Customer Reviews

The Black Cloud

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Delighted to find this work available in hardback; I've got my old Penquin copy from the 60's (it cost less than a buck back then) and it's falling apart, as I read this book once a year whether I need to or not. I first heard of British scientist Fred Hoyle back in my freshman physics class at Wheaton College, Ill, in the early 60's re: his "steady state" theory; Shortly thereafter I came across "The Black Cloud." Hoyle is a terrific writer and brings to bear his expertise as a scientist in producing a novel that is engrossing, with the dialogue delightfully flavored with his subtle British sense of humor. I particulary enjoy the interaction between the dignified 'Astronomer Royal' and the chief character and maverick & rather unstable Professor Kingsly. The book begins with a description of a cold wintry January morning on the prime meridian in England, with the natives huddled around their fireplaces moaning about the weather, and quickly moves to Mt. Palomar above the California orange groves, where an underpaid Norwegian grad assistant finds that certain photographic plates (didn't have CDC's back then) taken of the Orion region of the sky show that an entire circle of stars is blinking on and off when compared with the plate taken somewhat earlier….a condition that shouldn't exist…and the action starts from there….of course the culprit is the "Black Cloud" heading straight for the solar system. I'm a fan of Heinlein, Asimov, Arthur C. Clark, et. al…but I gotta say this is my number one favorite of all time. Anybody who likes sci-fi within the realm of what actually could happen as told by a writer grounded in science…and who's got a flare for SETI will love this book. And the way he writes, I find myself visualizing being right there on the scene., whether at Mt. Palomar, Pasadena, or Nortonstowe out in the English countryside (where they all end up). Always felt it was too bad Hoyle wasn't a more prolific writer of novels....

Every bright adolescent and teenager --not to mention adult-- should read this book and ponder its subject, which is nothing less than the provenance and place of thinking beings in the Universe. Full of stimulating, exciting ideas and speculations, with an engrossing and intelligent storyline, it engages the reader in addressing the problems presented. I say every teenager should read this book because no matter what your religious or philosophical bent or direction, that's the time in life when you really start considering these important topics in a mature fashion. The book was a thrill to me as a 12 year old in the late sixties; I read it again and again, along with The Martian Chronicles, the Odyssey, A Wrinkle in Time, the Robot books of Asimov, A Canticle for Leibowitz, Huck Finn, White Fang, and all the other high-quality fiction that insidiously teaches the reader to take seriously such questions as: what constitutes a soul (or conciousness)?; to what extent is there a place for compassion in nature; even if the universe is blind and uncaring, do I still have duties and obligations?; when may, and when must, I act even when my actions harm others?; and where did we come from, is there a reason for our being, is there a reason for everything, is there a reason for anything? This may seem pretty dry but the book, like the others mentioned, is not. It's exciting to come upon these questions, to treat them seriously especially for the first time, and it's important to learn to do this humanely (history is too full of people who get the Answer to these questions and then apply it vigorously to everyone in reach). And the cosmology is fascinating, too. The actual science is a little dated, but that won't hurt--the important stuff is still valid. I'm glad to see it back in print, even at so high a price--I want my daughters to read it. Someone ought to issue it in paperback. Compared to some of the books being read today in middle and high school (and many of these are good books), this work stands out. If you read the book and you AREN'T fascinated by the questions it raises, then either (a) you incapable of curiousity and wonderment, or (b) you have been mind-wiped by a culture of triviality and appetitive gratification--the Math is hard Barbie syndrome. I should note for those (parents) who are religiously inclined and concerned about this: The book does not preach amorality or a soulless universe. Neither is it, like the (wonderful) books of CS Lewis, a religious vehicle. It lies outside of these constraints. There is no magic or witchcraft, no something for nothing; the cloud's universe is our own, and displayed from a scientist's perspective. But it is not a perspective incompatible with views from other directions.

In this slender tale (190 pages) from 1957 -- the year of Sputnik and tailfins -- renowned astronomer Fred Hoyle managed to foretell AI (artificial intelligence), OCR (optical character recognition), TTS (text-to-speech converters), digital burst communications and a whole host of other technologies which didn't become commonplace until 40 years later.

Perhaps his most famous innovation in this story, however, is one very few other writers or thinkers have been able to contemplate, even today: non-organic intelligence. Most science fiction assumes "little green men" with bilateral symmetry and carbon-based morphology (think "Twilight Zone" with bad rubber masks). Hoyle was one of the few to theorize information-processing as the hallmark of life and/or intelligence, rather than some biological definition. In this, he is still ahead of us, nearly half a century later.

I was surprised when I first landed here to see that "The Black Cloud" is apparently so much more popular than Fred Hoyle's more compelling science fiction works, "Andromeda Breakthrough", "A is for Andromeda", "October the First is Too Late", etc. A bit of mouse-clicking showed me the answer: the rest of Fred Hoyle's science fiction is out of print. This is sad. Maybe buying "The Black Cloud" will encourage someone to bring back the others.

Recommended: "October the First is Too Late", Paul Creston's "Principles of Rhythm", Jeff Burns's "Pentatonic Scales for the Jazz Rock Keyboardist" (still in print!).

I "inherited" this copy from my dad. I read this first at the age of 14, i.e last year. I loved the book! Its science fiction, with fiction facts, dunno how I can explain that, but ill give it a try. What all Sir Hoyle has put up, he has given full calculations, and little proofs of those things. So it really sounds very logical.

I liked Kingsley's character very much. Brilliant minded character, but a bit unsound.

Once you read the book, you might as well start wondering "Can there really be a living cloud in space?"

Like many others I've been hunting for this book for some 30 years. I first read it in the sixties and was profoundly moved by it. If you like SF that takes place in the present (well... allow for the dating) and reality based you will love this book. It would be great to see other Fred Hoyle books published again, especially "A for Andromeda" and "The Fifth Planet", all great works from a great mind. The science may get to be dated but great writing should never be allowed to fade away.

This Amazon site contains many excellent reviews of The Black Cloud by British astronomer Fred Hoyle, my favorite science fiction story that I have re-read many times. Here I focus on some of the philosophical implications of this classic 1957 novel to modern studies of consciousness. Hoyle's novel stimulated the interests of two historical figures in a personal and professional relationship at the time: physicist Wolfgang Pauli and psychologist Carl Jung. As described in Hoyle's autobiography Home Is Where the Wind Blows: Chapters from a Cosmologist's Life, Pauli later told Hoyle that he discussed the philosophical implications of the novel with Jung and thought the novel was "better than your astronomical work."

In Hoyle's novel, a black cloud of matter with diameter larger than the earth-sun separation approaches our solar system. The heroic scientists make repeated attempts to study its physical properties by probing the cloud with electromagnetic signals of different frequencies, resulting in cloud behavior in apparent violation of known physical laws. After eliminating all other possibilities, the scientists are forced to an astounding conclusion: the cloud is intelligent! The scientist's next question is whether the cloud contains a single consciousness or many little conscious entities. They decide that the cloud has developed highly effective means of internal communication by electromagnetic fields. Each small part of the cloud is able to send signals to other parts in select frequency bands. The imagined process is analogous to the internet, but with a large fraction of the earth's population on-line at all times and rapidly sending messages to an ever changing subset of recipients.

The scientists decide that because the rate of information transfer between all parts of the cloud is so high, the sub-clouds can not be considered as having separate consciousnesses. Any thoughts or emotions experienced by a sub-cloud are assumed to be quickly and fully transmitted to many other sub-clouds. Thus the black cloud is deemed to contain a single global consciousness. Individual sub-clouds might be concerned with tasks like celestial navigation, memory storage, internal regulation of bodily functions and so forth; however, for the cloud to behave as a single mind, the sub-clouds must work in concert. Neuroscientists now refer to the analogous brain processes as functional segregation and functional integration. Different brain regions do different things; they are segregated. At the same time, they cooperate to yield a unified behavior and (apparent) unified consciousness so they are integrated. The question of how this can be accomplished in human brains, known as the binding problem in neuroscience, is discussed many places, including my new book (2010). The work of Benjamin Libet Mind Time: The Temporal Factor in Consciousness (Perspectives in Cognitive Neuroscience) shows that our subjective feeling of the present actually refers to times about ½ second in the past; consciousness is distributed over time. Modern neuroscience studies (EEG, etc) show that consciousness is also distributed over space within the brain as implied in Hoyle's novel. Still another excellent yarn by Hoyle having to do with the apparent relationship of consciousness to information is October the First Is Too Late. Although these are books of fiction, Hoyle makes it quite clear in his comments that he is quite serious about the ideas presented.

I've been looking for this book for awhile. I hope you guys keep it around since I intend to buy it. Of course there's various reasons I can't do that now. The science in it is somewhat dated, but I think it's quite accurate for the time. It is also a more entertaining look at the lives of scientists then say Timescape. In some ways it wasn't what I expected, but in most ways it was a whole lot better.

This book is yet another fine example of a great mind at work to challenge the thinking of an individual. I've been searching for this book for years, and I've also attempted to locate "Ossian's Ride," although I've since learned that it is out of print. To find one of the greatest collection of Sci-Fi short stories, I recommend "Element 79" by Fred Hoyle.

This book was referred to me during a university level astronomy course. It is a fantastic voyage into the realm of extraterrestrial life that goes far beyond the stereotype of "little green men." This is a believable story, complete with a reasonable assessment of how the politics of alien contact would affect the earth. An excellent read.