This was one of my most engaging reads. It starts off kind of slow, in the sense that I'm not too interested about what's going on, but then they find the Thing. Blair wants to melt it because he thinks it won't survive and they just kind of let him. The scene where Blair talks about how the Thing works and how it could take over the world literally put chills though my bones. Like, what do you mean it can split into separate entities? They literally just found Satan incarnate. Kill it now. At that moment, I was hooked. Every aspect of the story from then on was filled with tension. Not knowing who is or isn't an imitation was quite gripping.

Lots of hard science fiction made up this book. There was lots of explaining about human-immune animals like dogs and rabbits. It also has a bit of horror mixed in because they're literally trapped in a research base in Antarctica as an alien monster runs amok. The scene where one of the men (other than Blair) went crazy and started singing, and then the other man went in and tried to kill him, and then they found out that the man was one of the monsters just pretending this whole time in an elaborate attempt to deceive them.... Geez, that was intense.

I also like when McCready found out a plausible solution to weed out the monsters, which lead to them going to find Blair who was also replaced with a monster that had tried to create anti-gravity. Damn. That had to be my favorite section. I definitely think this is a compelling science fiction book that successfully executes a high concept premise. If only it were longer.

Obviously a great premise and an iconic story, but the writing is atrocious most of the time. Having to reread sentences just to understand what's going on sometimes. It's bloated with far too many adjectives and in general horribly overwritten, which is surprising considering John W. Campbell Jr worked as a prominent editor for many years

Perhaps the greatest argument one could bring against the existence of this book was that during reading the central story I felt “hmm, this could use some trimming.”

So I'd say this experiment is somewhat of a failure - the gorgeous drawings, dark and appropriately chilling, and the strength of the original story are balanced out by lacklustre introductions (that offer some interesting history, but also call this version inferior), the inclusion of a mystifying potential “follow-up” (apparently penned by the editor himself - talk about self-serving, tackling your obviously inferior waste of time on one of the most acclaimed sci-fi stories ever), and the restoration of some 40 pages of (personally) excruciatingly boring hard sci-fi descriptions of melting ice.

There are moments that work in the new text, but it's only once the story gets past its intro that it really gets into its groove, the uncertainty and paranoia building into beautifully creepy mind games and poetic philosophising, the story becoming impossible to put down before the ending. It still shows its age with its naive belief in the human spirit and -kind, and the pretty much xenophobic and racist approach to anything different; not to mention that the characters truly are no characters, just a cast of names for mostly interchangeable scientists. But the problems are the clearest during the intro and the rest of the story, nevermind the naivety, just works.

And to think, I almost quit the whole book right there, thinking it just wasn’t for me.

5 stars for the original tale (and the drawings), none for this misguided endeavour - some stuff should remain on the cutting floor.

Who Goes There? is the novella that inspired the horror classic The Thing. The Thing 1982 is probably my favorite horror movie, and this novella shows some of the seeds that John Carpenter would refine into a classic. Here the idea is more interesting than the story and Campbell's version suffers due to poor characters. Still, the plot is gold and it's a quick read so I can't complain much.

One of those rare instances were the movie packs more of a punch than the novel. The ideas in Who Goes There? are great. The psychological terror of not knowing who is the enemy is still scary but the movie discards the forced scientific dialogue which is peppered throughout the story for no other purpose than info dumping. Definitely worth reading.