Cap Kennedy #15, and The Thing Connection

It’s always interesting to me to trace influences over time in Science Fiction and fantasy. I made an interesting discovery recently as I was reading Cap Kennedy #15, Mimics of Dephene (1975). This is a space opera series from the 1970s written by Gregory Kern, who was actually E. C. Tubb (1919 – 2010). The book would seem to be a relatively minor one in the series, but at the very top of page 62, (Daw Books, Inc. 1975, April), I found a fascinating paragraph.

To set it up, Cap and his colleague, a scientist named Jarl Luden, discover an alien mimic who is trying to pass as a human. Luden remarks: "'There is a certain test. Take some tissue, some blood, and touch it with a hot wire. Normal blood will not react, but that taken from a Mimic will incorporate an individual survival-pattern. It will recoil from the threat of heat.’”

My mind, and quite possibly yours, instantly leaped to the John Carpenter movie, The Thing, which opened June 25, 1982. Here’s the speech Macready gives in the movie just before running the blood test that reveals ‘The Thing.’ “You see, when a man bleeds. It’s just tissue. But blood from one of you things won’t obey when it’s attacked. It’ll try and survive. Crawl away from a hot needle…” In the movie they actually use a hot wire for the test.

I went back to the original novella that was the basis for John Carpenter’s The Thing. This is Who Goes There, by John W. Campbell Jr, which was published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1938. I’d read it a very long time ago but in checking it out I found that the hot wire test was used in that book. This is probably where Kern/Tubb got the idea for Kennedy #15, and would also seem the likely influence on Carpenter. Oddly, though, the wording in the movie is closer to that in Mimics of Dephene than in the novella. Coincidence? Probably.

However, a second tantalizing connection between the Cap Kennedy book and the “thing” is seen later. On page 93 of the Kennedy book, when a mimic is imitating Luden, Kennedy tells one of the forms to "Open your mouth." As soon as the being does so, Kennedy shoots him down. When the real Luden wants to know how Kennedy distinguished between the mimic and the real, Kennedy says: "...no Mimic could have known what was inside your mouth. Expensive dental work."

In the 2011 remake/prequel to The Thing, we find out that the creatures can't mimic dental implants and these get left behind when a human is taken over. This is one way to identify them. And this element did not appear in Who Goes There, or at least I couldn’t find it with a pretty close search. (I wonder if it might have been in the original script for that movie.)

Although certainly no proof of direct connection, the fact that Mimics of Dephene can be linked to both the 1982 and the 2011 movies, tantalizes me. I can’t find any evidence that Tubb himself had anything to do with either movie, so if there was an influence, it came from someone else. Were both links purely coincidental, or had someone who worked on these movies read Cap Kennedy #15? Could it have been John Carpenter himself? If anyone knows him, maybe you’ll ask him for me. I’d sure like to know.

Alien Versus Predator Versus The Thing

Traditionally, Hollywood hasn’t done a very good job of creating believable aliens. Much as I like the original Star Trek, for example, its aliens were far too human, not only physically but psychologically as well. Of course, budget and special effects limitations created restraints on the physical features of the Vulcans and Klingons, but a better job could have been done on the psychology.

Since the eighties, though, a few better aliens have been created. Off the top of my head, here are my top three, in reverse order from least to most realistic.

3. The Thing. (John Carpenter’s version.) I really like this alien. It’s just downright cool. And physically and psychologically it is about as far from human as you can get. But, unfortunately, I have to think it’s pretty unrealistic. Plenty of one celled organisms grow by absorbing other cells, and the “Thing” is supposed to be like a collection of cells. Mimicry is also very common in nature and the Thing is an extreme example of that. However, knowing how complex the human brain is, and how complex the cell structures are in a human, I can’t imagine an organism that could assimilate so perfectly in such a short period of time and be absolutely believable as the person it assimilated. It’s still cool, though.

2. The Predator works pretty well because of the care taken in developing the creature’s physiology and society. Especially nice is the fact that they see heat signatures. The suggestion is that they evolved under a hotter sun than humans. It also suggests a reptilian background, since a number of reptiles have this capability. The Predator is still incredibly humanoid, however. And though their society is interesting, it is based pretty clearly on some savage human societies, particularly head hunter and warrior societies. When we see a bit of one of their cities in Alien VS Predator it seems clearly to reflect a Grecian architecture. Over the course of the series the Predator has gotten more and more human. And that’s unfortunate.

1. The Alien (Ripley’s alien, that is), is the best alien yet. Clearly, a lot of effort was spent developing its elaborate life cycle, which is not unlike that of some earth insects. Aliens have both insect and reptile characteristics, which makes sense since nature wouldn’t typically build something on another world that was an exact match for, say, a mammal. One interesting thing is that the Alien’s eggs are soft shelled rather than hard. On earth, this is an amphibian or early reptile characteristic. I can’t decide whether the fact that the alien embryos incorporate some of the DNA from the host species is a good characteristic or not. It’s certainly very different from what parasites on earth do, although it is characteristic of some types of viruses. The main problem with this DNA thievery is that the alien species would normally cease to exist as a unique species pretty quickly. To maintain a species one must maintain the genome.

The acidic blood is a problem, however. Although quite a few insects make internal toxins and even release these into the atmosphere, the alien’s blood is just too corrosive. Eating so rapidly through the kind of metal used to make spaceships would be quite a feat for a biologically developed corrosive. There is a possible explanation, however, and it comes from the earth species known as the Bombardier Beetle. This beetle shoots a spray of a noxious chemicals from its abdomen when disturbed. However, it actually stores two non-reactive chemicals separately in its body, which are combined only ‘outside’ the body after being sprayed into the air from abdominal ducts. Only then do they become reactive. Still, I have a hard time buying the alien’s acidic blood because it is not released from any glands but clearly seems to be circulating in the organism’s system. Highly unlikely.

Finally, with the Alien, I always had a hard time with the growth rate of the creature in the first movie. It’s small when we first see it, but within a few days seems to have grown much larger than a human being. Growth rates can be high for some insects, and even for fish and birds, but nutrients are needed. You only get out what you put in. They could have justified this somewhat if they’d given an indication that the Alien was feeding on something within the ship. Still, all in all, the Alien puts most other Hollywood conceived aliens to shame.

What do you think?
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