"The Thing" Revisited

I was eager to try out the features of my new iPad so I decided to rent John Carpenter's 1982 movie The Thing from iTunes in order to check out video quality and convenience.

Last year I had listened to the short story "The Things" by Peter Watts via a Clarkesworld Magazine podcast. It is a retelling of the story from the perspective of The Thing. The story rekindled a desire in me to watch this movie again. I had seen The Thing in the 80's when it first got to video and I seem to recall that I had walked away in disappointment. I'm not sure why that is because now that I have watched it again I must say that I quite enjoyed it!

I won't spoil the story for you. It is about an alien life form that is discovered frozen in the ice of Antarctica. The creature exists by assimilating lifeforms around it and taking on their appearance. The movie revolves around a group of researchers who are faced with the horror of trying to figure out who has become one of the creatures and who is still human. Kurt Russell is the main character McCready.

What I noticed most about this movie is that even though it was filmed in 1982, it does not appear dated. I would attribute that mainly to the fact that parkas and winter boots never go out of style! Apart from a scene with an old computer and another where McCready records himself on a cassette recorder, you would not know it was shot  almost 30 years ago. Even the creature effects are quite good.

On Writing

I have been reading the book "On Writing" by Stephen King over the last couple of weeks. It is the first book I have ever read on the subject of writing as I have never really considered myself in too much need of advice. I have been writing in one form or another since I was a kid. My first memory of writing was copying word for word a few pages of a book called "In the Days of the Dinosaurs", by Roy Chapman Andrews. Funny enough I read in Mr. King's book that he had done something similar in his youth.

As I moved through school I always enjoyed my English classes the most. I never had any problems doing creative writing projects. After I left school I continued writing short stories but rarely completed them. One I did sort of finish was about an overbearing boss who works a certain employee literally to death. I was inspired from an incident at a job I had at the time. Though my boss was actually pretty good, one day as I was driving around I happened to see his truck pulled over to the side of the road. I thought briefly that he was watching me. Suddenly this story came to mind and I blasted it off in short order. I never did anything with it but thought it was one of the better ones I had done at the time.