In 1938 John W. Campbell Jr. writes the short story “Who Goes There?” In 1951 Howard Hawks brings the short story to film with his interpretation “The Thing From Another World”. In 1981 screenwriter Bill Lancaster returns to “Who Goes There?” and writes a script based on the short story for a movie version of Campbell’s original novella. Alan Dean Foster writes a novelization of Lancaster’s script and in December 1981 John Carpenter starts to shoot  his film, THE THING, released in June of 1982. 15 years later in 1997 Anne Billson writes a British Film Institute book covering Carpenter’s classic giving it extremely high praise.

You can read the complete 1938 novella  “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell here.