Who Goes There?


Who Goes There? is a science fiction horror novella by American author John W. Campbell, written under the pen name Don A. Stuart. Its story follows a group of researchers and support personnel trapped in a scientific outpost in Antarctica that has been infested by shapeshifting monsters able to absorb and perfectly imitate any living being, including humans.
Who Goes There? was first published in the August 1938 issue of Astounding Science Fiction magazine and was also printed as The Thing from Another World, as well as included in the collection by the same title. Its extended version, found in an early manuscript titled Frozen Hell, was published under this title in 2019.
The story has been directly adapted to film as The Thing from Another World by Christian Nyby in 1951 and as The Thing by John Carpenter in 1982. Its many other adaptations, and works inspired by it, have spanned various media.

Publication history

Two slightly different versions of the original novella exist. It was first published in the August 1938 issue of Astounding Science Fiction in a 12-chapter version, which also appears in Adventures in Time and Space and The Antarktos Cycle: Horror and Wonder at the Ends of the Earth. An extended 14-chapter version was later included in The Best of John W. Campbell and the collection Who Goes There?. Campbell renewed the copyright in 1965. In 1973, the story was voted by the Science Fiction Writers of America as one of the stories representing the "most influential, important, and memorable science fiction that has ever been written." It was promptly published with the other top voted stories in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two.
In 2018, it was discovered that Who Goes There? was actually a shortened version of Campbell's unpublished larger novel with working titles Frozen Hell and Pandora. Two of its draft versions, including an entirely different opening, were found in a box of manuscripts sent by Campbell to Harvard University. The discovery was made by author and biographer Alec Nevala-Lee, during his research on a biography of Campbell and other authors from the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Campbell first attempted selling the story to Argosy, but was rejected by its editor John "Jack" Francis Byrne. After some rewriting and significant trimming, it was eventually accepted by Astoundings editor F. Orlin Tremaine. A Kickstarter campaign was launched to publish the full novel that same year. When completed, the campaign had raised more than $155,000, compared to its original $1,000 goal. An edited version of the two original drafts was published by Wildside Press under the full title Frozen Hell: The Book That Inspired The Thing, illustrated by Bob Eggleton and with a preface by Nevala-Lee and an introduction by Robert Silverberg. E-book versions of the novel began distributing digitally to campaign backers on January 16, 2019, with physical copies following in June the same year.

Plot

A group of American researchers, isolated in their scientific station in Antarctica towards the end of winter, discover an alien spaceship buried in the ice, where it crashed twenty million years before. 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. They manage to recover an alien creature from the ancient ice, which the researchers believe was searching for heat when it was frozen. Thawing revives the alien, a being which can assume the appearance, memories, and personality of a living organism it devours, while maintaining its body mass for further reproduction. Unknown to them, the Thing immediately kills and then imitates the crew's physicist, a man named Connant; with some 90 pounds of its matter left over, it tries to become a sled dog. The crew discovers the dog-Thing and kills it midway through the transformation process. Pathologist Blair, who had lobbied for thawing the Thing, goes insane with paranoia and guilt, vowing to kill everyone at the base to save mankind; he is isolated within a locked cabin at their outpost. Connant is also isolated as a precaution, and a "rule-of-four" is initiated in which all personnel must remain under the close scrutiny of three others.
The crew realizes that they must isolate their base and therefore disable their airplanes and vehicles, and pretend that everything is normal during radio transmissions to prevent any rescue attempts. The researchers try to figure out who may have been replaced by the Thing to destroy the imitations before they can escape and take over the world. The task is found to be almost impossibly difficult when they realize that the Thing is shapeshifting and telepathic, reading minds and projecting thoughts. A sled dog is conditioned by human blood injections to provide a human-immunity serum test, as in rabbits. The initial test of Connant is inconclusive, as they realize that the test animal received both human and alien blood, meaning that either Copper or Garry is an alien. Assistant commander McReady takes over and deduces that all the other animals at the station, save the test dog, have already become imitations; all are killed by electrocution and their corpses burned.
Everyone suspects each other by now but must stay together for safety, deciding who will take turns sleeping and standing watch. Tensions mount and some men begin to go mad, thinking that they are already the last human, or wondering if they could know whether they were human any longer. Ultimately, Kinner, the cook, is murdered and accidentally revealed to be a Thing. McReady realizes that even small pieces of the creature will behave as independent organisms. He then uses this fact to test which men have been "converted" by taking blood samples from everyone and dipping a heated 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. Fourteen men, including Connant and Garry, are revealed to be Things. The remaining men go to test the isolated Blair, and on the way, see the first albatross of the Antarctic spring flying overhead; they shoot the bird to prevent a Thing from infecting it and flying to civilization.
When they reach Blair's cabin, they discover that he is a Thing. They realize that it has been left to its own devices for a week, coming and going as it pleased, as it is able to squeeze under doors by transforming itself. With the creatures inside the base destroyed, McReady and two others enter the cabin to kill the Thing that was once Blair. McReady forces it out into the snow and destroys it with a blowtorch. Afterwards, the trio discover that the Thing was dangerously close to finishing the construction of a nuclear-powered anti-gravity device that would have allowed it to escape to the outside world.

Characters

Humans

Although the expedition based at Big Magnet comprises 37 members, only 16 are named in the story, and all but three by last name alone. By the end of the story, 15 of them have been replaced by alien impostors.
  • Barclay: present at alien excavation.
  • Benning: aviation mechanic. He survives. He appears in the 1982 adaptation renamed George Bennings with the occupation of meteorologist, and is portrayed by Peter Maloney.
  • Blair: biologist, present at alien excavation. Blair goes insane after the Thing escapes, due to his desire to thaw the Thing leading to the subsequent disaster. Blair is locked in the tool shed, where he is replaced by a Thing. Blair appears in the 1982 adaptation portrayed by A. Wilford Brimley.
  • Caldwell: a member of the team.
  • Clark: dog handler. Clark is later revealed to be a Thing. He appears in the 1982 adaptation, played by Richard Masur.
  • Connant: physicist, cosmic ray specialist. He is the first member of the team to be assimilated. In Frozen Hell, he is given the first name Jerry.
  • Dr. Copper: physician, present at the alien excavation. Copper appears in the 1982 adaptation portrayed by Richard Dysart.
  • Dutton: revealed to be a Thing.
  • Garry: expedition commander. Garry is eventually revealed as a Thing and killed. Garry appears in the 1982 adaptation portrayed by Donald Moffat.
  • Kinner: scar-faced cook. Kinner is later revealed to be a Thing. His film counterpart is renamed Fuchs and played by Joel Polis.
  • McReady: expedition second-in-command, meteorologist, present at alien excavation. McReady appears in the 1982 adaptation portrayed by Kurt Russell, now with the name "R.J. MacReady" and the occupation of helicopter pilot. MacReady reappears in the video game played by Russell and in the comics based on the film.
  • Norris: muscular physicist. Norris appears in the 1982 adaptation portrayed by Charles Hallahan, though he is given Kinner's fate and much of Kinner's characterization.
  • Pomroy: livestock handler.
  • Ralsen: sledge keeper.
  • Van Wall: chief pilot, present at alien excavation.

    Non-humans

  • "The Thing", the antagonist, is a malevolent, shapeshifting alien life form. It appears in all three film adaptions. In the first film, the Thing is depicted as a tall, menacing humanoid alien that is composed of vegetable matter. In the two later film adaptions, the Things retain their ability to shapeshift, although they do not have telepathic abilities.
  • Charnauk: lead Alaskan husky, first openly attacked by the Thing.
  • Chinook and Jack: two other huskies.

    Adaptations and spin-offs

Films

The Thing from Another World is a loose adaptation of the original story. It features James Arness as the Thing, Kenneth Tobey as an Air Force officer, and Robert Cornthwaite as the lead scientist. In this adaptation, the alien is a humanoid invader from an unknown planet. A plant-based life form, the alien and its race need animal blood to survive. He, or rather it, is a one-alien army, capable of creating an entire army of invaders from seed pods contained within its body.
The John Carpenter 1982 adaptation The Thing, from a screenplay by Bill Lancaster, sticks more closely to Campbell's original story. Carpenter remade the film due to The Thing from Another World being one of his favorite films, and the 1951 adaptation featured on a television in Carpenter's original Halloween. Carpenter's idea was not to compete with the direction of the earlier film. In both the novella and this adaptation, the Thing can imitate any animal-based life form, absorbing the respective hosts' personalities and memories along with their bodies. When the story begins, the creature has already been discovered and released from the ice by another expedition. This version maintains the digestions and metamorphoses alluded to in the original novella, via practical effects such as animatronics.
A prequel to the Carpenter version, also titled The Thing, was released in 2011. It was directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. and written by Eric Heisserer, combining traditional special effects of the original film with computer generated imagery. In response to this, the special effects artist Alec Gillis crowdfunded and made the film Harbinger Down in 2015.
During the early 2000s, Frank Darabont and David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick of Darkwoods Productions worked on Return of the Thing, a four-part miniseries project for Sci Fi Channel. In 2020, a new film was announced to be produced by Jason Blum's Blumhouse Productions and released and distributed by Universal Pictures. The project is based on the Frozen Hell edition of the story. John Carpenter later confirmed that he was involved with the project. In 2023, he also acknowledged his involvement with The Thing 2, a direct sequel to his original film.