The Black Cloud
Ratings17
Average rating3.6
A 1959 classic 'hard' science-fiction novel by renowned Cambridge astronomer and cosmologist Fred Hoyle. Tracks the progress of a giant black cloud that comes towards Earth and sits in front of the sun, causing widespread panic and death. A select group of scientists and astronomers - including the dignified Astronomer Royal, the pipe smoking Dr Marlowe and the maverick, eccentric Professor Kingsly - engage in a mad race to understand and communicate with the cloud, battling against trigger happy politicians. In the pacy, engaging style of John Wyndham and John Christopher, with plenty of hard science thrown in to add to the chillingly credible premise (he manages to foretell Artificial Intelligence, Optical Character Recognition and Text-to-Speech converters), Hoyle carries you breathlessly through to its thrilling end.
Reviews
Popular Reviews
Reviews with the most likes.
Ah, more 50's Sci-Fi - but this was different. Written by a renowned Cambridge astrophysicist it's heavy on the science and its fiction is based on facts.
A sentient alien cloud blocks the Sun's light to Earth and a group of scientists attempt to survive in a country house. They manage to make contact with it and exchange information before the cloud has to continue its mission.
There are some beautifully written characters and the debates between the scientists are most entertaining. It's a bit short on “action” and the large-scale death and destruction is mostly a footnote. This makes the final, more personal, deaths quite unexpected. And then it ends. It left me a bit deflated, to be honest, but in a good way.
Fascinating ideas stuck in antiquated language; in a post-The Martian world this book's achingly long explanations of science are just far too slow.
Top Prompts
