5 Sci-Fi Novels That Deserve Film Adaptations (& 5 That Deserve Better)

5 Sci-Fi Novels That Deserve Better

5. I Am Legend - Richard Matheson

I Am Legend is one of the most important novels in not only the sci-fi genre but horror as well. Not just that, but you can also thank I Am Legend for essentially single-handedly paving the way for modern vampire and zombie fiction, as well as popularising the concept of pandemics as the root cause of the apocalypse. That's a hell of a lot of medals to pin to your literary chest, which is why it's all the more disappointing that we ended up getting the hot, moist trash of an adaptation that we did.

The Will Smith led movie left a lot of us familiar with the source material...wanting, to put it politely. As often happens with Will Smith projects - stick around for entry three everyone - the movie ended up being very action oriented and the third act resembles the novel in no way at all except on a superficial level.

The novel itself is bleak and legitimately terrifying from start to finish and the overall tone is far closer to Cormac McCarthy's The Road than what we wound up with in 2007, especially the sugarcoated ending that Hollywood no doubt tacked on because they assumed no one wanted the grim, ironic ending of the source material - don't worry, no spoilers here in case you want to read it.