Fairy Tale Spotlight: Who Goes There? [Book Review]

"Who Goes There?" is a science fiction book written by John W. Campbell. It was published in 1938. It is the inspiration for the 1951 movie "The Thing from Another World, and the 1982 movie "The Thing."

"Who Goes There?" details the events of a changeling type monster found in Antarctica. It doesn't just kill other biologicals, it replaces them in a 1 to 1 fashion. If it copies a human, the creature even thinks it is human. It is the way it hides. Really scary stuff actually.

The bulk of the story deals with the men trying to figure out who is human and who is the monster. The paranoia they go through is extremely nerve-wracking. Imagine the stress of not only knowing which one of your fellow humans was a monster... but that the monster might actually be you. That's insane.

When I went into this, I actually expected the story to be kind of corny. Science fiction from the 30's tends to be a little on the goofy side. I was pleasantly surprised to not only find it to be quite gritty, but it was a whole lot like the 80's film. Or should I say the 80's movie was like the 30's book? Either way, the story was presented in a way that seemed ahead of its time.

I do have a major criticism though. This is more of a writing criticism, to be clear. It is important that, when you write a book, you have a good balance between dialog and narrative. They are suppose to help each other out so that the reader doesn't get bogged down by either over-written exposition or too much dialog. "Who Goes There?" suffers from way too much from a constant streams of dialog. It feels like one single conversation that just goes on and on right through the entire book.

This issues comes with two problems. Firstly, it becomes increasingly difficult to know who is talking and what those people are like. It also will wear the reader out. This story does feel imbalanced in its writing, and that's really too bad. It is much like the author just hammered out what the characters would say while arguing to each other and just wanted to get it all out at once. In many ways, it reads like a script, but it isn't a script. It's a proper book.

Despite this flaw, I still recommend that you read "Who Goes There?" If you can get past the heavy dialog of the story, you will find yourself reading the tale that inspired "The Thing." It's good. It's really good, and especially surprising to see something this gritty from the 30's. Oh, and real quick: I like the title "The Thing" far more than the book's title. It is called a "thing" constantly in the story. That's just my opinion though.

This blog was written on April 13, 2023.

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