I’m No Legend

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First there was The Last Man on Earth with that rare, disappointing performance by Vincent Price. Then there was The Omega Man, putting Charlton Heston into the role that fit him better than Moses. Finally, returning to the original title, I Am Legend featured Will Smith as Robert Neville. Having watched all three movies, I knew I should have read Richard Matheson’s short novel first. After all, it was a vampire story, and who doesn’t feel utterly alone once in a while? I finally decided to make an honest man of myself. It occurred to me as I started to read that I didn’t know how this story would end. All I had ever seen were cinematic treatments—and who writes anything serious about genre fiction? Still, I needed to know.

Last Man

Matheson was one of the writers who had caught Rod Serling’s attention on the Twilight Zone. Having read some of his short stories I could see why. Not knowing the ending, some of them can actually be scary. I Am Legend isn’t exactly frightening. It is, however, thought-provoking and sad. Matheson, a New Jersey native, wasn’t among the most literary of writers. Nevertheless, he conveys some deeply disturbing images of humanity in this particular novel. After all (spoiler alert!) Robert Neville is the evil one. He has been killing vampires with a cold calculation, no matter whether they are living or undead (good or bad). Who has a right to kill whom depends on your point of view.

The-Omega-Man-Poster

In I Am Legend, Matheson makes it clear that Neville, the last man alive, is an atheist. The problem, as it usually is, is theodicy. How could a god allow such a massive tragedy to strike not only himself, but the entire world? After the vampire virus had spread, Neville finds himself dragged into an evangelistic meeting by terrified survivors who had turned to religion to make sense of their tragedy. Neville escapes as quickly as he can. The movie versions tend to ignore this poignant aspect of the narrative. After all, the audience watching must sympathize with Neville or the whole draw of the movie is off. In a nation where atheists are trusted about as much as vampires, it seems that Matheson left us a parable as well as a legend.

Zongfu’s Ark

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While riding the elevator up to work last week, I glanced at the little LCD screen that plays single-page news stories for those who only have the seconds in an elevator to catch up in what is happening outside the world of commerce. That’s where the really creative stuff occurs. The picture on the screen appeared to be a large, orange, smashed ping-pong ball. I caught the words “Noah’s Ark” in the caption before the busy screen flashed onto a new and more pertinent story, such as who is winning what in the Olympics. I remembered the odd image when I got home and tried an Internet search and discovered only a small bit of information. This ark is in China, which may account for the lack of full coverage. Here in God’s own America, stories that potentially validate biblical myths are sure to attract readers and/or watchers, so there must be more to the story than I can find.

The details I’ve been able to locate note that Yang Zongfu, a Chinese inventor, designed an improvement on Noah’s ark. His ark is a sphere and really doesn’t have much room for animals beyond the occasional tapeworm or wayward spider. “Noah’s Ark of China” is a six-ton ball that costs nearly a quarter of a million dollars to build. Five people can live for ten months inside, sheltered from heat, impact, and, of course, water. Like a latter day bomb shelter, this is the place you would go to survive a disaster. The odd number of survivors, however, made me wonder about the repopulating of the earth part. Even in the Bible God made sure that instead of any individuals the ark was populated with couples. The more I thought about attempting to survive in a world with only four other people, the more frightened I became.

This is old school ark building.

Our lives are intricately inter-connected. Most of you reading these words will never have met me, yet here we are, sharing the same cyber-head-space. Movies like I Am Legend make it seem that a single man, whether Vincent Price, Charlton Heston, or Will Smith, could survive for a great length of time alone. This is pure science fiction. With the exception of Vincent Price, I doubt that any of our omega men could have successfully planted and raised a garden, let alone survived more than a few weeks. We need each other. The picture of Yang Zongfu popping triumphantly from his ark fills my head with a strange vision. A post-apocalyptic world in which the toxic runoff of our irradiated rivers will have a jumble of orange balls at their deltas and a bunch of confused, somewhat nauseous millionaires inside. As I stare out over this valley of dry balls, I think to myself, Who’s winning ping-pong at the Olympics?