<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Howard Hawks' movie The Thing (1951) and John Carpenter's remake (1982) are based on "Who Goes There?," a story by the famous editor John W. Campbell, which originally appeared in 1939 under his pen name, Don A. Stuart.

In a way, the story is a re-telling of H. P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness—set in the Arctic (rather than the Antarctic as in Lovecraft) and emphasizing the horror of contact with the truly alien.

The story involves the discovery of an alien intelligence, buried for 20 million years in the Arctic ice, a life-form both telepathic and able to change its shape. The central aspect of its horror hinges on not knowing who among the team that discovered the alien is human, and who is not.