Who Goes There? is an ironic science fiction novelette by John W. Campbell, Jr. under the pen name Don A. Stuart, published August 1938 in Astounding Stories.
The story follows a group of Antarctic researchers, isolated from the rest of their world, who discover an alien spaceship buried in the ice. They also discover an frozen occupant of the spaceship, which they thaw; it turns out to be a malevolent being that can assume the shape and memories of any living thing. The rest of the story follows the attempts of the station researchers to determine which of their members have been replaced by incarnations of the alien, and to destroy them before they can reach the rest of the world.
In 1973 the story was voted by the Science Fiction Writers of America as one of the finest science fiction novellas ever written, and published that year in the second volume of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, a collection of the top vote-getters.
Who Goes There? has been twice adapted as a motion picture: rather loosely in 1951 as The Thing From Another World; and more faithfully in 1982 by director John Carpenter as the film The Thing, from the Bill Lancaster screenplay.
