and written, and supremely entertaining."
LONDON TIMES BOOK REVIEW
"As I read CREATED BY, my life flashed before me (only sexier). Paddy Cheyefsky rolled over in his grave, and television's A-List frantically searched their offices for the hidden cameras Richard Christian Matheson surely placed there."
BRANDON TARTIKOFF, President of NBC and former President of PARAMOUNT PICTURES
"Some 49 years ago I received a wonderful letter from a young writer named Richard Matheson. He enclosed one of his first published stories. I read it to my wife and she loved it as much as I did. I immediately wrote Richard Matheson to say that if he continued in this vein, he had a great career as a writer. It turns out that my intuition was correct. Now, all these years later, I pick up a story by Richard Christian Matheson, who is already in mid-career and doesn't need me to walk up and down outside his house bearing a sandwich board on which is written FUTURE SUCCESS GUARANTEED. LIKE FATHER LIKE SON, etc. While I am talking, he is rounding the bases with another home-run. With eyes shut, I see into his elder years and behold his father's clone triumph in 2010, 2030 and so on far into the next century. His genetics are in full-charge, his imagination simply cannot stop. I would pat him on the back but he has already dashed out to write a dozen more stories, a novel, and a screenplay. I hope that up ahead he clones yet another son to continue the fire-works."
RAY BRADBURY
"He excels as a literary writer of perfect integrity. The central images of his stories are so powerful and resonant that they linger after structure and specific language have been forgotten. 'Red' seems to me to be a masterwork. 'Vampire' is a tour de force of breathtaking virtuosity. Matheson is a role model for those interested in the art form of the short-short story, a particularly challenging form in which he specializes and excels. I take inspiration in the mastery and control of this remarkable writer."
DENNIS ETCHISON
"The first Richard Christian Matheson story I read was 'RED' and it had a powerful effect on me. It is a masterpiece, undisputed. Since then, I've read a few dozen more of Richard Christian's stories and the best of them--which is to say, the majority of them---have the same quality. The phrase that sings and stays. The brief dramatic moment that lacerates. The truth that seems fleeting, yet somehow lingers. He's very, very good."
ED GORMAN Best Selling Novelist
"Imagine a Rosetta microchip. Compact, succinct, precise. Universes in there. Richard's stories are like a drop of biowar culture. Like a speck of neutron star that weighs a million tons. About the length of the blowgun dart that clips to his knees the consumer of cake-thick, water-inflated paperbacks, wondering what the fuck just stung him to death. Richard writes high-powered short stories. Will. Payload. Intent. Aim. Delivery. Coda. In the blink of an eye. Or faster. Don't blink. Start reading. You're already behind."
DAVID J. SCHOW
"CREATED BY is almost as frightening as working in network television for real. What may be therapy for Matheson is a great supernatural thriller for the rest of us."
RICHARD DONNER Director of LETHAL WEAPON 1,2,3, THE OMEN, ENEMY OF THE STATE
"Richard Christian Matheson doesn't write like the rest of us. If you haven't figured it out by now, RC writes mean. He doesn't pull punches and he doesn't mince (or pad) words. At the same time, there is real and admirable restraint about his work. He writes like a poet. I've always felt that you can write about anything - as long as you write well. A lot of people don't. RC does; with artistry, poetry and sheer heart."
CHET WILLIAMSON novelist
"Razorred Saddles, a seminal anthology of macabre Western tales edited by Joe R. Lansdale and Pat Lobrutto in 1989, is just chock-full of brilliantly subversive horror stories. It is easily one of the best horror anthologies of the eighties. But even in such shining company, Richard Christian Matheson's 'I'm Always Here,' stood out for me. Way out. It was, and is, one of those stories so good I wished I'd written it."
POPPY Z. BRITE best selling novelist
"I so admired the stories of Richard Christian Matheson, and the elegant, scary, unexpected way his mind works that I attempted to have him put together a book that would take one of his stories from first draft through each rewrite to the final version. I wanted to show, you see, the mind of a creative professional at work. Never got done. More's the pity. But the point is that when he began talking to me about the book that was to become CREATED BY, I knew it was going to be a doozie. I knew, too, that working with him (as his editorial valet, his helper, his...Igor, if you will) through the labyrinthine, confusing process we like to think of as editing, would be vastly entertaining. I got to acquire CREATED BY but alas didn't get to edit it. I did get to give my most unworthy editorial opinion on drafts of two excellent novels that have not yet been published. As an editor, I'm used to seeing scores of projects each week and choose to work on only a teeny-tiny miniscule few of that huge number. So, why am I so all-fired interested in the Richard Christian Matheson books that are and those to come? Because he is entertaining. Because everything the man ever wrote is as interesting as two snakes fucking. Because his hand is sure and his voice compelling. But most of all it's the view. Oh, what perspectives from the places he brings you. My Dad used to say, 'If you want to know what a person is like, watch him when he's in trouble.' In his Nobel acceptance speech, William Faulkner said that good writing was about 'the human heart in conflict with itself.' RC's writing takes place at the inter-section of those two statements."
PATRICK LOBRUTTO former Senior Fiction Editor, Bantam/Doubleday Publishers
"Richard Christian Matheson's stories are haiku-like in their brevity. Economic, elegantly succinct, often darkly comic, they slice directly to your soul with surgical precision-surgery performed with no anesthesia. In lesser hands, the drop-dead endings, the staccato sentences, the ironic twists would simply not succeed. But for Matheson, they become unique and effective style. Even when taken to the ninth degree-as in 'Vampire' a short-short written entirely in one-word sentences, or the literal list of 25 'Things to Get'-it works. Even when 'cute'-the intensely paranoid 'Wyom...', 'Graduation' is a series of gradually disconcerting letters from a son away at school, 'Obituary' is just that, 'Conversation Piece' is a 'transcribed' Q&A session-it works. But Matheson can also be ambiguously poignant and insightful ('Who's You In America'), make modern cinema metaphoric ('City of Dreams'), re-create the history of a fictional rock-n-roll band with vivid snippets or pseudo-journalism ('Whatever'), and explore the aberrant ('Region of the Flesh,' 'Mutilator'). Matheson's short stories have been appearing in anthologies and magazines since 1977 and he's published a single novel, CREATED BY (1993). This new omnibus should serve to introduce him to new readers as well as confirm his rightful place as one of the best writers of modern dark fiction."
PAULA GURAN, fiction editor DARK ECHO HORROR
"Almost every author writes short stories, and many write superb stories. In terms of the short-shorts, there is one man whose work defines the category. Just ask Jack Ketchum, F. Paul Wilson, Poppy Z. Brite or Stephen King - a few of the luminaries who contribute insightful and engaging commentary on the stories and author. No one matches Richard Christian Matheson in the art of the truly short story. Maybe it's the brutal economy with which he chooses and uses words, as if they cost thousands apiece. Throughout this collection, there is not an unnecessary word to be found. Pick the stories apart. You won't find a better way to say what Matheson has already said. Honestly, every piece in this collection is a masterpiece of short, stunning storytelling. Trying to choose a favorite is next to impossible - - but not impossible. After you've read the creepy, the shocking, the terrifying, there is one story I would like you to pay particular attention to: 'Who's You In America.' If you are skipping around through the book, read several stories before you read this extraordinary short. There is always an amazing insight into the human mind and heart in Matheson's work; this story allows you to see the open, vulnerable heart of the author more clearly. The knowledge of the grief, loneliness, and incompleteness in all of us is wrapped up in this exquisite piece. Read it, see the sad truth in it, and wonder how Matheson knows you so well. Perhaps I am the only one who wept while reading 'Who's You In America,' but I'll bet there are many more who felt the same connection, however they reacted. How did he know? And how brave he is to acknowledge the yearning. If I had never read another word by Matheson, this one story would make me a fan for life and would make me feel a kinship, though we may never meet. Make a gift to yourself of this unparalleled collection. It is Matheson's gift to us."
LISA DUMOND, Science Fiction SITE Reviews
Advance quotes for RC Matheson's new 125 page novella:
"THE RITUAL OF ILLUSION" (due in 2011)
"With amazing skill and authorial sleight-of-hand, Richard Christian Matheson brilliantly inhabits fifty different characters in this mystery/horror tour de force. I search for adjectives, but if Picasso and M.C. Escher had decided to create a piece of fiction together, it might be something like this. Bravo, Mr. Matheson!"
P.G. STURGES, author of the critically acclaimed mystery novel 'SHORT CUT MAN' and son of legendary director Preston Sturges.
