This story was published in the June issue of Clarkesworld. It currently has 10 recommendations on the Nebula Reading List. (I’ve revised based on comments.)
MacReady is one of two survivors of an incident at an Antarctic research station. His lover Childs is the only other survivor. The station has been found burned down, with the residents blown to bits and only two apparently frozen corpses perfectly preserved. There is also something that resembles a spacecraft in the wreckage. Thawed out in surprisingly good condition, MacReady rejoins life in New York City and takes up the fight for civil rights in a society where gays are ravaged by AIDS and the police target blacks. His old lover Hugh takes him to a meeting where he joins a plan to bomb NYC police stations. MacReady thinks something is wrong with him, but can’t put his finger on it. He has gaps in his memory. He starts to jump off the George Washington Bridge, but reconsiders. He carries out his part of the plot, leaving a bomb at a precinct station. On the way home, he has a profound realization about monsters.
This story is a sequel to the John Carpenter move The Thing, which is adapted from John W. Campbell, Jr.’s novella “Who Goes There?” The two survivors of the destroyed station are infected by an extraterrestrial creature that emerges to claim other victims when conditions seem safe. At those times MacReady and Childs have memory lapses, realizing that something isn’t right, but with no idea what it is.
This is fairly long, written in present tense, and follows MacReady’s efforts to find a place in society again. It gives glimpses of the world around him, of what went on in Antarctica, glimpses of his past, and makes connections with issues current in society. It’s interesting as an extrapolation of the movie, but like most of the Nebula Reading List stories so far, it’s message fiction.
I’m certainly not the expert on literary criticism, but I think this is a postmodern work. It has a scattershot approach where Miller throws out a lot of different bits and leaves the reader to try to put them together into some kind of cohesive whole. Note: The following discussion contains spoilers.
Message 1: As far as I know neither of the works this sequel builds on has any mention of sexuality or racism. That suggests Miller has introduced the gayness of the characters and MacReady’s allyism with the Black Liberation movement to make some kind of statement. Progressive is what’s going to jump out at most people.
Message 2: Miller uses gayness as an excuse to bring up the AIDs epidemic, which was in full swing in the 1980s. He draws a parallel to the spread of the alien life form, as in the story MacReady trades the alien for AIDS through casual sex. This is interesting but not very deep, and I find the references dated. We’ve come a long way in prevention and treatment since 1980 and still referring to AIDS as the “gay flu” struck me as victimization.
Message 3: Through Hugh, Miller sends MacReady to a Black Liberation meeting. He’s right the movement was in sharp decline in the 1980s, but I get the feeling he’s not talking about 1980 here, at all. The issue of police shootings is current and has sparked a new movement, Black Lives Matter, with retaliation against the police from either inside or outside the organization. The fact that MacReady and the others agree to bomb police stations so readily is a questionable suggestion. Is violence against the police progressive, or something beyond that? Neoleft? A return to radicalism?
Message 4: Miller winds this up in the last paragraph by letting us know we need to make peace with the monster within.
Okay, so what’s this all about? Editor Neil Clarke’s estimation is apparently that it will piss a lot of people off. Because he runs a progressive magazine, I suspect he’s identified Message 1 and considers the story to be progressive because it’s about gay men as victims and defending African Americans from the police through retaliatory measures.
However, does it really say that? The problem with postmodernism is that the disorderly presentation means readers can draw different conclusions from the text. I can interpret the gayness and bombings to be just interesting sidelines to the main story here, but when I get to the main theme as stated in the last line, then I need to look back at what’s been said. If Miller has been talking about monsters, then gay men with AIDS carry a monster within that they communicate to others. Also, people who ally with the Black Lives Matter organization to retaliate against the police are monsters within. But this is all okay. Just make peace with yourself and go on spreading it around.
Actually, that reading could piss off a few progressives.
Regardless of the politics, I think this story is complex and well-developed enough to rate a possible nomination. I’d be happier if the messages were more subtle.
Three and a half stars.
David VanDyke
Jan 21, 2017 @ 01:16:35
Message fiction works best when it remains subtle. In-your-face message fiction may win awards by playing to the base, but it won’t change any minds. I can tell you, my mind has been changed, or at least influenced, by message fiction, but it has to slip in below the radar. It has to put its arm around you and whisper in your ear, not scream spittle into your face.
In the long run, hyper-aggressive message fiction is self-defeating by driving away all the swing voters, all those who might be influenced by it. It clears the field of those who can still think for themselves, leaving only those who nod with sidelong glances to make sure they are approved by the tribalists. When that happens, like is happening with the Hugos, any awards must have asterisks attached to them, and they will likely begin to slip into irrelevancy.
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greghullender
Jan 21, 2017 @ 12:23:02
As a gay man who was an activist from the late 80s to the mid 90s, I found this story didn’t resonate with me at all. We won a great victory without ever resorting to violence (outside a few vandals at a few otherwise-peaceful protests). We used freedom of speech and the political process to get what we wanted–we never even tried to blow anything up. We were patient. We accepted often-humiliating compromises (like “don’t ask, don’t tell”), and eventually we won almost all the marbles.
I do not recognize our message in this story at all. If this is message fiction, what the Hell sort of message is it delivering? Or do you think it’s automatically message fiction if it has a gay protagonist?
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Lela E. Buis
Jan 22, 2017 @ 01:45:33
Ha. I knew I was going to get into trouble on this one–mainly because I didn’t delve enough into the messages. I’m certainly not the expert on literary criticism, but I think this is a postmodern work. It has a scattershot approach where Miller throws out a lot of different bits and leaves the reader to try to put them together into some kind of cohesive whole. Note: The following contains spoilers.
Message 1: As far as I know neither of the works this sequel builds on has any mention of sexuality or racism. That suggests Miller has introduced the gayness of the characters and MacReady’s allyism with the Black Liberation movement to make some kind of statement. Progressive is what’s going to jump out at most people.
Message 2: Miller uses gayness as an excuse to bring up the AIDs epidemic, which was in full swing in the 1980s. He draws a parallel to the spread of the alien life form, as in the story MacReady trades the alien for AIDs through casual sex. This is interesting but not very deep, and I find the reference dated. We’ve come a long way in prevention and treatment since 1980 and still referring to AIDs as the “gay flu” struck me as victimization.
Message 3: Through Hugh, Miller sends MacReady to a Black Liberation meeting. He’s right the movement was in sharp decline in the 1980s, but I get the feeling he’s not talking about 1980 here, at all. The issue of police shootings is current and has sparked a new movement, Black Lives Matter, with retaliation against the police from either inside or outside the organization. The fact that MacReady and the others agree to bomb police stations so readily is a questionable suggestion. Is violence against the police progressive, or something beyond that? Neoleft? A return to radicalism?
Message 4: Miller winds this up in the last paragraph by letting us know we need to make peace with the monster within.
Okay, so what’s this all about? Clarke’s estimation is that it would piss a lot of people off. Because he runs a progressive magazine, I suspect he’s identified Message 1 and considers the story to be progressive because it’s about gay men as victims and defending African Americans from the police through retaliatory measures.
However, does it really say that? The problem with postmodernism is that the disorderly presentation means readers can draw different conclusions from the text. I can interpret the gayness and bombings to be just interesting sidelines to the main story here, but when I get to the main theme as stated in the last line, then I need to look back at what’s been said. If Miller has been talking about monsters, then gay men with AIDs carry a monster within that they communicate to others. Also, people who ally with the Black Lives Matter organization to retaliate against the police are monsters within. But this is all okay. Just make peace with yourself and go on spreading it around.
Actually, that reading could piss off a few progressives.
Do you think I need to add this to the review?
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greghullender
Jan 22, 2017 @ 09:55:10
Well, if the message really is, “blow shit up–nothing else is going to work,” that would definitely not be the usual liberal message fiction that I hear people complaining about! 🙂
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Lela E. Buis
Jan 22, 2017 @ 10:06:00
I don’t think that’s quite the main theme. I think the main theme is “we’re all monsters inside.” Then he provides a couple of specific examples in the spread of AIDs and blowing up police stations. I’m not sure that’s what he means to say, but that’s the problem with postmodern works. People interpret them in different ways. Of course, some people will just see the message they like best.
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David VanDyke
Jan 22, 2017 @ 12:12:35
In my experience, people often see the message they hate worst, myself included, possibly because they’re tired of getting clubbed over the head with things and they have a knee-jerk reaction. I have my message moments, and it both pains and amuses me when people see the exact opposite of what I intended to convey.
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greghullender
Jan 22, 2017 @ 12:36:55
Just as a note for comparison, when I review stories for Rocket Stack Rank, a story with a heavy message cannot get more than two stars because (by definition) the message keeps popping me out of the story. If the message is all in the what-if, that’s different, but most folks with a heavy message to deliver can’t stop repeating it; they’re never willing to let the reader figure it out. (The same thing that makes “show-don’t-tell” a hard lesson for some writers to learn.)
In over 1200 stories reviewed, perhaps a dozen had such a heavy message. Of those, only one had a right-wing message. My point here is that a message that pops me out of the story is bad, no matter how much I agree with it. I think the left-wing ones are more likely to escape the slush pile because some editors have a soft spot for messages they agree with, but I’ll bet the vast majority of message fiction never sees the light of day.
Now if you think it’s a message to have a story with a black character who’s not a violent moron, or a gay character who’s not a pervert, or one which assumes the science on climate change is accurate, then I don’t have much sympathy. You should try reading a real message story sometime. They do exist, and they really suck, but they’re pretty rare.
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Lela E. Buis
Jan 22, 2017 @ 15:01:08
So you think I’ve reveiwed this one with too high a number? I’m responding to the complexity and the skill Miller has used in putting it together, even if I don’t much like what it says. It’s a little unsettling, isn’t it?
Just having gay characters is pretty mainstream right now, and not considered diversity, even (see recent blog about change in status), but I do think that harking back to the eighties and calling AIDs the “gay flu” is an attempt to present these characters as a victimized group to make the story more progressive. Hmmm. Maybe you’ve talked me into reducing the score a little.
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greghullender
Jan 22, 2017 @ 22:27:54
I thought three stars was your minimum score. 🙂
I didn’t see this as message fiction, owing to my inability to see what the message was. I thought it was an okay story that didn’t really go anywhere and left lots of open questions, but I no longer give a story two stars for having a confused plot unless it’s actually painful to read, and this one didn’t fall that far.
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Lela E. Buis
Jan 23, 2017 @ 00:26:48
Yeah, I think I’ve given a couple of stories a one or two. There was one I wouldn’t rate last year because I thought it was attack fiction. Things could get worse than just a questionable message.
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Robert
Jan 08, 2018 @ 00:18:21
I felt the story was a childish stain on a classic film. Yes I’d agree the writer is trying to make statements about several things including gay interatial relationships, police brutality, and terrorism. So he turns Kurt Russell into a gay man with a history of multiple African American male lovers and has him become a terrorist who goes into blow up a police station. Utterly offensive to anyone who enjoyed the original film.
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Lela E. Buis
Jan 08, 2018 @ 00:55:59
There is that.
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