Danse Macabre   ::   Кинг Стивен

In the movie version, which Matheson also wrote, Scott's final line is a triumphant "I still exist!" accompanied by shots of nebulae and exploding galaxies. I asked him if this had religious connotations, or perhaps reflected an early interest in life after death (a subject which has become more and more important in Matheson's later work; see Hell House and What Dreams May Come ). Matheson comments: "Scott Carey's 'I still exist,' I think, only implied a continuum between macroscopic and microscopic, not between life and life after death.

Interestingly, I was on the verge of doing a rewrite on The Fantastic Voyage , which Columbia is supposed to be making. I couldn't get involved in it because it was so technical and I would rather be involved with character now, but it was like a small continuation of the end of The Shrinking Man -into the microscopic world with rod and gun.” Overall, we can say that The Shrinking Man is a classic survival story; there is really only one character, and the questions here are elemental: food, shelter, survival, destruction of the Nemesis (the Dionysian force in Scott's mostly Apollonian cellar world). It is by no means a tremendously sexy book, but sex is at least dealt with on a level more thoughtful than the Shell Scott wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am level that was the common one for paperback originals in the fifties. Matheson was an important figure in pioneering the right of science fiction and fantasy writers to deal with sexual problems in a realistic and sensitive way; others involved in the same struggle ( and it was a struggle) would have included Philip José Farmer, Harlan Ellison, and, perhaps most importantly of all, Theodore Sturgeon. It is hard to believe now what a furor was caused by the concluding pages of Sturgeon's Some of Your Blood , when it is revealed exactly how the vampire has been obtaining his supply ( "The moon is full," he writes both wistfully and chillingly to his girl friend in the book's final paragraph, "and I wish I had some of your blood."), but the furor happened. We may wish that Matheson had dealt with the sexual angle a little less solemnly, but in light of the times, I think we can applaud the fact that he dealt with the sexual angle at all.

And as a fable of losing power and finding it, The Shrinking Man ranks as one of the finest fantasies of the period we've been discussing. And I don't want to leave you with the impression that I'm only talking here about sexual power and sexual potency.