The Thing

Posted Mon Dec 19, 2005 in Books

I wrote about John Carpenter’s The Thing some time ago. Carpenter’s movie has to be one of the scariest I’ve ever seen, much superior to the original from 1951.

I also tracked down the title of the book in which the original story still lives. The original story was entitled Who Goes There? and is from 1938, by the amazing John W. Campbell, Jr. (Yes, I know the pun—Campbell edited Amazing Stories for many, many years.) In the book, The Antarktos Cycle, published by Chaosium, the story is renamed and called The Thing from Another World.

I ordered a copy from Amazon and it arrived last week. I read The Thing from Another World, and the creep factor is definitely there. I won’t spoil the story for those who might want to track it down, but will say the Carpenter movie is closer to the story than the original movie.

It’s an excellent story and I’m looking forward to reading the remainder of the stories in The Antarktos Cycle.