Just Couldn’t Finish Reading: The Purple Cloud by M P Shiel (FP: 1901) [222pp] 

It was the chance of a lifetime, a chance at immortality. To be the first man to reach the North Pole would mean more than fame though, it would make him rich. An American philanthropist had offered millions to the first person to make the journey, and Adam Jeffson was determined to be that man. After much effort and not a few deaths he found the achievement to be ashes in his mouth. Almost dead himself he struggled back, alone, to base camp to find the other two explorers dead. Weeks later as his sled approached their ship, he failed to raise anyone to help him aboard. Just like at base camp he discovered the entire crew dead caught, it seemed, unaware of their predicament. Jeffson had no option but to sail the ship single-handed back to the nearest port. He knew what he would find when he got there. After seeing countless dead birds, fish and larger animals on his voyage he did not expect to find anyone alive. He did not. The world had changed in his absence. All life, it seemed, had been removed. He was, as far as he could tell, alone in a world-wide graveyard.  

To be honest I do rather like post-apocalyptic stories either in film/TV series form or as a novel. I’m particularly fond of the ‘Last Man’ idea as an individual (all too often finding someone else – an actual Eve – towards the end to start things over) explores a dead world looking for solutions and starting things over again. I was, again being honest, getting rad flags about this book almost from the beginning. Although billed as ‘Science-Fiction’ it did have a supernatural/horror feeling to it with disembodied voices and a weird experience/encounter at the Pole itself. I did kind of compartmentalise this and, essentially, ignore that part of the narrative.  

What I did like was the way Adam went about his journey of discovery, sailing from place to place, reading newspapers about how it all happened – that pesky Purple Cloud of the title – and looking at what to do next. I did manage to get to around page 90 before I gave up. Although it wasn’t too badly written overall, I did find it far too slow to really enjoy it. Descriptively it was pretty good and the picture of mass casualties lying where they fell weeks previously – in their thousands – was the stuff of nightmares. The description of the ‘event’ and subsequent speculation didn’t, however, sit well with me. The ‘Cloud’ was thought to have emerged from a volcanic eruption and encircled the Earth at approximately 4 miles an hour killing everyone and everything in its path. This, of course, completely ignores wind and much else besides. I couldn’t help but think that there would inevitably be places where the Cloud/gas wave never arrived – apart from the fact that it would take a LOT of gas to circumnavigate the entire planet. I also couldn’t help thinking of things like: just how HIGH was the Cloud? What about people in Peru or the Himalayas? Apparently, there was a few attempts to seal rooms or structures from the gas – but they ran out of oxygen before it passed... Really? What about oxygen bottles (like in The Poison Belt by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) and what about respirators? Also, what about airships either hovering above it or popping over the Cloud and dropping people off in the area already passed over? SO many questions. But eventually, it all became a bit much and it became an unprecedented THIRD DNF of the year – something I really didn’t like doing. So, overall, a questionable idea, quite well done, but too long-winded for much reading pleasure.