It is several months before the public become aware and the cloud becomes visible to the naked eye. It is agreed upon that there are only around 16 months left before it arrives, and as this filters up to the heads of state in the US and UK we follow Kingsley at a team of astronomers and others as a base is set up at a manor estate in the Cotswolds, which contains the most cutting edge radio technology available. On a brief visit to the US, Kingsley at the UK’s Astronomer Royal discuss with those who first noticed the cloud what it could be, where it is going and what will happen to Earth if a huge gas cloud inserts itself between us and the Sun. They tell me what is going on in the engine of state, but they don’t control it.’ Here we meet once of the central characters of the novel, Chris Kingsley, who is the Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge University, and rather blunt in his approach to working with others, particularly politicians, whom he regards as being like ‘the instruments on the dashboard of my car. Other astronomers around the world have also noticed something strange happening through their telescopes and results are presented at a British Astronomical Association meeting. The Black Cloud, published in 1957, is the first science fiction novel written by the astronomer and mathematician Fred Hoyle and an in a modern day setting charts the arrival of a gigantic cloud of gas into our solar system from deep space, and the consequences of its appearance.Īt the Palomar Observatory in California a young astronomer notices that a curious black mass has suddenly appeared at the edges of our galaxy.

The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle