The Black Cloud
- 226
- Pages
- about 4 h
- Reading time
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Our view
“The Black Cloud” is a rare science-fiction novel that makes scientific reasoning itself the drama, written by an astrophysicist. A vast gas cloud enters the Solar System and threatens to cut Earth off from the Sun, and a group of researchers sets out to understand it. Readers relish the debates among the scientists as they reason their way forward; some note that action is scarce and the wider catastrophe stays mostly offstage.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The Black Cloud is a 1957 science fiction novel by British astrophysicist Fred Hoyle. It details the arrival of an enormous cloud of gas that enters the Solar System and appears about to destroy most of the life on Earth by blocking the Sun's radiation.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.7 across 63 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 30% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Science fiction average of 7.8. That is how 7.7 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.0 | 9 | 14% |
| Hardcover | 7.6 | 54 | 86% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Black Cloud?
It has 226 pages — shorter than 90% of the ranked books in Science fiction.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Science fiction — with scores between 7.7 and 7.8, closest to this book.
