# Who Goes There?
**Who Goes There?** is a science fiction horror novella by John W. Campbell Jr., printed complete in the August 1938 issue of *[Astounding Science-Fiction](https://www.edgepedia.org/analog-science-fiction-and-fact)* under the pseudonym Don A. Stuart[1](https://literatureatlas.com/science-fiction-book/who-goes-there/). It tells of an [Antarctic](https://www.edgepedia.org/antarctic) research station whose crew recovers a frozen alien from the ice near a crashed spaceship, and must then work out which of their number the revived shapeshifter has replaced[2](https://sfmagazines.com/?p=11560). The story is the basis of *The Thing from Another World* (1951), [John Carpenter](https://www.edgepedia.org/john-carpenter)'s *The Thing* (1982), and *The Thing* (2011)[3](https://experts.illinois.edu/en/publications/before-ithe-thingi-viruses-sled-dogs-seabirds-and-science-fiction/).
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| First publication | *Astounding Science-Fiction*, August 1938, complete in one issue, as by Don A. Stuart[1](https://literatureatlas.com/science-fiction-book/who-goes-there/) |
| Author | John W. Campbell Jr. (1910–1971), editor of *Astounding* from October 1937; the novella was his last significant fiction, written at age 28[4](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/campbell_john_w_jr) • [5](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/175975772-who-goes-there) |
| Length | A novella of more than 20,000 words[6](https://rjalker.itch.io/who-goes-there-by-john-campbell) |
| Premise | Antarctic crew digs a frozen alien from the ice near a crashed spacecraft; the revived creature can imitate any life form it assimilates[2](https://sfmagazines.com/?p=11560) • [7](https://www.thresholdsarchive.org.uk/abject-adaptation-in-the-thing/) |
| Film adaptations | *The Thing from Another World* (1951), *The Thing* (1982), *The Thing* (2011)[3](https://experts.illinois.edu/en/publications/before-ithe-thingi-viruses-sled-dogs-seabirds-and-science-fiction/) |
| Earlier version | *Frozen Hell*, written circa 1935, about 30,000 words, found among Campbell's papers at Harvard and published in 2018[4](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/campbell_john_w_jr) • [8](https://sfmagazines.com/?p=11658) |
| Standing | Voted top place among science fiction novellas in *The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two* (1973)[9](https://mikegrost.com/boucher.htm) |
## Publication history
Campbell had been appointed editor of *Astounding* by F. Orlin Tremaine from the October 1937 issue, and the story appeared in the magazine's August 1938 number under the name Don A. Stuart[4](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/campbell_john_w_jr) • [10](https://www.asnotedin.com/?action=person&id=P00012). Stuart was the pseudonym Campbell used for his more literary, moody stories, in contrast to the superscience space opera he published under his own name[4](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/campbell_john_w_jr). The novella was his last significant piece of fiction; after taking the editor's chair he wrote almost no more[5](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/175975772-who-goes-there). The copyright notice reads © 1938 by [Street & Smith](https://www.edgepedia.org/street-and-smith), Inc., the magazine's publisher[11](https://www.everand.com/book/585605491/Who-Goes-There).
The story's first book appearance was the collection *Who Goes There? Seven Tales of Science-Fiction* (Shasta Publishers, Chicago, 1948), with a dust jacket by Hannes Bok[12](https://potterauctions.com/pdf/Catalog_192_web.pdf). Several volumes were assembled to take advantage of the tale's success: the 1948 collection was retitled *The Thing and Other Stories* in 1952 and *The Thing from Outer Space* in 1966, followed by *The Thing from Another World* (1953 chap) and *Who Goes There? and Other Stories* (1955)[4](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/campbell_john_w_jr).
## Story and themes
The novella opens at an Antarctic research station with the crew gathered around the tarpaulined body of a frozen alien. The pilot McReady recounts how the men, investigating a magnetic anomaly, found a crashed spaceship and dug the creature from the ice, accidentally destroying the craft in the process[2](https://sfmagazines.com/?p=11560). The thing has three red eyes and blue hair like crawling worms, and even frozen it seems to seethe with wrath[2](https://sfmagazines.com/?p=11560). Once thawed, it revives and reveals itself as a shapeshifter: as the biologist Blair explains, an organism of ordinary protoplasm in which the cell nuclei can control the cells at will, allowing it to imitate any living creature it assimilates[7](https://www.thresholdsarchive.org.uk/abject-adaptation-in-the-thing/).
The bulk of the story follows the men as they try to determine who is human and who is a copy, and the paranoia this generates becomes the story's engine[7](https://www.thresholdsarchive.org.uk/abject-adaptation-in-the-thing/). The explicit horror is cross-species infection from a preserved animal body trapped in the polar ice, according to Lucinda Cole, a scholar of literature and science at the University of Illinois, who reads the tale against early twentieth-century debates about bacteria and viruses and against the diseases mentioned in the text, such as parrot fever and rabies[3](https://experts.illinois.edu/en/publications/before-ithe-thingi-viruses-sled-dogs-seabirds-and-science-fiction/). The alien's method of reproduction by assimilation, rather than by seeds or sex, distinguishes it from most monster fiction of its period[7](https://www.thresholdsarchive.org.uk/abject-adaptation-in-the-thing/).
The story has an ancestor in H.P. Lovecraft's *At the Mountains of Madness*, which was serialized in *Astounding Stories* from February to April 1936, the year before Campbell took over the magazine; both stories place sinister alien remains in [Antarctica](https://www.edgepedia.org/antarctica)[13](https://mediainfluencemap.com/influences/who-goes-there). Scholarship has also read the story as a founding text of the [Golden Age](https://www.edgepedia.org/golden-age) of science fiction[14](https://jsfphil.org/vol-1/mendoza-the-creolizing-genre-of-sf/) and as an Antarctic narrative in which the alien embodies the continent itself[15](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297226373_Locating_the_thing_The_Antarctic_as_alien_space_in_John_W_Campbell%27s_%27Who_Goes_There%27).
## Adaptations
Three major films derive from the novella, and they differ sharply from it and from each other[16](https://oulurepo.oulu.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/7047/nbnfioulu-201605051637.pdf?sequence=1).
**The Thing from Another World (1951).** Directed by Christian Nyby and produced by [Howard Hawks](https://www.edgepedia.org/howard-hawks), the 1951 film relocates the action from Antarctica to the Arctic and removes the shapeshifting entirely[7](https://www.thresholdsarchive.org.uk/abject-adaptation-in-the-thing/). Its alien is a humanoid creature derived from plant life, which harvests blood for food and reproduces through seed pods rather than assimilation[7](https://www.thresholdsarchive.org.uk/abject-adaptation-in-the-thing/). It is the only version of the story to feature a woman character, Nikki, played by Margaret Sheridan[7](https://www.thresholdsarchive.org.uk/abject-adaptation-in-the-thing/).
**The Thing (1982).** John Carpenter's film restores the shapeshifting premise and is credited on screen as based on Campbell's novella[13](https://mediainfluencemap.com/influences/who-goes-there). It translates the paranoia premise into a body-horror film in which a perfect imitation weaponizes trust[17](https://www.cinemablend.com/movies/these-book-to-screen-adaptations-annihilation-were-wildly-misunderstood-thats-what-makes-them-brilliant). The film was panned on release as nihilistic and gross, especially in the shadow of *E.T.*, which arrived the same year, but its reputation has grown substantially since[17](https://www.cinemablend.com/movies/these-book-to-screen-adaptations-annihilation-were-wildly-misunderstood-thats-what-makes-them-brilliant).
**The Thing (2011).** A prequel to the 1982 film, imagined as showing the events at the Norwegian camp that precede Carpenter's story[3](https://experts.illinois.edu/en/publications/before-ithe-thingi-viruses-sled-dogs-seabirds-and-science-fiction/). In story elements it resembles the 1951 version, since both feature the expedition's initial discovery of the alien craft and the alien[16](https://oulurepo.oulu.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/7047/nbnfioulu-201605051637.pdf?sequence=1).
The story also reached the screen in a form far from the original: the 1972 film *Horror Express* reset the material as a period piece aboard the Trans-Siberian Express[18](https://www.scottnicolay.com/stories-from-the-borderland-10-mccluskycampbell/). The 1951 film's scientist [Carrington](https://www.edgepedia.org/carrington), who argues that the Thing's development was not handicapped by emotional or sexual factors, foreshadows the speech that the duplicitous science officer Ash gives in *Alien* (1979), a film whose claustrophobic isolation and creature trace back to *The Thing* in its 1938 and 1951 guises[7](https://www.thresholdsarchive.org.uk/abject-adaptation-in-the-thing/).
The story has also returned to prose. Peter Watts's short story "The Things" (2010) retells the events from the alien's perspective, portraying the creature as a cosmic consciousness for which human individuality is a frozen solitude[7](https://www.thresholdsarchive.org.uk/abject-adaptation-in-the-thing/).
## Frozen Hell
The published novella is a cut version of a longer manuscript. Campbell wrote the first version, titled *Frozen Hell*, circa 1935, completing it within a couple of months of a story meeting in which the idea was proposed; the magazine that eventually bought the story did not want the longer text, so Campbell excised part of it on the advice of senior editors[19](https://bloody-disgusting.com/editorials/3706147/frozen-hell-the-history-of-the-thing-from-1936-to-2011/) • [20](https://fanac.org/fanzines/Portable_Storage/Portable%20Storage%206%20Breiding%2C%20William%202021%20US.pdf). The longer manuscript was never published in Campbell's lifetime and was discovered after his death among his papers deposited at Harvard[4](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/campbell_john_w_jr).
Its rediscovery came in two steps. A 2011 publication mentioned the existence of "40,000 words" of the story, a version considerably longer than the published one; the writer John Gregory Betancourt then unearthed the manuscript, contacted Campbell's relatives, and published it[8](https://sfmagazines.com/?p=11658). The book *Frozen Hell* appeared in 2018[4](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/campbell_john_w_jr). The actual text runs to about 30,000 words, 8,000 words longer than *Who Goes There?*, not the 40,000 mentioned in the letter[8](https://sfmagazines.com/?p=11658). How much of the published *Frozen Hell* text is an earlier draft and how much a longer version Campbell cut for length is not settled[1](https://literatureatlas.com/science-fiction-book/who-goes-there/).
## Reception and legacy
Within the science fiction field the story has ranked highly in canon-building exercises: it took top place among novellas in the reader vote behind *The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two* (1973), and it placed well in the Locus All-Centuries polls (2012)[9](https://mikegrost.com/boucher.htm). It is widely regarded as one of the best science fiction stories ever written[21](https://academic.oup.com/book/54524/chapter-abstract/422593002), and one commentator calls it one of the most celebrated stories in all of weird fiction[18](https://www.scottnicolay.com/stories-from-the-borderland-10-mccluskycampbell/). Its assimilation premise has echoed through later fiction, from the pod people of *Invasion of the Body Snatchers* to the Borg of *Star Trek: The Next Generation*[7](https://www.thresholdsarchive.org.uk/abject-adaptation-in-the-thing/).
## References
1. [Who Goes There? (1938) — John W. Campbell, Great SF Books](https://literatureatlas.com/science-fiction-book/who-goes-there/)
2. [Astounding Science-Fiction v21n06, August 1938, SF Magazines](https://sfmagazines.com/?p=11560)
3. [Lucinda Cole (2022). Before The Thing: Viruses, Sled Dogs, Seabirds, and Science Fiction. In Animal Remains, Routledge.](https://experts.illinois.edu/en/publications/before-ithe-thingi-viruses-sled-dogs-seabirds-and-science-fiction/)
4. [Campbell, John W, Jr, Science Fiction Encyclopedia](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/campbell_john_w_jr)
5. [Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell Jr., Goodreads](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/175975772-who-goes-there)
6. [Who Goes There? by Rjalker (transcription of the 1938 magazine text)](https://rjalker.itch.io/who-goes-there-by-john-campbell)
7. [Chris Machell. Abject Adaptation in The Thing, THRESHOLDS](https://www.thresholdsarchive.org.uk/abject-adaptation-in-the-thing/)
8. [Frozen Hell by John W. Campbell Jr., 2019, SF Magazines](https://sfmagazines.com/?p=11658)
9. [Michael E. Grost. Visitors From Science Fiction](https://mikegrost.com/boucher.htm)
10. [John W Campbell, As Noted](https://www.asnotedin.com/?action=person&id=P00012)
11. [Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell, Jr., ebook edition](https://www.everand.com/book/585605491/Who-Goes-There)
12. [Potter & Potter Auctions, Catalog 192: Campbell, Who Goes There? Seven Tales of Science-Fiction (Shasta, 1948)](https://potterauctions.com/pdf/Catalog_192_web.pdf)
13. [What influenced Who Goes There?, and what it influenced, Media Influence Map](https://mediainfluencemap.com/influences/who-goes-there)
14. [The Creolizing Genre of SF and the Nightmare of Whiteness in John W. Campbell's "Who Goes There?", Journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy](https://jsfphil.org/vol-1/mendoza-the-creolizing-genre-of-sf/)
15. [Locating the Thing: The Antarctic as Alien Space in John W. Campbell's "Who Goes There?", ResearchGate](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297226373_Locating_the_thing_The_Antarctic_as_alien_space_in_John_W_Campbell%27s_%27Who_Goes_There%27)
16. [The Thing From Another World (1951), The Thing (1982), and The Thing (2011), University of Oulu thesis](https://oulurepo.oulu.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/7047/nbnfioulu-201605051637.pdf?sequence=1)
17. [These Book-to-Screen Adaptations Were Wildly Misunderstood, CinemaBlend](https://www.cinemablend.com/movies/these-book-to-screen-adaptations-annihilation-were-wildly-misunderstood-thats-what-makes-them-brilliant)
18. [Stories from the Borderland #10: "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell and "The Crawling Horror" by Thorp McClusky, Scott Nicolay](https://www.scottnicolay.com/stories-from-the-borderland-10-mccluskycampbell/)
19. [Frozen Hell: The History of 'The Thing' from 1936 to 2011, Bloody Disgusting](https://bloody-disgusting.com/editorials/3706147/frozen-hell-the-history-of-the-thing-from-1936-to-2011/)
20. [Portable Storage 6 (William Breiding, 2021), FANAC](https://fanac.org/fanzines/Portable_Storage/Portable%20Storage%206%20Breiding%2C%20William%202021%20US.pdf)
21. [The Thing from Inner Space: John W Campbell, Robert E. Howard, Cordwainer Smith, in Uncovering Lives, Oxford Academic](https://academic.oup.com/book/54524/chapter-abstract/422593002)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Literature and written works › Science fiction (literature) › Science fiction works › SF short fiction, collections, and anthologies › SF novellas*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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