On my break at work yesterday I was fooling around with my computer and Googled Campbell's novella, "Who Goes There?" One of my favorite films is that wonderful old cold war screed, "The Thing." As the super carrot, James Arness delivers what is probably his most animated performance lol, and this film contains probably my all-time favorite line: "An intellectual carrot--the mind boggles--" The Tiompkin score never fails to chill my blood, either. I remember waking up early one a.m. and turning on the TV. As it happened, I got on right when "The Thing" was beginning, and when I heard that theme ("Da-DUH, DA-Duh") I immediately turned to another channel--I couldn't take that at 1:30 in the morning! Though I know that the '50s classic bears very little resemblance to Campbell's work and that the '80s version is much more similar to it, I have long wanted to read the novella, and here was my chance. I ran it off and started to read it, but I got no further than the first paragraph. This hot July day is no time to be reading this, I said to myself. It takes what I call a "Bradbury" evening--rain lashing the windows, thunder and lightning renting the black sky--nature's fireworks or "Beethoven weather," as my biological father called it. My supervisor here at the West Virginia and Regional History Collection (a genealogy research library) here at West Virginia University once said (and I agree with him) that there is no substitute for holding a fine book in your hands for your reading experience, but I have cached my run-off "Who Goes There" in a safe place until just the right "Bradbury" night shows up later when fall comes--
