Just Finished Reading: The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle (1957) [219pp] 

It was spotted by an amateur astronomer. Just a dark speck in the sky, something wrong, something off. Within days it was confirmed by astronomers in the US and then in other countries. Part of the night sky had gone dark as if a black cloud was blocking out the light. Radio telescopes quickly confirmed the sighting. A large gas cloud was approaching at speed and would, in about 16 months, block out the Sun. More calculations followed. Scientists on both sides of the Atlantic concurred. At its present speed the cloud would obscure the Sun for around 4-6 weeks causing global temperatures to drop, crops to fail and global famine to occur – but many lives could be saved if appropriate measures were taken. It was going to be rough, but the event was not enough to threaten life on Earth in its entirety. As observations continued scientists noticed something strange, something very worrying indeed. If the figures were correct the cloud was doing something very unexpected indeed, something thought to be simply impossible. The cloud was slowing down. This meant a much longer transit through the Solar system and a much longer, deeper, cold ‘snap’. The threat to mankind's survival had just become much more acute. As monitoring continued the radio-telescopes regularly pinged the cloud to determine speed and direction in the hope that it would bypass the Earth and move on. As the approach continued and as the pings rang out the strangest thing so far happened – the cloud pinged back... 

As is usually the case this slim SF novel has been sitting on one of my shelves for many years unread. As part of a (actual failed) coupling I thought it was about time to give it a ‘go’. I was actually pleasantly surprised. I thought, especially from the blurb and what I’d heard about it, that it was going to be a standard ‘world in danger’, ‘politicians dismiss the science’ kind of thing. There were certainly elements of that – especially when politicians in the US and UK decided not to tell the public what was going on even when the worst was happening around them. Then, about a third of the way through, the narrative changed direction into a First Contact book (the alien was nicely *alien*). Once THAT dust had settled the book took another unexpected turn and (rather delightfully) surprised me again. It wasn’t all fun though – although I did have a few laugh-out-loud moments and particularly liked the Soviet scientists quip about letting the Cloud learn English so we could talk to it rather than us learning ITS language! 

Billed as ‘Science-Fiction by a Scientist’ this did have a tendency of pausing or stopping the narrative to discuss the science bits – including the odd diagram and even a sprinkling of equations! People (even very smart scientists) discussing things in smoke filled rooms is not really a good way to keep many people's interests! Oh, and I think most probably to save the cost of too much SFX the majority of the death and destruction took place ‘off page’ to be reported back in news broadcasts & the daily papers (which somehow seems to weather the global disaster much longer than you’d think they would. One last thing – the author made mention of one group of people who barely noticed the moderate cataclysm – the Esquimaux... I didn’t realise that this particular spelling lasted into the late 1950’s. Curious! 

Despite the sometimes-glacial pace of the narrative, this wasn’t half bad. It surprised me more than once and floated some interesting ideas of life in the Universe and our place in it. More than reasonable (if rather dated as you might imagine) and worth a read.