The Things by Peter Watts is the only one of the four Hugo nominated short stories that I read before it was nominated. In fact it may be the only Hugo award nominated story that I have read before it was nominated and even recommended it to a couple of friends over the year. I read it again the second time now that it was nominated and enjoyed it just as much as the first time.

This story is a retelling of John Carpenters The Thing, except from the point of view of the thing and the idea is that the humans are as alien to it as it is to the humans. This is because this creature is intelligent all the way through so to speak. That is to say that it doesn’t have a brain but is all intelligence. This makes sense with the movie since small parts of this creature seem intelligent. In addition it has trouble even believing that the humans are individual intelligences.

This story goes through the entire story of The Thing and I would suggest watching the movie again before you read this if you want the best experience because unless you are very knowledgeable about the movie you’re going to miss a lot of what is going on in this story and pat of the fun is comparing the points of view.

If I were voting on the Hugo awards in this category I think that I would probably vote for this because in addition to being fun to read this is the story that was nominated which most stayed with me and to me the value of the Hugo awards to me is to have a great story that you will remember.  

I strongly suggest that anyone who likes The Thing to read this story, but while it is fun to read this story because it is already knows it is bound to lose some value because if you don’t know the story you will get far less out of this. I don’t think there are a lot of people who are likely to read this that haven’t seen The Thing, but if you haven’t it’s worth watching as well.

To see the thing check out Netflix Instant Watch.

To read The things check out Clarksworld Magazine. You can also listen to this story in audio format if you want as well.