Other reviews:1
Richard Lupoff, Locus
Alexei Panshin, The World Beyond the Hill, p. 272-276
Various, Goodreads
Mark Yon, SFFWorld
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Editor, John Gregory Betancourt
Fiction:
Frozen Hell • novella by John W. Campbell Jr.
The Things from Another World • extract by John Gregory Betancourt
Non-fiction:
Cover & Interior Artwork • Bob Eggleton
Preface • Alec Nevala-Lee
Introduction • Robert Silverberg
A Note • John Gregory Betancourt
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A few months after John Campbell Jr. became the editor of Astounding Stories in October 1937 he published one of his own stories, Who Goes There?, in the magazine (Astounding Science-Fiction, August 1938, reviewed here last week—you might want to read that post before this one2). This tells of an Antarctic expedition which finds an alien spaceship buried in ice that is millions of years old; alongside the ship is the body of one of the occupants. When the expedition personnel disinter the “Thing” and take it back to base to thaw it out, the alien comes to life, and demonstrates an ability to absorb, replicate, and mimic men and animals. The survivors then have to work out what is human and what is alien. The former also realise that if they fail, and any of the Things leave the station, they will pose an existential threat to life on Earth.
The story became a classic, and was twice made into a film (one of which is the acclaimed The Thing, directed by John Carpenter).
Who Goes There? had a complicated genesis, and this is revealed in various letters in Fantasy Commentator #59/60, a volume I’ve referred to here previously.3 Fortunately, Frozen Hell provides an Introduction by Robert Silverberg which summarizes the story’s history.
In this essay Silverberg discusses how Campbell used the idea of a shape-changing alien in an earlier piece, The Brain Stealers of Mars (Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1936), the first of his light-hearted ‘Penton and Blake’ series, which has them encounter “thusol” aliens which can mimic other life forms. Silverberg then goes on to say that Campbell, who wanted to break into the higher-paying Argosy magazine, later presented this idea (among others) to that magazine’s editor, Jack Byrne. Byrne was receptive,4 and matters progressed:
Campbell set out immediately to write it, working at his usual high speed, and by June, 1937 had done his new story employing the shapeshifting monster theme, setting it on an Antarctic base that he envisioned after reading the account of Admiral Richard E. Byrd’s recent expedition to the south polar regions. He may also have been influenced to some degree by H.P. Lovecraft’s novella At the Mountains of Madness, which had been serialized in Astounding in 1936—a powerful tale with an Antarctic setting, although Lovecraft’s style and narrative approach had very little in common with Campbell’s. A third factor that may have enabled Campbell to intensify the impact of his shapeshifter plot was a strange autobiographical one that Campbell revealed many years later: his mother had been one of a pair of identical twins, so much like each other that as a small boy he was unable to tell them apart. The sisters disliked each other and the aunt disliked her nephew, and on occasion he would come home from school to seek comfort from his mother for some mishap that day, only to be coldly rebuffed by a woman who was actually his aunt. p. 22
The completed story was Frozen Hell (this recycled a title of another unsold story from the year before5) and Byrne subsequently rejected it. In a later story conference he stated there weren’t any major characters in it, only minor ones, while Byrne’s associate editor, George Post, unhelpfully suggested (my characterisation) the introduction of a female character (into a 1930’s Antarctic expedition!)
Silverberg then explains what happened to the revised version:
[Campbell] showed it also to his friend Mort Weisinger of Thrilling Wonder Stories. Weisinger was impressed also, though he grumbled about Campbell’s recycling of the plot idea of Brain-Stealers of Mars, which he had published.
[. . .]
Weisinger did not want the story for Thrilling Wonder Stories—he needed material that adhered more closely to pulp magazine formulas—and it is not clear whether Campbell submitted it to Argosy, which had suggested he rewrite the longer version in the first place. But late in the summer of 1937 he offered it to F. Orlin Tremaine of Astounding. A strange thing happened, though, while the manuscript was still sitting on Tremaine’s desk.
[. . .]
Tremaine was moved up into the post of executive editor of the entire magazine chain, leaving Astounding itself without an editor. And at the beginning of October Tremaine asked Campbell to be his replacement. With astonishing swiftness Campbell found himself the editor of the very magazine to which “Who Goes There?” was currently under submission. p. 26
Campbell could not buy material for Astounding at that point (he initially appears to have had a first reader/managing editor position) but Tremaine was happy to publish a revised and shortened version of the story (essentially the last five of the eight chapters).
And there matters lay until two significant events in 2011 and 2017. The first of those dates corresponds to the publication of the aforementioned Fantasy Commentator #59/60 which, in one letter (p. 46), mentions the existence of “40,000 words of [Frozen Hell/Who Goes There]”, a version considerably longer than the published one. The other date, 2017, is when Alec Nevala-Lee (at the time researching an autobiography of Campbell) stumbled upon mention of an archive of Campbell’s papers at Harvard Library. He subsequently unearthed the longer version of the manuscript and contacted Campbell’s relatives, who in turn pointed him to their agent and the publisher of this book, John Betancourt.6 (An account of this discovery is provided in Nevala-Lee’s Preface.)
As for the story itself, Frozen Hell is only around 30,000 words long (not the 40,000 mentioned in the letter), which is 8,000 words longer than the earlier Who Goes There? The extra material consists, it would seem, of the three chapters at the beginning of the piece (the events that take place in this part of the longer work are referred to in Who Goes There?), as well as other minor changes, e.g., McReady’s account of his nightmare about the creature’s shape-changing powers in Frozen Hell (pp. 69-70) is related by Norris in Who Goes There? (pp. 66-67), and is less explicit.
So, what do these three extra chapters contain? Well, chapter one (13 pp.) establishes the story in the Antarctic, where McReady, Barclay, Norris, and Vane arrive at a sub-camp on a mission to investigate an magnetic anomaly which is nearby. Before they go looking for it the next day, we get some interesting detail about life in the Antarctic:
The roof of tent canvas laid across chicken wire and slats, weighted down by chunks of ice cut out in the making, rested across bolted uprights. Fiberboard panels made up the side walls. A copper stove, in the center of the room, succeeded in bringing the upper layer of air to about 80 degrees, but the wooden floor had a tracery of ice crystals scattered over it. Wind growled threats down the stove pipe.
Norris and Vane sat on the edge of Norris’s bunk, working over a sheaf of data sheets. Above the table, they were clad in long-sleeved grey woolen underwear and shoulder-length hair. They had on light khaki trousers, and the clothing increased in thickness as it approached the floor, ending in knee-length wool socks, and heavy, fur-lined boots. Perishable stores were kept frozen on the floor, while dry cells, beer, and food stock took to the temperate climate half way up. The tropics near the 7-foot ceiling were reserved for drying socks, two suits of underwear, and Vane’s bunk. pp. 34-35
There is more of this descriptive writing when they travel to the site of the anomaly and start digging:
The sun rose very gradually above the horizon to the north, rising by sliding along an invisible, angling groove somewhere beyond the edge of the frozen continent. The thermometer rose slowly with it, and wind began to creep across the plateau, gaining velocity as the temperature differences increased. The thermometer passed -50°, and the wind passed 15 miles an hour. The four men still chopped and hacked into the coldbrittled ice. A sloping, step-nicked tube grew down into the ice, the solid blue of the stuff began to scintillate with blinding, intense azures, pure rays of sapphire, the chips became huge wealths of discarded emeralds, sapphires and rubies. The sun’s slanting rays were piercing down, heatless, through nearly twenty feet of crystalline ice. Still the magnetic needle pointed straight downward. p. 43
Later, the men see a plate of polished, machined metal and, when they dig down further, McReady comes upon something else:
“God!” said McReady softly. “Good God!” The schuff of the ice axe started, very gently, very carefully.
Unable to see past the two men, Norris heard Vane’s soft sigh, and over his head caught a glimpse of glittering silvery metal. A smooth, curving metal surface nearly five feet square was bared. The sun had set again, but the rose and lavender, apple greens and melting yellows lingered in the sky. The light that trickled down through twenty feet of ice glimmered on the bared metal, hinting at an immense bulk of machined, rounded metal plates, joined with unhuman skill.
Vane straightened, and backed away. Half visible between McReady’s legs was a head, a half-split head laid open by a careless ice axe. Norris turned up toward the sun-painted patch of sky and called out to Barclay.
“Bar, if what you saw had blue hair like earthworms and three red eyes, it’s here.” p. 45
The image of the alien is a good end to the chapter, and provides an engrossing if delayed hook. If I have a criticism of this chapter it is that it would be better to have this image at the very beginning of the story, and perhaps fill in the background detail afterwards.
Chapter two (14 pp.) has the team get resupplied by autogyro, and the foursome are joined by Copper (the doctor) and Blair (the biologist). That evening they talk about the alien’s face and expression, and speculate about its nature; the next day they disinter the body.
After this the team decide to use thermite bombs to gain access the spaceship, but (spoiler) end up setting the strange alien metal on fire, causing the destruction of the vehicle. This is a spectacular scene involving a huge ice and steam explosion, as well as a massive EMP (electro-magnetic pulse—all the “magnetism” the ship had “stored” is released). The men only survive as they shelter behind a natural ridge:
An incredible torch in the midst of a vast, blasted area of ice. A dazzling, blue-white stream of molten stuff tumbled from a softened rent in the side of the ship to roll down toward the mightier, towering ramparts of ice still undefeated. It struck them with a vast hissing roar, and they crumbled before it, tumbling into exploding steam as they fell into the growing lake of supernal fire. White-hot spheres of flaming metal exploded outward, to thunder downward through thousand-foot-thick ice.
The howling, rushing wind seemed to gain strength, thrusting the ice-smoke toward the distant Antarctic ocean. Great blocks of ice tumbled madly through the air. For a moment, resistant in blue white heat, withstanding even the lapping sea of molten fury, vast dazzling bulks stood out firm in the center section of the ship, huge machines of curving, dazzling splendor, shedding the rain of blazing metal from incandescent, adamantine backs. Then abruptly, they dissolved in a vaster, fiercer flame that sent darting rays through the towering, tottering glaciers looking on about the ship. The black, glistening rock of the ice-drowned mountainside glowed faintly red before that onslaught.
The wavering curtains of the aurora overhead jerked suddenly, spiraled in a mad vortex of shimmering light, and beat down a savage stalk to the incandescent fury. From the mountain, from the ice, vast angry tongues of lightning crashed against the molten pool. Lesser lightnings darted from the tractor, from the steel treads to the ice. Ice axes and shovels grew warm in the hands of the men, as thrilling shocks darted from wristwatches and metal buckles. p. 59
The shorter chapter three (9 pp.) has the team arrive back at base on a tractor. McReady tells Powell about his nightmare where the Thing was aware and could change form down to cellular level.
Chapter four of Frozen Hell rejoins the Who Goes There? version somewhere around its second to third chapter (the beginning of Frozen Hell’s chapter 4 and Who Goes There?’s chapter 3 are identical, but some of later content of the chapter 4 appears in the previous chapter of Who Goes There?).7 I should mention in passing that most of the first two short chapters of Who Goes There? is a data dump which recalls the events of the first three chapters of Frozen Hell.
So, now we broadly know the differences between the two works, which version is better? Well, in the Preface I get the impression that Nevala-Lee is ambivalent:
The quality of the excised material is on much the same level as the rest, and both versions have their merits. “Who Goes There?” is darker and more focused, but there’s something very effective—and oddly modern—in how Frozen Hell abruptly shifts genres from adventure to horror. It drastically alters the tone and effect of the overall story, and the result is worth reading as more than just a curiosity. p. 14
Whereas in the Introduction, Silverberg prefers the original:
Comparing the rediscovered manuscript with the published novella is an instructive lesson in Campbell’s growing mastery of his craft. What is immediately apparent when putting one against the other is that Campbell the future editor must have realized at once that he had opened the story in the wrong place. Frozen Hell starts with the discovery of an alien spaceship buried in the Antarctic ice cap, but, though Campbell tells of it in the crisp, efficient prose that had become his professional hallmark, and describes the south polar setting with a vividness worthy of Admiral Byrd himself (“The northern horizon was barely washed with rose and crimson and green, the southern horizon black mystery sweeping off to the pole.…”), nothing that he tells us in the first three chapters of the original version drives the reader toward the terrifying situation that is the mainspring of the novella’s plot.
[. . .]
There were other flaws in the longer version, too. On page 12 we find a scientist named Norris explaining [how the compass behaves above the anomaly] to McReady, in two paragraphs of leaden dialogue, that McReady surely already knows.
[. . .]
And on page 35 the Antarctic explorers accidentally destroy the buried alien spaceship in a clumsy attempt to excavate it, though it would have been much more plausible to leave it in the ice to be recovered by some later, and better-equipped, expedition.
In his revision Campbell solved all these problems simply by cutting the first three chapters, getting rid of the slow opening sequence and the lecture on geomagnetism, and brushing McReady’s dream and the destruction of the spaceship into quick flashbacks where they would be less obtrusive. To set events in motion now he wrote two new paragraphs that constitute one of the most potent story openings in the history of science fiction. pp. 23-25
I disagree with this latter assessment, and prefer Frozen Hell for a number of reasons. First, the three extra chapters are well written, provide interesting background detail, and the exciting and vivid explosion scene; they also give us the image of the alien’s face at the start of the story. Parts of it may be slow moving and data-dumpy, but that is a criticism you can also make of the original version too. Second, it is easier to keep the characters straight in Frozen Hell as they are gradually introduced (compare this to the confusion of the original version where we more or less meet all thirty-seven at once). Third, I prefer the SF emphasis of the longer version (if you like the movie Aliens more than Alien, you’ll probably like Frozen Hell more than Who Goes There?). Fourth, the SFnal start of Frozen Hell makes the final scene of Who Goes There? less anomalous. (If I recall correctly, John Carpenter kept the image of the ice-enclosed spaceship in The Thing but dropped the last scene with the reactor and anti-gravity harness—so that film is structurally the mirror-image of Who Goes There?) Finally, Frozen Hell makes you realise that the Who Goes There? version has a very clunky beginning.
In this new book, apart from the text of Frozen Hell, and the aforementioned Preface by Alec-Nevala Lee and Introduction by Robert Silverberg, there is also A Note which introduces an extract from a prospective sequel, The Things from Another World. Both of these latter items are written by John Gregory Betancourt.
The sequel is set in the present day and concerns a second anomaly discovered by the US military. What I read was workmanlike and engaging, but I’ll be interested to see if Betancourt can keep it up over the length of a novel and not descend into formula.
Finally there is a striking Cover by Bob Eggleton, as well as Interior Artwork which includes both a colour plate of the spaceship plummeting to Earth, and black and white illustrations for chapters one to five, and eight. The latter are well executed but a couple are rather bland (one is of a man in snow goggles, and none of the major scenes are illustrated).
A volume worth getting for anyone with an interest in Who Goes There? or The Thing. ●
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1. Lupoff’s review gives the impression that Frozen Hell was written before Brain Stealers of Mars.
The Panshin reference in The World Beyond the Hill (Amazon UK) isn’t a review of Frozen Hell but an interesting analysis of Who Goes There? A quick read of this section gives me the impression that Panshin rather overloads Campbell’s story with meaning and significance, and there is a passage which, with the publication of Frozen Hell, subverts his own analysis:
And yet, the emphasis in “Who Goes There?” is not upon horror or excitement, as it is in the two Hollywood movies that would be made from Campbell’s story—The Thing (1951) and The Thing (1982). If thrills had been Campbell’s object, then almost certainly he would have chosen to start his story at an earlier moment than he does. Say—as a bronze ice ax chips into something and breaks off, and an American scientist suddenly finds himself staring into the three glowing red eyes of a frozen snake-haired alien. Or as a magnesium spaceship suddenly catches fire, and sparks and burns away to nothing beneath the polar ice.
But action and emotion are not the heart of “Who Goes There?” Horror and excitement in sufficient measure may be used to carry the story along, but they aren’t what Campbell is after. In fact, in a very real sense, it is horror and excitement that the characters of the story are called upon to overcome if they are to perceive their situation clearly and deal with it effectively.
And so it is that “Who Goes There?” does not open with the high thrills of the discovery of the creature and the destruction of the alien spaceship. Rather, it opens back at base camp with all the members of the expedition gathering to hear a chalk talk summary of what has been found. p. 273
Panshin also calls Campbell’s Who Goes There? “the first story of modern science fiction” (why it and not, say, del Rey’s The Faithful, isn’t explained—or at least not to my skimming eyes).
2. My review of Who Goes There? is here.
3. There are references to Frozen Hell (both The Moon is Hell and Who Goes There? versions) on pp. 32, 46, 47, 50, 51, 54, 58, 59, 77, & 151 of Fantasy Commentator #59/60, edited by A. Langley Searles & Sam Moskowitz (available from Lulu and highly recommended).
4. There are two letters from Campbell to Swisher in Fantasy Commentator that give variant accounts of Campbell’s initial approach to Argosy. The first, dated April 12th 1937, has Campbell pitching ideas to Byrne:
“Mort told me he’d been talking to Jack Byrnes of Argosy, and knew that Byrnes wanted science fiction but didn’t know quite what. Just rejected one of Ralph Milne Farley’s latest productions. ‘Why not go see the gentleman—I’ve got him interested in weird animals.’ I went posthaste. Byrne was offered a collection of story ideas, including the human mutant one, but he liked best the idea of the Thusol (from ‘Brain Stealers of Mars’). I told him I’d done it in a humorous vein—comic opera possibilities of course obvious—for Wonder. Would he like it done in a horror vein, with the setting Earth instead of Mars . . . He would. Wants 24,000. 35,000 or 44,000 words of it. They pay 11/4 to 11/2 cents a word for their stuff—34,000 of them sound interesting. I may be able to get the higher rate because of Tremaine’s recent generosity. Byrne said he didn’t think the Thusol should be loose on Earth—inject ’em into a movie colony on location—or on a desert island or something— in a city would be too darned much, and too impersonal (Think he’s right myself). The horror angle there is—they might get loose . . . I finally decided they got loose in an Antarctic expedition, when one was thawed out of the Antarctic ice (Old. but the animal idea isn’t); since then they’d be in a frozen, lifeless desert, unable to find an animal other than man to imitate, and man couldn’t escape unaided, as they’d have to. No life in Antarctica in the winter, not even seals, or other fish, except at unattainable points. Penguins even leave—at least the section where the expedition is . . . Starts with finding of things. Biologist puts frozen beast in the one cabin that’s kept warm all night, so that it can thaw out for dissection; the hut where the meteor observer sits alone at night. Something stirs behind him—he turns.
“The next morning—Bio finds animal gone. Great curiosity. Meteor man says he didn’t hear a sound all night—wanders off—He’s missing later, but they find a cow in the passage half molten, and a three-foot image of meteor man growing from it— it runs—they learn the horrible truth. p. 44
In Campbell’s his letter of May 15th, 1937, however, he says this:
“Mort Weisinger has been out here a number of times since you were down, and we’ve met him elsewhere. For some reason, the guy seems to like me, and also seems to think I can do anything I happen to want to in the way of writing. Nice, but sometimes embarrassing. But he’s been a hell of a good guy. You ought to see the letter of recommendation he gave me. He taught me tricks of layout, proofreading, and editing generally last weekend, and in connection therewith gave me a letter which says that I’m a top-notch editor, excellent scientific writer, and well qualified to handle editing and lay out work, as I have for several magazines. Signed, M. Weisinger, Editor, Standard Magazines. Official as hell. If I was anywhere near as good as that letter says. I’d sneer at an offer of a mere $ 100 a week.
“Also: Mort’s a Jew, as you know, and hence unable to get a job with most (Christian) publishing houses, e.g.. Argosy. But he trained under a guy named George Post. (During the thirties, in addition to Frank A. Munsey, Street and Smith and Popular Publications never knowingly had a Jew on their staff, even as an office boy, despite the fact that there were two million Jews in New York City.) Post was given my ‘Brain Stealers of Mars’ to read, and reported (he hadn’t read stf. before) that he didn’t see any point to it. Mort said: ‘That’s a damn good story. You tear up that report, go home and write another tomorrow after you’ve re-read the story.’ Which Post did. He then decided ‘Brain Stealers’ wasn’t so bad. Since then, he’s liked my yarns. Also ‘Brain Stealers’, as he knows, Mort says, got more letters of approbation than any other single story they’ve run.
“All of which leads up to this: Post is now managing editor of Argosy, and wants a stf story! Mort told me about it, and I’ve written one. ‘Frozen Hell,’ a new yarn under the old name. It’s about Antarctica (scenery and background lifted practically entire from Byrd’s ‘Discover’) and fairly authentic. The idea is the old one of finding a strange animal frozen in Antarctic ice—but with the Thusol idea as animal. (The Thusol could take the form of any living creature.) The thing gets loose in the camp—and no man knows his friend. Dona says I clicked. Mort read 2/3 of it when he was here Sunday, and said it was good, it’s being retyped now. 40,000 words of it. I had more fun writing that story than I’ve gotten out of any I ever turned out. It’s a pure horror-type story, and with the Thusol as background, imitating everything in sight, you can imagine that it has its horror aspects. If accepted, I should get between $500 and $600 for it—and Post, you remember, was brought into stf. On ‘Brain Stealers’, which used, in a different way. The same weird-animal ideas. So—I have hopes. p. 46
Campbell subsequently reports in his letter of Monday, 21st June 1937 (Fantasy Commentator #59/60, p. 51), that he was called in for the Argosy editorial conference on the previous Friday (presumably the 18th), where he was told about the story’s failings.
In a later letter of 15th September 1937 (Fantasy Commentator #59/60, p. 58) Campbell says that he “took in [a] revamped ‘Frozen Hell’ (Antarctica) to Tremaine at Astounding.” So the revised story was perhaps rejected again by Argosy between the 18th of June and the 15th of September.
Finally, in Campbell’s letter of January 14th 1938, he says:
Following the suggestions of Tremaine and (Frank E.) Blackwell (Street & Smith’s Editor-in-Chief), I rewrote the first third of ‘Frozen Hell’, and have hopes Tremaine will take it. If so, it will finally and completely clear up the remains of my ‘operating’ expenses and start us on the road to that car we want. p. 77
5. One of the things that Silverberg’s Introduction cleared up for me was that the original Frozen Hell (eventually published as The Moon is Hell) wasn’t a variant of Who Goes There? but an entirely different story.
6. The Kickstarter launched to publish this lost manuscript was phenomenally successful and raised $155,000.
7. I haven’t got the time, inclination, or energy to look into the Who Goes There? revisions in more detail at the moment (I’m a bit tapped out on this story, maybe later).
As for the longer version, chapter four goes on to describe what happens when Connant babysits the corpse as it thaws, his report of its disappearance, the dog fight scene, and the questions about Connant’s humanity.
Chapter five starts with an endless meandering conversation about the outside coming to rescue them, and finishes with the unsuccessful serum test (which I understood this time), which reveals either Copper or Garry are not human.
Chapter six is quite difficult to follow as there are far too many characters involved in too many situations. However, Garry hands over control of the base; Copper is sedated; McReady takes over the doc’s job and works on a blood test; Kinner the cook becomes hysterical; they watch the movies; Kinner is killed, etc., etc.
Chapter seven has the exciting blood test scene, and more violence.
Chapter eight has McReady and Powell go to see the isolated Blair. They discover he is a Thing, and kill him. Afterwards, they realise it has built an atomic reactor and an anti-gravity device, and was just about to leave the station. ●
Edited 5th January 2021: minor text changes.
