The Incredible Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Incredible Shrinking Man
Book Review: Classic Matheson novel finally grows large again
Summary: 5 Stars
Please note: It has come to my attention that amazon is grouping this review for ALL editions of Richard Matheson's book. This edition is for the Tor Edition which is a large format trade paperback that includes the novel The Shrinking Man under its film title The Incredible Shrinking Man with 9 other Matheson stories including "Duel" and "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet". This review applies ONLY to "The Incredible Shrinking Man" Tor Edition.
A master of terror, science fiction and the mystery genre, Richard Matheson's work has inspired many classic (and not so classic films). Why? Because he's one of the best writers working in a genre that never quite good the respect it deserved. His best work inspired people like Dean Koontz, Stephen King, Dan Simmons and other current masters of terror. Matheson's The Shrinking Man (the original title by the way--the Incredible part of the novel from what I recall was added after the movie was made)begins simply enough; Scott Carey is out on a boat with his brother when the ship is enveloped by a fine mist that gently stings his skin. He wipes it off, goes down below to tell his brother Marty about it and thinks nothing of it again. Until he begins grow smaller each day. From this simple beginning we immediately jump to Carey fighting a spider in the basement of his house (although both novel and film begin the same way, after the introduction Matheson's novel veers in a slightly different direction telling us most of the story in flashback. A smart choice for the novel and it would have been a bold choice for the film but Universal-International veoted the idea).
A marvelous novel that deals with the themes of sense of self, loss of control and, ultimately, loss of identity as Carey shrinks smaller and smaller, it's also a marvelous story of terror (with elements of science fiction thrown in as well). Finally back in print after a long slumber, The Incredible Shrinking Man is fleshed out with a number of stories (the novel is only about 200 pages)including "Duel" (the basis for Steven Spielberg's film of the same name), "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet"(the basis for the classic "Twilight Zone" episode featuring William Shatner and remade by director George Miller for "The Twilight Zone Movie"), and seven other short stories. A warning to readers is in order. "Duel" and "The Test" both appear in 2 other Matheson anthlogies published by TOR books but there's also a lot of other gems in the books Duel and Nightmare at 20,000 Feet as well.
If you enjoyed this book, I'd suggest Matheson's marvelous novel I Am Legend (which is, again, fleshed out by 10 Matheson short stories as the novel is fairly short. That novel was made into two films neither one of which captures the novel very well. "The Last Man on Earth" and the horrendous "The Omega Man". It also provided the uncredited inspiration for George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" trilogy). Matheson's hommage to Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, Hell House is also a good read (made into the movie "The Legend of Hell House" featuring Roddy McDowall).
Book Review: Going Down in the World
Summary: 4 Stars
This is the second novel I've read by Richard Matheson, the first being his other well-known book "I Am Legend".The book cover says it all: after a freak encounter with radiation, Scott Carey begins to shrink. Scott has been surviving in the basement, a hostile, Dali-esque environment where the only neighbour is a menacing black widow spider. Like all people troubled by the miseries of the present, Scott's mind frequently turns back to the past. These flashbacks chart the course of Scott's diminishing height, beginning with the anger and humiliation of total dependence, the loneliness of being a national spectacle, and the inexorable retreat into a nightmare world.
"The Shrinking Man" has much in common with "I Am Legend". We have the lone protagonist, an outcast, cut off and isolated from everything that was once safe and familiar. Both characters are trapped in their respective predicaments, virtual prisoners with no hope of reprieve. Like Robert Neville, Scott Carey also had a wife and daughter. While Robert's family succumbed to a plague of vampirism, Scott's family seemed to be turning into "giants". Robert Neville was armed with a wooden stake, hoping to kill his tormentor Ben Cortman - Scott is armed with a sewing pin, hoping to dispatch the persistent spider.
Scott's dimunition is constant. He is literally going where no man has gone before. Eventually he'll be able to see germs without a microscope, and perhaps see what atoms really look like. Maybe he'll even be able to see the miniature solar systems inside them. Didn't William Blake say something about the universe being a grain of sand?
In the film adaptation of "A Stir of Echoes" the babysitter reads a copy of "The Shrinking Man" - a little in-joke on the script writer's part. It's easy to see how Stephen King was influenced by Matheson's work, particularly in books like "Salem's Lot" or "Thinner". There really is no such thing as originality. Everything comes from something else. It's just a matter of good story-telling.
Book Review: The Reduction Of The Self
Summary: 5 Stars
Scott Carey is exposed to a one in a million chemical reaction (brought about by a mysterious sea-spray and being drenched in pesticides) and finds himself shrinking 1/7th of an inch every morning. While the Scientific explanation is a little bit of a throwaway, and left me going `huh?' (like Bruce Banner getting the gamma rays or Peter Parker getting bit by a nuked spider), the end result is certainly not.What plays out as a relentlessly depressing view of mortality and the loneliness in which man faces that mortality (much like Matheson's I AM LEGEND), ends with a surprisingly optimistic conclusion which puts this story into the realm of a zen-line allegory.
As he shrinks, the protagonist's social struggles grow. He is often mistaken for a child (by bullying teenagers and in one scene, a drunken pedophile) and begins falling into the `little man's complex,' raging at seemingly insignifigant things and growing increasingly more neurotic as a result of his inability to be taken seriously. His manhood is challenged as he becomes too miniscule to relate physically to his wife (in the pit of his self-loathing he contemplates the rape of a sixteen year old girl), and in a final display of his ineffectiveness, his young daughter treats him like a doll. After being locked and lost in the cellar of his own house, his neuroses become manifest in the body of a black widow spider who torments him endlessly (amusingly, its the same spider he wounds with a stone while in a larger state).
Carey's biggest problem is his fear. He fears his innate impulses and desires, he fears his financial instability with his brother, he fears the way his wife and daughter see him and his own concept of masculinity. The shrinking seems almost Heaven sent - a gift to teach the guy the importance of life and how to shed his petty concerns. In that it is very much like a zen parable. Carey is effectively being reduced physically and emotionally. It is his notion of `self' which is dwindling. Yet, when in the last pages he accepts his fate and performs a ritualistic sort of purging of worry by engaging the spider, things begin to fall into place both physically and emotionally for him. He comes to understand that he cannot (and doesn't need to) `escape.' From a Taoist perspective, he is rewarded for this, being in the end able to percieve the worlds within worlds (possibly a spiritual metaphor?) and gaining new hope.
Probably I AM LEGEND is more suspenceful and better written, but SHRINKING MAN is a much more thought provoking, nearly mystical read. In both novels Matheson spends a lot of time with internal thoughts, but I don't know many other writers that can make a one-man show this compelling. This isn't the adventures of the Human Atom, but the realistic study of a man. Well-deserving of the handle `classic.'
Book Review: small
Summary: 2 Stars
a guy begins to shrink (wll, there is a story behind it, but that's what he does). and......he continues to do so. in the end he must face a spider which think he's yummy. one little fight for one little man. the book is just as good as it sounds. things that happen in this book has at tendency to be dull.Book Review: Body versus mind
Summary: 4 Stars
The fairly plain life of Scott Carey, this book's title character, gets unusual when he starts to shrink by one-seventh of an inch per day after being exposed to radiations; despite the efforts of various doctors, no cure is in sight. This bodily transformation doesn't do much to his mind: though many times smaller, Scott still is pervaded by the same desires (mostly sexual). In fact, if his situation irritates him at first, it's mainly since he becomes smaller than his wife - he feels more like a boy than a man. Financial problems resurface, as he can't work for his brother anymore. By being reduced to such a little size, he now has to think, something which he wasn't used to; predictably, it makes him uncomfortable. Less than one inch tall and the prisoner of his house's cave, the end seems near; but when the occasion of getting out arises, he can't resist and is lead by pure exhaltation, no longer afraid of death. After a night of sleep, he wakes up in a whole new world which marks the next step of his voyage. For this to be possible, his body had to be reduced to... almost nothing.