John W Campbell's "Dead Knowledge" (as by Don A Stuart) (novelette, alien invasion): "Molecular", microscopic, space traveling, light-eating alien invaders want to control us as tools!

Three human star travelers have arrived at a new world 27 light years from earth, only to find that it once harbored intelligent, highly developed, humanoid civilization that is now dead. And, curiously, it's long dead residents have their bodies well preserved & they all apparently committed suicide!!

It drags on for a while, until the visitors themselves start committing suicide - first one, then other. It's the final one who will enlighten us on the nature of infection before himself committing suicide.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, January 1938.
Rating: B.
Nominated for Retro Hugo Awards 1939 in novelette category.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Works of John Campbell (as by Don A Stuart).

Lester del Rey (ed)'s "The Best of John W Campbell" (collection): Annotated table of contents & review

"Who Goes There?" has been filmed more than once & is among his best known stories. And I loved "Forgetfulness". "Twilight" is widely anthologized, but didn't work for me; to me it sounded like a bad imitation of some themes from H G Wells' "The Time Machine". "Cloak of Aesir" is also a well known story, but it works best when read after "Out of the Night"; the two actually form one complete story. "The Last Evolution" is the oldest story I've read on the idea of singularity. "Blindness" is now very dated. "The Invaders" & "Rebellion" also need to be read together & in sequence; they too together form a single complete story.

ToC below is in order of my preference, best first (4 commented stories at the end of list are where I need to refer to my notes; will come back on them later). My rating is in brackets. Links on publisher or year fetches more matching fiction. Where I'm aware of an online copy, I include that link too.

1. [novella] "Who Goes There?" (A); download; Astounding, August 1938: When the curious opened the bottle, & let the jinn out...
2. [novelette] "Forgetfulness" (as by Don A Stuart) (A); Astounding, June 1937: Technological progress involves forgetting old knowledge.
3. [ss] "The Machine" (as by Don A Stuart) (B); Astounding, February 1935: North is the best!
4. [ss] "Elimination" (B); Astounding, May 1936: Two men build a "chronoscope" that lets you see, on a TV screen, all places & times in future or past. The inventors begin looking at their own possible futures, & the view is very ugly...
5. [ss] "Blindness" (B); Astounding, March 1935: A great inventor spends substantial time in close proximity to sun, studying it to discover the secret of "atomic power" - an activity that succeeded but blinded him. Ironic ending as another of his earlier inventions, an alloy called "thermlectrium", has outdated the need for atomic power in the meantime.
6. [ss] "The Last Evolution" (C); download; Amazing Stories, August 1932: Probably among the earliest stories about singularity, decades before the term was coined.
7. [ss] "Twilight"; Astounding, November 1934: Description of the last days of human race, as narrated by a time traveler to future...
8. [ss] "The Invaders"; Astounding, June 1935.
9. [novelette] "Rebellion"; Astounding, August 1935.
10. [novelette] "Out of the Night"; Astounding, October 1937.
11. [novelette] "Cloak of Aesir"; Astounding, March 1939.

Fact sheet.

First published: 1976.
Related: Stories of John Campbell; Fiction from 1930s.

John W Campbell's "The Machine" (as by Don A Stuart) (short story, post-apocalypse): North is the best!

This has the feel of one of those so called "proto-sf" stories. And there is clear influence of H G Wells.

Most of the story is of post-apocalypse survival. There is a very curious notion here, apparently borrowed from H G Wells' "The Time Machine", but in a different form. Wells makes an argument that fittest people are those that live in the toughest environments; luxury is ... sort of ... anti-survival. Campbell offers a variation of it: Since north is much colder & tougher to live in than moderate climate of south, biggest & most survival success stories among the post-apocalypse humans will be found in the north!

"The Machine" of title is actually an alien AI. There is a long-winded explanation & history of it that could have made several separate stories, but the important point is: it has tended to the needs of humans for several generations, & now suddenly it has decided to withdraw from earth - bringing in a collapse of civilization.

Notes.

1. Story features a steam powered aircraft that could fly off someone's balcony.

Collected in.

1. "The Best of John W Campbell".

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, February 1935.
Rating: B.
Series: "The Machine" (this story), "The Invaders", "Rebellion".
Related: Stories of John Campbell (as by Don A Stuart).

John W Campbell, Jr's "Forgetfulness" (as by Don A Stuart) (novelette, first contact): Technological progress involves forgetting old knowledge

I wonder if van Vogt's fantastic story, "The Monster", was inspired by this? Both involve advanced aliens visiting earth, & trying to bully a single apparantly harmless & unarmed man, & ... getting surprised. van Vogt's version is by far the better of the two; that was the story that made me notice van Vogt.

Story summary.

A pioneering 100-strong alien expedition has arrived on earth ("Rhth", to aliens) from Pareeth. Millions of years ago, their distant animal ancestors were uplifted by humans, & perhaps they've come to pay homage to their benefactors.

What they find here are abandoned cities, a tiny village with virtually no technology, & what remains of the human race apparently living a primitive existence off land.

Aliens are respectful, for old times sake, & a bit arrogant too. Seun, a very humble man, shows them around the dead city, but humanity seems to have forgotten much of the technology that made this city tick.

Aliens go back home. Only to return with a colonizing expedition that has instructions to move the remnants of humanity off to some sort of reservation & use only minimal force, in case of resistance, because of its past glory.

Aliens are in for a shock, when they threaten to use this minimal force...

Collected in.

1. Raymond J Healy & J Francis McComas (Eds)' "Adventures in Time and Space".

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, June 1937.
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of John Campbell (as by Don A Stuart); fiction from 1930s.

John W Campbell, Jr's "Who Goes There?" (science fiction thriller, novella): When the curious opened the bottle, & let the jinn out!

Great fast-paced thriller, even if many of its themes are no longer new. Not always reasonable, but it held my interest all through.

Conceptually, the story is closest to Hal Clement's "Needle" - among the stories I've read. Campbell's version much faster paced. Clement's is more rigorous where behavior of alien is described.

Full text of this story is available for download. But I've not read this online version.

Story summary.

A research expedition is camping in Antarctica - where all action in the story takes place. 37 men, with Commander Garry as leader.

A team investigating magnetic south pole discovers a second minor magnetic pole nearby! Hitherto unknown, & not explained by anything known. Further investigations reveal a buried ancient spaceship of alien origins - "a thing like a submarine without a conning tower or directive vanes, 280 feet long and 45 feet in diameter at its thickest". It's buried "within one hundred feet of the glacier surface"; we will later learn it has been buried for at least 20 million years! Note there was also a magnetic anomaly on moon that led to discovery of ancient sentinel in Arthur Clarke's "2001 A Space Odyssey".

After digging, they find the ship's airlock ajar, but jammed - there is snow inside too. To melt this snow, they throw a supposedly harmless "25-pound thermite bomb", an "ice-softener", in the airlock. Result is: the whole ship is blown to bits, with nothing recoverable!!

Bit more investigation reveals a frozen specimen nearby. An authentic alien, probably intelligent, probably part of the crew, probably tried to take a look at the place after crash & was frozen "within ten feet of the ship". We will later learn - through arguments I don't recall - that the alien ship came from stars; it's not of any world within Sol.

Anyway, the story is about this frozen alien specimen. Some argument after taking it back to camp ("Big Magnet" - that's camp's name), & a decision is made to thaw it - slowly.

There are some arguments presented here that always sound egotistic to me (but I'm not a biologist, & cannot now locate relevant quotes): distinction between "lower" & "higher" lifeforms where it concerns basic life processes. We are told certain fish survive such freezing & thawing, but no higher life forms do. Since a starfaring alien is obviously at least our peer, he is "higher" life form - hence is certainly dead! Objective of thawing is to look at equivalent of alien bacteria - these low life forms are said to survive 20 million years of freezing. They are not considered a health hazard, because alien biochemistry will be so different from earthly one.

Anyway, the group goes to sleep. One guy is working in a room, & that is where the frozen alien is left thawing. By the time the guy notices, alien is not in the room anymore! Alarm is raised, there is commotion among dogs maintained by group, a deadly chase is given, & eventually the alien is electrocuted & is declared dead.

That is when the world begins to fall apart. Arguments are a bit hand-wavy, but they prepare the way for real thriller. We are told the alien biochemistry is such that its cells simply take over any others it comes in contact with. It's a sort of shape shifter - it eats a bit of a dog, & it becomes a dog indistinguishable from other dogs but that dog in not really an earthly dog - it's this alien, & as smart! They found this because the thing they finally killed was partly dog, partly alien; it had not had time to completely adopt new shape.

And it can multiply fast because each of its cells is a complete individual - & as smart. Threaten a drop of its blood, & that drop will defend itself! This threatened blood drops will play a role in the story later.

OK - so here is the threat. Any animal it comes in touch with is absorbed - birds, fish, humans, ... Very soon, all earth life will be alien!

And our friends discover that some of them have been taken over! How to detect friend from foe? That's what the story is about - everyone is a suspect, many tests that each fail because alien has been thinking ahead, infected individuals don't know they are infected, ... Eventually, the running-blood test described earlier will be used to catch & kill the infected crew. 14 crew members will be thus killed!

But that is not all; one individual is still left. He had raised so much ruckus during earlier days that he had been isolated with food. And he kept making annoying noises all though about the week of drama. That's when someone thinks of giving him the running-blood test too - but too late! There will be some fight; eventually they will kill this host of alien too. And some remnant of alien is seen running out to Antarctic wilderness - hopefully to find other victims later!!

Going through the isolation chamber, they figure the alien has been making gadgets to effect escape (by looting the camp's "apparatus caches") - among them a tiny atomic power plant that consumes any material as fuel, & an anti-gravity device he planned to use to fly away! You see, all vehicles of camp, including aircraft, were destroyed beyond any hope of fixing when the menace was discovered - to contain its spread through earth.

We will also learn that the alien wasn't completely frozen; only his metabolism was slowed down. He could still think, & he in fact telepathically put the idea of his thawing in the heads of the crew!

Quotes.

1. "micro-life might retain the power of living. Such unorganized things as individual cells can retain life for unknown periods, when solidly frozen... Organized, highly developed life-forms can't stand that treatment."
2. "individual cells might show the characteristics they had in life, if it is properly thawed. A man's muscle cells live many hours after he has died. Just because they live, and a few things like hair and fingernail cells still live, you wouldn't accuse a corpse of being a Zombie".
3. "childish human weakness of hating the different. On its own world it would probably class you as a fish-belly, white monstrosity with an insufficient number of eyes and a fungoid body pale and bloated with gas."
4. "Nothing would kill it. It has no natural enemies, because it becomes whatever it wants to. If a killer whale attacked it, it would become a killer whale. If it was an albatross, and an eagle attacked it, it would become an eagle. Lord, it might become a female eagle. Go back—build a nest and lay eggs!"
5. "Man studied birds for centuries, trying to learn how to make a machine to fly like them. He never did do the trick; his final success came when he broke away entirely and tried new methods."
6. "It doesn't fight. I don't think it ever fights. It must be a peaceable thing, in its own—inimitable—way. It never had to, because it always gained its end—otherwise."
7. "the blood will not obey. It's a new individual, with all the desire to protect its own life that the original—the main mass from which it was split—has. The blood will live—and try to crawl away from a hot needle".

Movie adaptations.

1. Christian Nyby's "The Thing from Another World" (1951).
2. John Carpenter's "The Thing" (1982).

I haven't seen either of the movies.

Collected in.

1. Ben Bova (Ed)'s "The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two A".
2. David Drake, Jim Baen, & Eric Flint (Ed)'s "The World Turned Upside Down".
3. Raymond J Healy & J Francis McComas (Eds)' "Adventures in Time and Space".

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding Science-Fiction, August 1938 (as by Don A Stuart).
Rating: A