I have to say that I came to this novella, “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell, by seeing it in the credits of one of my favorites fifty’s Sci-fi movies with James Arness, “The Thing from Another World” (1951). Of course, the movie had to stay true to its time and was loosely based on this story; it still stands as a great presentation of its own. In 1982, John Carpenter took it upon himself to add a few more of the original elements of the story. Unfortunately, he had to bow to the gooey, gory monster era and missed much of the original story, including the fact that our antagonist was able to read minds and project thoughts. Not to distract from the two movies, but it would be nice if someone tried again to portray this story. Carpenter also leaves his movie with excellent potential for a sequel: “Two things are better than one.”
We find that thousands of years ago a rocket crashed and was buried in the Polar Regions. It was found to be due to a magnetic disturbance. During extraction, there is an accident. We find a being from another world and another time. The being has powers of deception and shapeshifting. Yet the story is not about supernatural beings, as it is about people and their relationship with each other. As with many great mysteries, it is always the last person you suspect. That is one of the strong points of Sci-Fi, not the technology, as it will come about soon enough; what it is about is how we deal with our fellow humans under duress.
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