posted on 11 Aug 2016

The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle

Just imagine that it's a cold, wet Sunday afternoon in January and all you want is something on television to settle down and watch. Flicking through the channels you stumble on a 1950s black and white, British science fiction feature - you know the sort I mean, lots of men in tweeds, trouser waistbands under their armpits, pipes clutched between teeth and the odd exotic computer as big as bus with the capacity of a small calculator. If you've tuned into that, you will know what to expect from this novel.

Fred Hoyle, who died in 2002, was one of Britain's great scientists and an astronomer of real importance but he doesn't perhaps command the sort of public respect he deserved because of his often controversial positions towards the prevailing orthodoxies. He coined the term 'big bang' but did so with the intension of ridiculing the theory and he clung on to the so-called 'steady state' notion of the universe which was rejected by most other astro-physicists. He also developed the notion of 'panspermia' - that life was brought to the Earth by meteors and other extra-terrestrial mechanisms - which is a theory that is only now beginning to gain traction with scientists seeking to explain the origins of life.

Brilliant as Hoyle was, he was not a novelist of real skill or talent. That's not to say that he can't spin a decent yarn but he most certainly can't deal with characterisation and his handling of dialogue is truly terrible - which provides more parallels with those old science fiction films that were so good to watch on wet Sundays.

The plot of the book is really quite simple: astronomers in America and Britain separately discover the approach of a mysterious black cloud heading directly for the Solar System. One of the British representatives sent to the US to discuss  the implications of this is the maverick but brilliant Chris Kingsley ( a self portrait of Hoyle himself?) who is quickest to see the potential ramifications and potential climactic disaster such a cloud could cause if it blocked out the sun. Kingsley is also politically savvy and iconoclastic and manipulates a situation where he heads up a special team of scientists who will mastermind a response from a headquarters in the UK. When the cloud eventually arrives its behaviour starts to puzzle the scientists until Kingsley postulates the impossible - the cloud is alive!

You'll have to read the book to find out what happens because I'm not going to give it away. It's all thrilling enough to keep you reading but there are some real weaknesses in the book. Hoyle can't keep the science out of the story, which would be fine if it was more skilfully integrated but it tends to come at you didactically and in pretty indigestible slabs.

Kingsley, as a character that effectively carries the author's voice, needs to be someone you can sympathise with but, after a while, he becomes unspeakably irritating and a know-all that you just want to slap. Hoyle uses him as a conduit to set out his own ideas about the nature of the universe and humanity's place in it - and frankly it becomes plain tiresome to have one character so convinced of his superior knowledge.

And, of course, there's the usual problem of trans-atlantic imperialism. The British and Americans seem to feel no obligation to involve anyone else in the world despite the threat to life everywhere on Earth ( unless its to specifically exclude Russia from knowing anything) and, it would seem, no-one in any other country is capable of spotting the approach of the cloud and have no scientific capability on which to draw. Silly.

I pretty much read this book on a train journey and that's probably exactly the right context in which to get the best from this - the endless minor distractions of rail travel wont inhibit your enjoyment. So, if you're going to read this don't go to it with great expectations; switch off your critical faculties and relax.

 

Terry Potter

August 2016