Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #359848 in Books
• Published on: 1991-06
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Library Binding

Download Description
Basis of the 1951 cult horror film, The Thing From Another World, Campbell's frightening novelette appeared in ASTOUNDING in early 1938. He had become editor of that magazine five months earlier. A terrifying shape-changing alien at a frozen research st

Download Description
Basis of the 1951 cult horror film, The Thing From Another World, Campbell's frightening novelette appeared in ASTOUNDING in early 1938. He had become editor of that magazine five months earlier. A terrifying shape-changing alien at a frozen research st

Customer Reviews

Not Free SF Reader
A discovery of a lifeform buried in the Antarctic ice causes serious problems for an isolated research team.

If You Liked the movie...
You'll Freaking love this book.
It has almost all those involved in the movie (except Windows) in the book, plus another twenty characters.
And it goes into more detail on why they are there, different people become 'things' than the movie,

In short
IT FREAKIN' ROCKS MY SOCKS OFF!

nuff said

Good stuff.
John W. Campbell, Who Goes There? (Astounding, 1938)

A story which inspired a generation, and twice changed the face of filmmaking, reprinted in its original form after far too long a time. Who Goes There?" was, of course, the basis for the 1951 film The Thing from Another World, remade more true to form by John Carpenter as simply The Thing in 1982. Both were, arguably, the best work of each director involved, as Campbell's story is arguably his finest moment.

Those who saw the first film and not the second are likely not to recognize much of anything about the story at all. An observation post in Antarctica finds the remnants of a spacecraft, and in attempting to get it out of the ice destroy it accidentally. They also find something with the spaceship, but separate from it: an alien lifeform. They get this out of the ice, bring it, back, and thaw it out for the biologist to study. Bad idea, because as it turns out, the thing is capable of assimilating the forms of creatures it eats. Including humans.

To be brutally honest, Carpenter's revision and expansion of the story jacks the paranoia level up far higher than the original material, and the somewhat predictable ending is a bit too gung-ho. Also, in Campbell's attempts to keep most of that whole eating bit offscreen, he goes over the brink of subtlety into confusion in more than one place, though the problems are relatively quickly rectified. The story itself is well worth reading simply for its archival value as the progenitor of two excellent films, but it will grab ahold and keep you interested even if you already know what's going to happen. *** ½