Books2Movies Club discussion

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Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell Jr. is a psychological horror slash science fiction novella that inspired three adaptations so far. The most famous is certainly John Carpenter's The Thing (1982), however, it was first done in 1951, and called The Thing from Another World. The third movie, and the last one, followed Carpenter's (and Campbell's) line of thought, and was also simply called The Thing (2011), although it is actually set before the events happening in the 1982 story.

Have you read the novella? Have you seen the movie(s)? Share your thoughts and questions with us!

I have to say that I think the The Thing is actually a better name for this story than Who Goes There. I never quite understood why the book was called that. A part of me can see where the author was going with the title but I do think The Thing captures the attention more.

I quite enjoyed the book. I really liked the psychological aspect of the story and the idea of having this group of people isolated from the rest of the world and put into a situation where they do all start doubting each other, and turning against each other. Even without alien creatures one can imagine it might be easy to go mad in such a circumstance.

It seems the men where already on edge, in the conversations about how no one had any privacy and how that could get to a person after a while.

One thing that I noticed though was after the arrival of the alien Blair just started making all these crazy assumptions based on nothing. Everything he said, I would just starch my head and think "where did you get that from" or "Why would you assume that when you know nothing about this creature" He just pulled these theories out of the air and everyone else would just go along with it even though there was no real actual evidence to back up his presumptions.

Who Goes There? is the daily deal on Audible today. You can purchase the audiobook for $.99!

This made me happy, I wasn't sure if I'd get to this book this month.