Who Goes There?

Who Goes There? is a science fiction novella by John W. Campbell, Jr. under the pen name Don A. Stuart, published August 1938 in Astounding Stories. In 1973, the story was voted by the Science Fiction Writers of America as one of the finest science fiction novellas ever written, and published with the other top vote-getters in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two. The novella has twice been adapted as a motion picture: firstly in 1951 as The Thing from Another World and later in 1982 as The Thing.

Plot summary

A group of scientific researchers, isolated in Antarctica, discover an alien spaceship buried in the ice. They try to thaw the inside of the spacecraft with a thermite charge, but end up accidentally destroying it when the ship's magnesium hull is ignited by the charge. However they do recover the alien pilot, which the researchers believe was searching for heat when it froze. Thawing revives the alien, a being which can assume the shape, memories, and personality of any living thing it devours. It immediately becomes the crew's physicist, a man named Connant, and with some 90 pounds of its matter left it tries to become a sled dog. They kill the alien as it becomes the dead dog.

The researchers try to figure out who may have been replaced by the alien, simply referred to as the Thing, and to then destroy the surrogates before they can escape and take over the world. Ultimately, they realize that even small pieces of the aliens will behave as independent organisms, and use this weakness to test which men have been "converted" by taking blood samples from everyone on the base and dipping a hot wire in the vial of blood. Each man's blood is tested, one at a time, and the donor is immediately killed if his blood recoils from the wire. The original Thing had (unbeknownst to the researchers) taken control of a man named Blair, who'd had a nervous breakdown when they discovered the creature's abilities and had accordingly been isolated to a small cabin. With the monsters inside the base destroyed, the surviving humans enter the cabin to find and kill the creature which had once been Blair, just as it finishes building an anti-gravity harness that would have allowed it to escape.

Characters in "Who Goes There?"

Secondary Magnetic Expedition

Although 37 men comprise the expedition housed at Big Magnet, only half are mentioned by name in the story itself, all but three by last name alone. By story's end, 15 are replaced by alien impostors.

• Barclay: present at alien excavation.
• Benning
• Blair: biologist, present at alien excavation.
• (Bart) Caldwell
• Clark: dog handler.
• Connant: physicist, cosmic ray specialist.
• Dr. Copper: physician, present at alien excavation.
• (Samuel) Dutton
• Garry: expedition commander.
• Harvey
• Kinner: cook.
• McCready: expedition second-in-command, meteorologist, present at alien excavation.
• (Vance) Norris: physicist.
• Pomroy: livestock handler.
• Ralsen: sledge keep.
• Van Wall: chief pilot, present at alien excavation.
• Vane: physicist.

Non-human characters

• "The Thing": the antagonist - a malevolent shapeshifting alien creature
• Charnauk: lead Alaskan husky, first openly attacked by alien.
• Chinook and Jack: two other huskies.

Film adaptations

Who Goes There? has been adapted twice as a motion picture: rather loosely in 1951 as The Thing from Another World (with James Arness as the Thing, Kenneth Tobey as the USAF officer, and Robert O. Cornthwaite as the lead scientist) and more closely in 1982 by director John Carpenter as The Thing, from a Bill Lancaster screenplay. Prior to John Carpenter's involvement, William F. Nolan, author of Logan's Run, wrote a Who Goes There? screen treatment for Universal Studios in 1978, not published until 2009 in the Rocket Ride Books edition of Who Goes There?. Nolan's alternate take on Campbell's story downplays monster elements in favor of an "imposter" theme, in a vein similar to Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney.

The 1972 motion picture Horror Express starring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Telly Savalas shares some of the plot concepts.

External links

• Print and Audio Edition of "Who Goes There" with screen treatment by William F. Nolan