In the winter of 1982, a group of twelve men stuck at an Antarctic research cross paths with some strange occurrences; a Norwegian shooting at a dog from a helicopter, his nearby camp inexplicably destroyed, and, most interesting of all, a massive spaceship buried deep in the ice. They realize that a deadly alien creature is on the loose, one capable of shapeshifting, assimilating and perfectly imitating other organisms. And they quickly deduce it must be hiding among them.
But how must they look from the alien's perspective?
"The Things" is a short story by Peter Watts, best known for works such as Blindsight and the Rifters Trilogy, first published on Clarkesworld in January 2010. It explores the events of John Carpenter's Sci-Fi Horror classic from the point of view of the alien, providing a glimpse into the mind of a strange creature stuck on an even stranger world.
It can be read for free here.
This book features the following tropes (Warning: spoilers below):
- Adaptational Expansion: The film left the alien's origins unknown, with no explanation just why its ship arrived on earth and why it assimilated other lifeforms. Was it an invader? Was it a prisoner being carried on the ship to some space prison? Was assimilation its method of feeding? Here, the alien is a millennia-old empathic shape-shifting intergalactic ambassador who can spread its consciousness across separated parts of itself.
- Adaptational Villainy: In a way, given that, while there were hints of it, there was never confirmation that Copper or Childs were infected in the film. Here, it's stated outright.
- Adaptive Ability: The alien can adapt to pretty much any environment, albeit it needs the memories of templates to do so.
- Aliens Are Bastards: Subverted quite a bit, as the alien isn't outright malicious, but is confused and repulsed by humanity, since we're the first species it's encountered that remains in a static shape. Much of the alien's anatomy also runs on instinctive autopilot, where components will lash out to protect themselves when they're separated from its consciousness. It's not outright trying to kill or conquer, but trying to stay alive on what it sees as a hostile world; most of the attacks were theatrics designed to keep the attention off the alien's primary consciousness. But by the end, when it realizes the truth about humanity, it decides the best thing to do is to work behind the scenes to enforce its ideals onto us.
- Assimilation Plot: The alien decides its new mission is this, not to turn humanity into more of itself but to show them the beauty and knowledge that communion can bring. And it knows it'll have to do so by force.
- Being Human Sucks: The alien is critical of humanity's frail biology, clothing, technology and unwillingness to take communion. And it decides the best thing to do is to force them to see enlightenment.
- Bizarre Human Biology: Upon first encountering humans, the alien notes that they're wildly ill-equipped for the Antarctic landscape. Rather than a mind distributed throughout the body, ours is balled up into our brains, which the alien considers massive wrinkled tumors. In fact, earth is the only planet it knows of where life has apparently forgotten Voluntary Shapeshifting. The revelation that not only can they not shapeshift but that they never could in the first place leads it to reconsider everything it learned over its time awake and head back to the camp, now deciding the best thing to do for mankind is to show them.
- Bittersweet Ending/Downer Ending: Depends on whose perspective you look at it from. For the alien, it's trapped on earth with a species of scared and angry things living isolated and futile lives, but intends to devote itself to showing them salvation. For humanity, we're potentially going to lose everything that makes us who we are courtesy of an alien who doesn't understand individuality.
- "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: The alien reflects on this bitterly, saying it could've stopped this had it been able to take communion or if more of its body had survived the crash to earth.
- Creator Thumbprint: The idea of human self-awareness and individuality being a form of "cancer" from the perspective of aliens also comes up in Blindsight.
- Death by Adaptation: Whereas in the original film it was ambiguous on whether Childs was human by the end, here, he does get assimilated.
- Defiant to the End: Even while his mind and body are being consumed by the invader, Childs gives the abomination a verbal middle finger.Childs: Parasite. Monster. Disease. Thing.The Thing: How little it knows. It knows even less than I do.Childs: I know enough, you motherfucker. You soul-stealing, shit-eating rapist.
- "Eureka!" Moment: MacReady's blood test proves to be this for the alien. It doesn't just allow the humans to figure out who among them is the thing, but finally clues the alien into the fact that humanity is not, and never has been, capable of communion as it knows.
- Evil Colonialist: The alien certainly has shades of this. Not only does it treat humans with contempt for rejecting communion and says they attacked it first, but that it's taken communion with other life and considers the process the most natural desire any form of life can have. It doesn't seem to occur to it that it may be wrong. When it finally realizes humanity has never been capable of communion, it decides that the best course of action is to provide its idea of salvation to what it considers poor, wayward savages, and it'll have to do so by force.
- Exposed Extraterrestrials: With the ability to change physiology at will and produce antifreeze, the alien has no need for clothing. In fact, the very idea of clothes seems to perplex it.
- Expositron 9000: Actually exploited by the alien. The ludicrously precise simulation Blair runs was a deliberate misdirect; the computer had no data to base it on, it was too simple to perform the calculations and the animation was just placed there to make it convincing. Between that and altering Blair's memories, the alien created a convincing cover story to drive the men to look for an enemy, all so it could escape and hide.
- Fantastic Slur: After seeing a brain, the alien refers to humans as "thinking cancer" and "tumors" multiple times.
- Humans Through Alien Eyes: From the perspective of a shapeshifting Hive Mind, we Earthlings aren't just primitive but barely sapient tumors that walk.
- Human Popsicle: The Framing Device consists primarily of the Childs-Thing searching for a safe place to hide in the snow in order to wait out the chaos. It changes its tune when it realizes the true nature of humanity, and decides it needs to show them salvation.
- Humans Are Special: Out of all the worlds and species the alien has encountered, humanity is the only one it's seen who doesn't have the capacity to shapeshift, and decides it needs to show us firsthand.
- Logical Weakness: The alien has the capacity for a wide variety of forms it can take, but it's limited by its biomass and available energy. In addition, with a distributed consciousness, its knowledge can be lost if parts of its body are destroyed or break off and are never recovered. Entire theorems and philosophies were lost when the alien crashed to Earth, and all it remembers is that it once knew them.
- Me's a Crowd: The alien can split its conscience across multiple bodies, which each carries the knowledge of templates for shapeshifting, though it still seems to retains a sense of singular identity. The downside to this is that, as these pieces die or grow weaker, the information they carry is lost and they become more and more instinctual.
- My God, What Have I Done?: In a very twisted Blue-and-Orange Morality sense. When the alien realizes that humanity has never been capable of shapeshifting or communion, it understands why they were fighting back so hard against its attempts at reaching out to them. So rather than retreat into the ice, it decides to work on saving them from what it considers futile, torturous and unimaginably lonely lives. Knowing that humanity will never embrace such a thing willingly, it decides, in its own words, it'll have to rape salvation into them.
- Once More, with Clarity: The story revisits many scenes from the movie, now with the knowledge that Childs and Copper were also Things. During the blood test, it's clarified that Copper's blood actually "shivered" in the petri dish when exposed to the hot needle, but it was so subtle that nobody but Childs-Thing noticed.
- Perspective Flip: The story is John Carpenter's The Thing told from the perspective of The Thing itself.
- Psychic Link: The alien refers to it as "communion," which involves physically connecting with other life and exchanging neural information, allowing them to learn far more than could be possible via speaking, reading, or writing and allowing them to merge into new forms.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Inverted. The alien likens assimilating other lifeforms to rape as a supreme positive. Justified as he heard the word from a human mind all but stated to be Childs, and didn't get the connotations.These poor savage things will never embrace salvation. I will have to rape it into them.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: To MacReady and the others, the blood test works because every component of The Thing's body is its own organism, so blood in a petri dish will instinctively leap away from a hot needle. According to the Thing, this only works when enough cells have been assimilated; Childs-thing theoretically would've passed the test due to how brief he'd been assimilated, as Copper-thing's apparently did due to merely shivering in the dish and nobody noticing. Palmer-thing had been fully assimilated for days and thus had no chance.
- Shapeshifter Longevity: The story confirms that the Thing is essentially immortal, being able to preserve everything connected to its Hive Mind from entropy; unfortunately, it finds the notion of mortality openly horrifying, along with the concept of individuality - so it sets out to cleanse the human race of both through an Assimilation Plot.
- Sharing a Body: Because humans lack a distributed consciousness, the alien is disturbed to find that it can hide inside a body even without them knowing. It can move around freely without being seen and even see whatever ideas float to the surface of the mind; it also refers to the mind itself as a searchlight, which remains until the alien has fully assimilated the body.
- Starfish Aliens: With Voluntary Shapeshifting, a distributed consciousness and ability to pass on information via physical contact, the alien certainly qualifies.
- Time Abyss: When Copper and Macready find the ship buried in the ice, the alien is horrified to consider just how long it must've been unconscious and, since there was no rescue mission, whether or not it exists anywhere else in the universe.
- Tomato in the Mirror: The alien sends electric signals to wipe memories so the person being possessed doesn't realize what's happening.
- Transformation Exhilaration: The alien reveals that shapeshifting is not only a natural survival trait of its species but inherently pleasurable, especially when it comes to "taking communion" by merging itself with other life-forms. Indeed, it's so used to seeing the process of transformation and assimilation as normal that it's left confused as to why none of the base personnel ever transform to resist the cold and why they all react badly to the sight of the Thing "taking communion" with other life-forms. Ultimately, the fact that humanity find the notion of losing their individuality too horrifying to contemplate leads the Thing to enact a Mind Rape on the entire human race simply so that they can understand the beauty and pleasure of communion.
- Xenofiction: Of course.
