"Duel" was derived from an incident in which he and a friend, Jerry Sohl, were dangerously tailgated by a large truck on the same day as the assassination of John F. Kennedy.According to film critic Roger Ebert, Matheson's scientific approach to the supernatural in "I Am Legend" and other novels from the 1950s and early 1960s "anticipated pseudorealistic fantasy novels like "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Exorcist"."