Richard Matheson's 1954 novel "I Am Legend" deals with the life of Robert Neville, the only unaffected survivor of a global pandemic that has turned the world's population into vampire zombie-like creatures. The novel has been adapted to film three times: "The Last Man on Earth" (1964), "The Omega Man" (1971), and "I Am Legend" (2007). Jeff Carlson wrote a trilogy of novels beginning with his 2007 debut, "Plague Year", a present-day thriller about a worldwide nanotech contagion that devours all warm-blooded life below in elevation. Its two sequels, "Plague War" and "Plague Zone", deal with a cure that allows return to an environment that suffered ecological collapse due to massive increases in insects and reptiles.