This is a novelization of the John Carpenter movie the Thing written by Peter Watts. The gimmick is that it is written from the perspective of the shapeshifting extraterrestrial. It's available on Clarke's World for free in text and audio reading. At less than seven thousand words I would recommend just reading or listening to it. Writing from a nonhuman perspective is one of those challenges that takes a strange mind and significant writing chops to accomplish much less excel at. I feel confident claiming Watts at least manages the former. This is a first person narrative. At every stage the story is related directly by the Thing; what it sees, what it feels, and what it thinks. This is complicated by the fact that the Thing is not just one thing. It splits and merges, occupies several bodies, instantiating several minds and points of view, all link by one soul. This soul is not some super natural essence. It is the outlook and purpose that drives it forward, a memory of being part of the grander self that met with countless worlds. It took communion on each world; its word for merging. This communion was sensual, holy, and righteous. It was life cooperating to improve and expand itself. The Thing attempted to take communion on this world as soon as it was thawed and was attacked. Who are these things that would reject it? Why are they so ill formed for this icy environment? How did all of their cognition get stuffed into a giant mass of nerves in a bony casing? Where is the rest of the Thing's self? When is rescue coming? What can it do to survive till then?
I think it's amazing to consider that we are as much alien horrors to the monster as the monster is to us. The paranoia and dread that suffuse the camp as the extent of the threat comes into focus goes both ways. Why shouldn't it. The Thing remains blissfully ignorant of our limitations for most of the story. The notion of static morphology is anathema, an evolutionary contradiction, axiomatic paradox. When it comes to full awareness of its hosts' natures the depths of horror and pity for our plight overwhelms it. Lives held hostage by flesh. Minds in perfect loneliness. Born to die. It knows how to save us now, whether we want it or not.
Pity for the monster has been well tread ground since Frankenstein. Pity from the monster isn't unheard of. This story goes all in on both. The gulf between humanity and the Thing is enormous and the horror cuts both ways. What we see as infection and assimilation it sees as the fundamentals of life. This story really sells the creatures point of view. After reading it the movie takes on a much more tragic aspect. At the same time I find myself just as opposed to the creature ever getting out of the ice. We may be stunted freaks from its perspective but we're our own stunted freaks. I think that's the biggest strength of the story. Just because you fully understand and sympathize with someones point of view doesn't mean that you can get along. That's real cosmic horror.
IRON NODER XVII: ALL'S FERROUS IN LOVE AND NODING