A Far Out Fantastic Site

Credit: Pixabay I’m admitting it straight out: I hate John Carpenter’s “The Thing”. I always have. This remake of the 1950s original, which bears the slightly different title of “The Thing From Another World”, is based on John Campbell Jr.’s sci fi horror novella, “Who Goes There?” . Carpenter’s movie came across to me as more gore exploitation than anything. Regardless of that, I liked the movie’s promo poster.  I first saw this poster in the summer of 1982, when the movie released. I was 11-going-on-12 and with my parents and younger brother travelling around the Los Angeles area (we had just moved to Fresno). The poster depicted a monstrous, shadowed out, humanoid figure, beams of cold white light seeming to radiate from the center of its face, set against a dark arctic background. This poster was all over Los Angeles: on the benches of the bus stops, on the freeway billboards, and definitely on buildings throughout its place of production, Universal Studios (which my b...

Credit: Pixabay.com One of the things for us science fiction writers and fans to be thankful for this Thanksgiving is the greats of the genre’s golden age which was roughly from the 1930s to ‘50s. One of those greats is John W. Campbell. He had a big influence on science fiction and helped popularise the genre especially as editor of his Astounding magazine, now known as Analog Science Fiction and Science Fact . You can also say his novella, “Who Goes There?”, eventually influenced the mixed genre of science fiction horror when it was adapted into the 1950s film, The Thing from Another World , which in turn lead to two remakes: John Carpenter’s The Thing in 1982 and director Matthijs van Heijningen’s 2011 version (that some refer to as a “prequel”). So when Alec Nevala-Lee uncovered the manuscript of an earlier, unpublished, full-length novel version of Campbell’s story, it must had been as thrilling as it i s for the A ntarctic expedition in “Who Goes There?”/”The Thing...