friendorphobia

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.

Plot summary

A group of Antarctic researchers isolated from the rest of the world discover an alien spaceship buried in the ice for 20 million years. They try to thaw the inside of the space craft with thermite, but end up destroying it. However they do recover a frozen occupant, which was apparently searching for heat when it froze. Thawing revives the alien, which turns out to be an extremely dangerous and malevolent being that 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 tries to become a sled dog. They kill the alien as it is 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The researchers try to figure out who may have been replaced by the alien, simply referred to as the Thing, and to then destroy the surrogates before they can escape and take over the world.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, the researchers 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 and exposing them to a hot wire. Each man is tested, one at a time, and immediately killed if his blood tries to save itself from the wire. The original Thing has now taken control of a man named Blair, who had a nervous breakdown when they found the creature. Blair had been isolated to a small cabin. They enter the cabin to find and kill the creature, 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 thirty-seven men comprise the expedition housed at Big Magnet, only half are mentioned by name in the story itself, all but two by last name alone. By story's end, fifteen 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.
• Norris: physicist.
• Pomroy: livestock handler.
• Ralsen: sledge keep.
• Van Wall: chief pilot, present at alien excavation.
• Vane: physicist.

Non-human characters

• "The Thing"
• Charnauk: lead Alaskan husky, first openly attacked by alien.
• Chinook and Jack: two other huskies.

Movie adaptations

"Who Goes There?'" has been thrice adapted as a motion picture: rather loosely in 1951 as The Thing from Another World, with James Arness as the Thing, in 1973 as the obscure Horror Express, and most famously in 1982 by director John Carpenter as the film The Thing, from a Bill Lancaster screenplay.

External link

"Who Goes There" by J. W. Campbell

Donate to Wikimedia