t an American scientific station in the Antarctic, a group of men discovers, unbelievably, a spaceship buried in ice that's more 20 million years old. A shadowy, ice-entombed figure lies a small distance away. It appears the alien had survived the crash landing, only to be flash-frozen when exposed to the -60 degree winds on this fiercest of Antarctic plateaus. In attempting to dislodge the ship from its glacial grave, the team accidentally destroys it. But there is still a piece of mystery to explore, and so they haul the alien body back to base camp.
During the long trek back to camp, some members of the team begin to experience unsettling, vivid dreams about the alien. The men dream the creature is alive and can read their thoughts, absorb their souls, and steal their bodies. These are shrugged off and dismissed when the group reaches the base, and discussions of what to do with the dead creature launch like fireworks from the station's scientists, cooks, mechanics and engineers.
The decision is made to thaw it out in a back room and study it in Antarctic isolation. Fireworks flare anew when the station is alerted that the alien has vanished. Apparently not quite dead, it now walks unseen among them, able to absorb organisms and imitate them perfectly, dividing and conquering as it goes. All the dreams of violence and annihilation it has evoked among the men were not mere nightmares, but portents. No one is safe, and everyone is suspect.
Disappointing but inspiring
Although most readers might be familiar with either of the two film treatments of this short story--the 1951 and 1982 version of The Thing by Howard Hawkes and John Carpenter respectively-- probably far fewer have read the original itself. Those who only know this tale through the cinematic versions might be a bit jolted by the fiction that inspired them, by its brevity and its seeming incompleteness in comparison.
The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Science Fiction pegged this story best by saying, "...it became famous only after Howard Hawkes based The Thing on it." On its own merits "Who Goes There?" has its fair share of disappointments. It doesn't work well as an action piece because the narrative never seems to take off, largely because so much of the action is dealt with in uninspired exposition. Additionally, it fails as an effective psychological thriller because the characters are ill-defined, and Campbell's delivery of them as distinct individuals is an incomplete pass. Ironically, the premise of the alien as an undetectable shape-shifter is the perfect, albeit unmined, ore for a disturbing investigation of the psyche.
To his credit, Campbell placed this tale in the forbidding, exotic Antarctic, which, in the 1950s, must have seemed even more remote and desolate than in today's era of National Geographic footage, satellite remotes and e-mail. A few of the plot points are nicely clever (like the alien virus distributed through the milk of the cows at the station), and Campbell every now and then is able to create a vivid image with a deliberate and measured delivery of three or four words. But in the end this story is probably best enjoyed as an important piece of SF literary history rather than as an important piece of literature on its own.
