Here's the newest movie review on my blog, ahead of a couple others I meant to put up here, on The Thing. It's noteworthy as a "remake" that was more like an alternate treatment of the literary source material, and got misunderstood accordingly. I comment on its relationship to the story. Something I allude to that I realized I don't remember a specific source for is that John Campbell reportedly dictated that humans HAD to win in a conflict with aliens. Does anyone else remember this anecdote, or how many of the people working under Campbell mentioned it directly?
https://trendytroodon.blogspot.com/2022/06/really-good-movies-one-thats-remake.html
David N. Brown
Mesa, Arizona

David Brown wrote:
Something I allude to that I realized I don't remember a specific source for is that John Campbell reportedly dictated that humans HAD to win in a conflict with aliens. Does anyone else remember this anecdote, or how many of the people working under Campbell mentioned it directly?

Are there any who didn't mention it? As for a cite, I don't have one handy.. You might check _The Early Asimov_, about him wanting to write for Campbell. There was one egregious story ending of this time imposed and possibly written by the editor. This may be where the necessity of the Foundation series having an all-human galaxy was noted as having the side benefit of not butting heads with Campbell over the alien issue.

> https://trendytroodon.blogspot.com/2022/06/really-good-movies-one-thats-remake.html

--
-Jack

On Thursday, June 23, 2022 at 5:33:13 PM UTC-5, David Brown wrote:
> Here's the newest movie review on my blog, ahead of a couple others I meant to put up here, on The Thing. It's noteworthy as a "remake" that was more like an alternate treatment of the literary source material, and got misunderstood accordingly. I comment on its relationship to the story. Something I allude to that I realized I don't remember a specific source for is that John Campbell reportedly dictated that humans HAD to win in a conflict with aliens. Does anyone else remember this anecdote, or how many of the people working under Campbell mentioned it directly?

I thought it went over the top. For most of the movie the aliens operated much as in _Who Goes There?_,
assimilating and becoming people and sled dogs (the only organisms they had access to in central Antartica)
acting off stage over a period of days. In the short story, the humans knew that they had to destroy the aliens before
spring, when migratory seabirds such as the albatross would arrive, giving the aliens the ability to spread around
the world. In the conclusion of the movie, after the humans find and use the same method as in the novella
to identify assimilated people, some of the revealed aliens suddenly transform their bodies and grow to
the size of dinosaurs in seconds, exceeding by many orders of magnitude any metabolic energy that could
be produced by a biological organism.

Peter Wezeman
anti-social Darwinist

In article <9b26739c-c7c3-4307-af65-f4023b0698ean@googlegroups.com>,
peterwezeman@hotmail.com <peterwezeman@hotmail.com> wrote:
>On Thursday, June 23, 2022 at 5:33:13 PM UTC-5, David Brown wrote:
>> Here's the newest movie review on my blog, ahead of a couple others I
>meant to put up here, on The Thing. It's noteworthy as a "remake" that
>was more like an alternate treatment of the literary source material,
>and got misunderstood accordingly. I comment on its relationship to the
>story. Something I allude to that I realized I don't remember a specific
>source for is that John Campbell reportedly dictated that humans HAD to
>win in a conflict with aliens. Does anyone else remember this anecdote,
>or how many of the people working under Campbell mentioned it directly?
>
>I thought it went over the top. For most of the movie the aliens
>operated much as in _Who Goes There?_,
>assimilating and becoming people and sled dogs (the only organisms they
>had access to in central Antartica)
>acting off stage over a period of days. In the short story, the humans
>knew that they had to destroy the aliens before
>spring, when migratory seabirds such as the albatross would arrive,
>giving the aliens the ability to spread around
>the world. In the conclusion of the movie, after the humans find and use
>the same method as in the novella
>to identify assimilated people, some of the revealed aliens suddenly
>transform their bodies and grow to
>the size of dinosaurs in seconds, exceeding by many orders of magnitude
>any metabolic energy that could
>be produced by a biological organism.
>

Well, there was news months ago that a first draft by Campbell had
turned up that was very Lovecraftian...

(Did that ever get published BTW?)
--
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..

On 2022-06-28, peterwezeman@hotmail.com <peterwezeman@hotmail.com> wrote:

> In the conclusion of the movie, after the humans find and use the same method as in the novella
> to identify assimilated people, some of the revealed aliens suddenly transform their bodies and grow to
> the size of dinosaurs in seconds, exceeding by many orders of magnitude any metabolic energy that could
> be produced by a biological organism.

Are you talking about mass or energy? I don't really see a problem
with body mass. Only the final monster is larger than a person,
but we don't know really how much human/dog biomass went in there.

This is not like _Alien_, where the chestburster scurries away and
then off-screen expands into a human-plus-sized creature without
any source of food to support such growth. Now that has annoyed
me ever since I saw the movie for the first time.

Metabolic energy, I don't have a clue. But considering how long a
pregnancy takes, I am indeed somewhat suspicious of fast bodily
transformations. And how much heat they would generate.

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de

On Monday, June 27, 2022 at 9:27:10 PM UTC-7, peterwezeman@hotmail.com wrote:
> On Thursday, June 23, 2022 at 5:33:13 PM UTC-5, David Brown wrote:
> > Here's the newest movie review on my blog, ahead of a couple others I meant to put up here, on The Thing. It's noteworthy as a "remake" that was more like an alternate treatment of the literary source material, and got misunderstood accordingly. I comment on its relationship to the story. Something I allude to that I realized I don't remember a specific source for is that John Campbell reportedly dictated that humans HAD to win in a conflict with aliens. Does anyone else remember this anecdote, or how many of the people working under Campbell mentioned it directly?
> I thought it went over the top. For most of the movie the aliens operated much as in _Who Goes There?_,
> assimilating and becoming people and sled dogs (the only organisms they had access to in central Antartica)
> acting off stage over a period of days. In the short story, the humans knew that they had to destroy the aliens before
> spring, when migratory seabirds such as the albatross would arrive, giving the aliens the ability to spread around
> the world. In the conclusion of the movie, after the humans find and use the same method as in the novella
> to identify assimilated people, some of the revealed aliens suddenly transform their bodies and grow to
> the size of dinosaurs in seconds, exceeding by many orders of magnitude any metabolic energy that could
> be produced by a biological organism.
>
> Peter Wezeman
> anti-social Darwinist
Part of the backstory was that effects for the Thing's final form were cut from the theatrical film. ironically, the result is that there isn't a lot of "canon" shots to gauge its size or mass.

On Tuesday, June 28, 2022 at 8:30:09 AM UTC-7, Christian Weisgerber wrote:
> On 2022-06-28, peterw...@hotmail.com <peterw...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > In the conclusion of the movie, after the humans find and use the same method as in the novella
> > to identify assimilated people, some of the revealed aliens suddenly transform their bodies and grow to
> > the size of dinosaurs in seconds, exceeding by many orders of magnitude any metabolic energy that could
> > be produced by a biological organism.
> Are you talking about mass or energy? I don't really see a problem
> with body mass. Only the final monster is larger than a person,
> but we don't know really how much human/dog biomass went in there.
>
> This is not like _Alien_, where the chestburster scurries away and
> then off-screen expands into a human-plus-sized creature without
> any source of food to support such growth. Now that has annoyed
> me ever since I saw the movie for the first time.
>
> Metabolic energy, I don't have a clue. But considering how long a
> pregnancy takes, I am indeed somewhat suspicious of fast bodily
> transformations. And how much heat they would generate.
>
> --
> Christian "naddy" Weisgerber na...@mips.inka.de
I have an ongoing serial sort of thing where I tried to apply conservation of mass to a shapeshifter. Usual, it just gets ignored, in part bc it's often featured in fantasy where they can say magic did it. BTW, the original version of Who Goes There? was released as Frozen Hell, I believe a few years back.