John Gregory Betancourt

Of the 25 tales in this Christmas collection, few kept me hooked, and I skipped the least engaging ones.

Gary Lovisi’s ‘The Christmas Crazies’ is the latest in a long line of stories that refers to tears being silent:

‘I noticed a tear streaming silently down her cheek.’

Has anyone in human history heard a tear that wasn’t silent? I’ve seen many variations of the ‘silent tear’ in fiction now that I consider it to be the most absurd of all clichés. You can cry at different show more volumes but tears are never loud. It's as pointless as stating, 'Wet rain fell from the sky.'

I only had one magical experience reading this collection, which came in the shape of the funniest short story – and perhaps the funniest piece of literature of any length – that I’ve ever read, namely ‘Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs’. Written in the early 1920s by Eleanor Hallowell Abbott, whom I hadn’t previously heard of (and will be reading more of), this is a work of comic genius.

In short, a girl of seventeen or eighteen called Flame decides to spend her Christmas Day with four dogs in their owner’s house. The owner is away and, after Flame’s meeting with a servant who yearns to be elsewhere drinking cider, she offers to dogsit for him. Hilarity and chaos follow. I’ll be giving this one a separate read again next Christmas. show less

The Thing has long been my favorite horror movie--one of my favorite movies, period--and so reading the source material for the movie was long overdue. I ended up reading this extended version which was only published more recently, long after the original WHO GOES THERE? inspired the films. This longer version of the novella, discovered among Campbell's papers at Harvard, includes a longer and more developed introductory section of three chapters that were essentially cut prior to the show more initial publication.

First, I want to note that the preface and introduction here are well worth reading. In discussing Campbell's history and writings, they not only give context for the work (both long and short), but offer up a fantastic reading list for any reader who came to sci-fi late (like me) and is hoping to go back and read more of the classics. The novella itself is more than worth reading, of course. From a writer's perspective, it's fascinating to look at the decisions Campbell made and wonder what changes he might have made to the early chapters if he'd chosen to publish the full novella as a work initially. Now, there's certainly good case for understanding why he made the cuts, but I was still glad to read the whole.

This novella moves fast--especially in the final few chapters--and it was sometimes difficult for me to separate my hyper-awareness/memory of the movie from the story. I think, for me, that probably made the story even more encompassing and enjoyable, and that I might have felt it read too fast otherwise. But on the whole, I loved it--it's a fantastic piece of science fiction horror, worthy of time from any lover of the genre.

Absolutely recommended. show less

Anthologies can often be a mixed bag, and this one was no exception. I also have to say that it was rather frustrating how blatantly this needed way more copyediting than it got. It’s honestly kinda embarrassing for something attached to a major franchise. (Yes, I know it started life as a series of Kickstarter incentives that got out of hand, but you still decided to compile it and make money off of it, so put some effort into that please?)

Sidenote: after how much of a big deal the show more introduction made about Frozen Things (the recently-discovered longer draft of Who Goes There? that was published), I did actually start reading it, but tapped out after a couple chapters when I realized it wasn’t any less boring than Who Goes There? And like, I’m a masochist, but reading a longer version of a boring novella isn’t one of my kinks, sorry.

On that note, I should add that these stories are based on Who Goes There? not on its drastically more popular film adaptation, so bear that in mind I guess? And a lot of the stories left me feeling like “meh whatever,” but the ones I enjoyed made this anthology more than worth it. My favorite stories, in the order they appeared in the anthology:

“THE” BY CHELSEA QUINN YARBO:
This was probably the one that seems the most out of place in this anthology since I can’t really see that it has anything to do with Who Goes There?, but I’m way more interested in her weird Star Trek populated by beings with weird pronouns (!!!) and whatnot.

“COLD STORAGE” BY KEVIN J. ANDERSON:
This is honestly exactly what I would expect Kevin J. Anderson to write given this assignment. His is probably the most lighthearted story in the anthology. It has two government employees who are heavily implied to work at Area 51, one of whom ends up studying Blair’s journal.

“GOOD AS DEAD” BY NINA KIRIKI HOFFMAN:
In this story the wife of one of the Antarctic expedition members deals with her husband returning after a long time away, and her nosey neighbor trying to bully her. She actually ends up befriending one of the Things to an extent, as it takes up residence in her beloved family dog and puts an end to her neighbor bullying her.

“THE HORROR ON THE SUPERYACHT” by Mark McLaughlin:
This has the feel of one of those horror comedies where everyone is half naked and you’re not supposed to take anything seriously but it turns into a massive bloodbath. It’s a lot of fun. Not where I would want most of these stories to go, but an effective change of pace to have in an anthology like this one.

“APOLLYON” BY G.D. FALKSEN:
This was a story about Roman centurions encountering a Thing centuries ago. It was a little difficult to get into at first, but once it got going it was just phenomenal. And the pathos of the protagonist listening to a Thing that took the form of his dead lover hearing “her” talk about what it’s like to be alone in the universe, cut off from your home… this one was a lot.

“THE MONSTER AT WORLD’S END” BY ALLAN COLE:
This is probably my favorite story of the anthology. This one is told from the point of view of a Thing, but unlike “The Things” by Peter Watts it’s telling a wholly original story. In this one a captured Thing is being tortured but ends up befriending a human woman. Amusingly, it refers to humans as Things from its perspective, which is a fun little inversion. When it’s later able to escape, it hears her in the process of being sexually assaulted and rescues her. She convinces it to let her run away with it, and as their friendship deepens she begins to convince him that humans are not inherently evil. There’s even some pretty rad class consciousness on display as she tells him “those depredations are the fault of a greedy, deliberately ignorant few who have seized power over the rest of us.” It’s a remarkably succinct way of describing capitalism to a literal space alien.

And yeah, there are plenty of clunkers too. But I think there’s more than enough in here to make it worth your while if you enjoy science fiction and want more Things to read.

… more Things to read?

Yeah, okay, I’ll show myself out. show less

I vividly remember reading "Who Goes There?" as a child, in a sci-fi short story compilation I checked out from the library whose name I can't recall. I've completely forgotten the other stories, which were of the kind that fellow sci-fi veteran Robert Silverberg fondly but firmly sums up in the Introduction here as "wordy epics in which grim, methodical supermen repeatedly saved the world from menacing aliens by mastering, with the greatest of ease, such things as faster-than-light travel, show more the fabrication of matter-destroying rays, the release of atomic energy, and the penetration of hyperspace." Campbell's story about an Antarctic expedition's struggle against a shapeshifting alien was incredibly different - intensely-paced, relentless, eerie, and genuinely frightening to young me. It was a great bridge for me between more "literary" short stories like Jack London's "To Build a Fire" and other fantasy horror like H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness, which coincidentally was also published in serial form in the same Astounding magazine about 2 years before "Who Goes There?", which Campbell of course went on to become the phenomenal editor of.

This extended version, based on a manuscript recently discovered in a Harvard archive, adds 3 intro chapters and a few thousand words of additional verbiage throughout. Campbell was wise to cut the extra material, which is overly didactic and not strictly necessary to the plot. The Preface has a good discussion of the importance of firm editing; as newly-minted editor Campbell would advise Asimov years later, "When you have difficulty with the beginning of the story, that is because you are starting in the wrong place, and almost certainly too soon. Pick out a later point in the story and begin again" However, interestingly I didn't find that the extra baggage diluted the power of the story much for me, although perhaps that was because it still had the force of memory behind it. It's still the immensely influential Ur-sci-fi-horror work that inspired John Carpenter, Ridley Scott, Cris Carter, and so many more, and if you had never read the short story I don't think the impact would be much lessened. At the end there is a preview of a "faithful sequel" set in the present day written by John Betancourt, who helped compile this project. I wish that Peter Watts' wonderful tribute "The Things", which retells "Who Goes There?" from the alien's perspective, had been included, but otherwise this is a delight to read, and Betancourt has done the world a real service by raising this 80 year old story out of the ice of obscurity back to the land of the living. May it continue to spread its tentacles of influence! show less