I Am Legend (1954)

Richard Matheson strips bloodlust of all gothic romance, reframing the vampire condition as an airborne bacterial infection that induces severe cellular starvation. Through Robert Neville's clinical experiments, the craving for blood becomes an involuntary biological symptom rather than a supernatural curse, exposing how hunger can unravel civilisation. It is a pioneering, desolate study of appetite reduced to raw microbial necessity and desperate evolutionary survival.