Rating: 
Summary: One of the BEST Sci-Fi novels of all time !
Review: 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....
Rating:
Summary: One of the BEST Sci-Fi novels of all time !
Review: 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....
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent hard sci-fi
Review: Hoyle is a little weak on characters. He does not capture a feeling awe or paint fantastic images in the mind, but the scientific premise and its consequences for life on Earth was very interesting. I would have liked to explore "the cloud" a bit more. The book is short, so it's easy for me to overlook a little bit of dryness and say this should be on the "must read" list of anyone who is into hard sci-fi.
Rating:
Summary: Very nice
Review: 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?"
Rating:
Summary: British Political, Science, and Social Commentary
Review: I'd wager this is one of the few science-fiction books written by an astronomer. The book starts out with considerable astronomy: a struggling young Norwegian (making a living scanning the skies for supernovae, which appear maybe twice a year) finds a ring of oscillating stars and takes it to a learned local astronomer, G. Marlowe, who is "ready to talk astronomy at all hours of day or night." Marlowe & friends discover, through mathematical calculation, that a large Black Cloud (see "Barlowe's Guide to the Extraterrestrials" for a good summary of its nature) will encounter the Earth in 18 months. I expected it to be a unique but rather dull read. It seems I am mistaken. Although much of the first half is considerably uninteresting, I found Hoyle does make the characters interesting. I particularly miss the short appearance of the Astronomer Royal, a humorous character whose best scene is definitely the beginning of Chapter 2, in which he enrages the main character by mimicking a talkative and excessively boring minor scientist. Kingsley, the hero / main character, gets the attention he deserves (he's a very logical man whose repeated confrontations with politicians are unfortunate since they think illogically). By the end I had established a minor emotional connection with the characters and their personalities -- Kingsley, his flirt (a musician, Halsey), Marlowe (who smokes aniseed!), Weichart (a very clever and knowledgeable person), Leicester (an Australian radio astronomer), Parkinson (a politician who symphathizes with the scientists), Alexandrov (a crude, rude, brevid Russian who just happens to be brilliant), Stoddard (an uneducated gardener), and even Green & Jensen, two personalities mentioned very briefly. I particularly mourn Jensen, the struggling Norwegian whose character was developed then killed off abruptly. The plot? Oh yeah. Both the Americans (mentioned in the first paragraph) and the British discover the Cloud separately, meet, and the scene focuses almost entirely on the British, who are granted a country estate at Nortonstowe. Here the scientists congregate and socialize, unable to leave. After periods of intense heat and cold (around 500 million people die) the Cloud removes itself from the Sun. At this point an egg of unknown science hatches and scatters across the pages, and the author speculates everything from the failure of politicians to correctly analyze situations to what would happen if we discovered God somewhere. The story ends with the infamous danger of processing too much information and comes VERY close to being too Hollywood-dramatic. If you like studying the idiosyncracies of man, if you enjoy astronomy and science-fiction, if you detest politicians, if you wondered what life was like at observatories, if you ponder the mysteries of the Universe, then I recommend you read the "Look Inside" feature provided at this site, and then buy the book if you're not bored.
Rating:
Summary: Very nice
Review: I, like many of the other reviewers below, read "The Black Cloud" many years ago in paperback, lost track of my copy and/or had it simply disintegrate after many lendings and rereadings, and searched in vain for years until able to buy the recent reissue. It's just as good as I remembered it, with the Astronomer Royal and the Cloud itself as wonderfully drawn characters that the reader wants to hear much more of. The laments that "Ossian's Ride" is unavailable are silly -- just look under the "Used & New" line of the initial book request display for "Ossian's Ride" and you'll see a whole bunch of listings of used copies for -- $1.45 and up!!! We truly live in a great age; all those books you grew up with and can't find any more are available for certainly no more than $10 a copy. I have recently bought "Sheila Levine Is Alive and Well and Living in New York", Adam Smith's "Powers of Mind", and, of course "Ossian's Ride" this way. All (without exception, all) were deaccessioned library copies in good shape, hardbound, with the original dust jackets and transparent library covers. The concept of "out-of-print and (hence) unavailable" is dead.
Rating:
Summary: ...and in the end a curtain.
Review: It is good to see that this work is still in print. It will likely remain in libraries and on bookshelves of a long time to come, mostly due to its brilliant construction and story development. Of the more clever elements of the book is the endless contrasts and confrontations that arise in the telling of the story: science versus religeon, politics versus reason, accepted ideas versus the unknown truth. Although it must be said that a few too many of these confrontations are put together into too small a framework, with little time devoted to any one and leaving a lot of loose ends, but these loose ends also allow the reader to mull over what he's read afterwards rather than simply running on to the next book. A serious flaw in the story's telling is the endless dialog between our scientist heros. Although it would have been difficult to cut much of it back without sacrificing understanding, it becomes somewhat clear towards the end that even the author was getting wary of this habit, and more and more passages skip over what is either already known or inferable. This (neccisary) beating of a dead horse is really the only drawback to the book, and may frustrate those who are looking for a book with continual plot advancement and interesting, in depth dialog. Still, unlike many novels of science fiction, not everything is explained away, or even rationalized beyond doubt. This allows a great deal of imagination to come forth regarding how things look and what is actually occuring. This book is reccomendable to most, but particularly to those interested in the philosophy of science and theories of extraterrestrial existance.
Rating: 
Summary: an entertaining diversion: very light reading
Review: Re: "Sir Fred Hoyle, [a] scientist and polymath extraordinaire, [b] was also one of our greatest sci-fi novelists, and [c] it is a pity that his SF works are not better known." [a]: Yes, Hoyle was both a scientist and a science-fiction writer--and a popularizer of science as well, but I don't see that that makes him a polymath, particularly since his science-fiction, though entertaining enough, had no especial literary value. [c]: In the sixties, his science-fiction was very well known, very nearly as well known as that of Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, and Isaac Asimov. I'd guess that most of his stuff is now out of print for two reasons: 1) Genre fiction tends to be ephemeral, and 2) Hoyle's scientific reputation plummeted (deservedly so) as he continued to promulgate his long-since discredited "steady-state" theory of the universe and to embrace such fantasies as the space-spores "theory" of the origin of life, with no credible evidence or argument to support either. [b]: Hoyle's stuff was probably just as good or better than most or much of Clarke's, Asimov's, and Bradbury's (though I don't think Hoyle ever equaled Clarke's "2001: A Space Odyssey" or "Childhood's End", nor do I think Hoyle ever equaled Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles" or "Fahrenheit 451"-bearing in mind I haven't read either of these last two since before my own childhood's end), but as it happens there have been only TWO great science-fiction writers (I'm not counting great science-fiction works such as "Brave New World" and "Planet of the Apes" written by writers primarily known for non-science-fiction): H. G. Wells and Stanislaw Lem. In any case, "The Black Cloud" is neither Hoyle's best novel nor his worst; it's fairly middling. The exaggerated claims made for it below are patently absurd.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant (as usual)
Review: There's not much to add to the reviews below. Sir Fred Hoyle, scientist and polymath extraordinaire, was also one of our greatest sci-fi novelists, and it is a pity that his SF works are not better known. Anyway, its all here with a brilliant prescience: scientific discovery, political obtrusiveness, nuclear winter, the steady-state universe theory, the unintelligibility of extraterrestial intelligent life, right down to the tragic ending. Any lover of thoughtful SF should read this excellent book.
Rating:
Summary: Good science and good fiction
Review: This is good science and good fiction. What more do you want? The plot moves quickly and intelligently and the characters sound like the guys he knows from his astronomy department at Cambridge. Much of the humor is British of course and the spelling and inside jokes are British too. I like the way he pokes fun at the American tendency to drop bombs on anything they don't understand. Americans haven't changed much from 1957 (when this book was first published) to the present. Hoyle must have been naughty because he got his FRS about twenty years before he got his knighthood. The long delay indicating that the politicians and royals who make up the honor list, had reservations about putting him on it. The only character that needs further development is the cloud. I would have liked to get the cloud's opinion on a whole bunch of topics, but unfortunately the cloud had to move on. Why it's moving on so soon was never quite clear. Perhaps if you read this book, you can let me know.
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