The Year of the Cloud

by Ted Thomas, Kate Wilhelm

There was a race going on such as the world had never experienced before. It was a race to save humanity from death by thirst…. It was a race that might not even finish much less win.

Genres: Science Fiction

183 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Theodore L. Thomas

Reviews

[Jason Bleckly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the ninth novel of Kate’s which I’ve read and I’d rate it as equal second place with The Clone which she also co-wrote with Ted Thomas. Her Hugo award winning novel Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang I’d put in third place. The best book I’ve read of hers is The Killer Thing.

The title is interesting in relation to the story. As can be guessed the book takes place over the period of one year. The first chapter is titled February 26, and the last February 17 of the following year. The cloud though, is actually done and dusted in the first chapter. It is discovered and the Earth passes through it by page 10. The story is the fallout from the Earth passing through this cloud of space stuff. So book should really be The Year Following the Cloud, but that sounds naff.

The book is a slow apocalypse. Everything is fine at the start. It’s just a normal day at the observatory. Then The Cloud is discovered on a photographic plate and things start to unravel as it is investigated and starts impacting life on Earth. The narrative structure reminded me of John Whyndam’s ‘The Kraken Wakes’ (1953). One of the central characters is a journalist and we see a lot of the story through his eyes and his contacts at all levels of society as it starts coming apart.

But unlike Whyndam’s story the menace isn’t intelligently hostile, it’s a chemical reaction. There is a lot of detailed chemistry in this book which would be Ted’s input as he was a chemical engineer with a degree from MIT. But the good news is the book doesn’t read like a chemical text book. All the science is fully integrated into the story as another principal character is a scientist.

The first half of the book focusses on changes in the cities as hardships begin to bite; ration cards, water shortage, food shortage, intermittent power etc. It strongly reminded me of both Harry Harrision’s ‘Make Room! Make Room! (1966) and Jack Womack’s ‘Random Acts of Senseless Violence’ (1993). The second half is more similar to Octavia Butler’s ‘Parable of the Sower’ (1993) as two characters have to take a road trip. We see how different people respond to the degrading situation; from random brigands taking what they can get, to communities adopting an isolationist stance.

The book is character driven, which is where Kate excels. While there are principal characters followed through the bulk of the book there are also vignettes, little asides, where we see characters for just that chapter. One example is a chapter set in Japan with a farmer and how he is dealing with the emerging problems. Him and his family, and Japan for that matter, only appear in that one chapter. Yet he is a fully realised character. This is very similar to what Kate did in The Clone, though here the vignettes don’t end with the characters dying.

My only complaint with the book is the ending is too deus ex machina. It’s like HG Wells Martians being killed by common Earth bacteria. Although I will give her credit for the sting in the tail of her resolution which she delivers on the very last page. But to find out what that is you’ll need to read the book.

[Kooshmeister · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scientists led by Dr. Yudkin at an American observatory take photographic plates of a mysterious celestial object near Mars using a highly sophisticated telescope and determine it is a cloud of some sort. Predicting that it will reach Earth in a matter of days and that the planet will in fact pass through it, NASA sends a rocket to collect samples of it. Analyzing the samples, they determine the cloud is organic in nature, composed primarily of polymers and a few other elements they can't identify. However, test animals subjected to the particles the rocket collected don't seem affected by it, and so at first it seems as if nothing harmful will come of its contact with Earth.

The cloud soon permeates the planet's atmosphere. Although Earth is only enveloped in its mass for a day before it moves on, the organic polymers start having an unusual effect on the environment. Oceanographer Dr. Sam Brooks and a colleague along with a science reporter named Carl Loudermilch are out on the ocean collecting samples of seawater for analysis when they discover that the cloud is increasing water viscosity somehow. All water on Earth is slowly taking on a consistency roughly akin to rubber cement or gel. With nothing to drink, no rain, no water to irrigate crops and the oceans slowly solidifying into a viscous glop, Brooks and Loudermilch, along with wealthy yacht owners Hugh Winthrop and Gail Cooper, stranded in the ocean, have to figure out a means of reversing the cloud's effects as order begins to break down around the world with Earth facing a potentially apocalyptic global drought.

I really liked Thomas and Wilhelm's earlier collaboration, The Clone, and The Year of the Cloud doesn't disappoint. To an extent, it reminds me of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Poison Belt. Like The Clone, it focuses on a catastrophe (an interstellar cloud as opposed to a blob monster) affecting a large and varied cast of characters, showing the reader how the authorities, the scientific community and ordinary people deal with the crisis, but with a few key differences.

First and foremost is the nature of the threat. The "clone" in the previous novel was an amorphous flesh glob possessing a rudimentary intelligence (of a sort); it had agency and motivation and was decidedly terrestrial in origin, created accidentally by human carelessness. The Yudkin Cloud, as it's named after the kinda pompous scientist who takes credit for its discovery (although it's actually an assistant named Porter who first notices it on the photographic plates) despite its informed organic nature is just, well, a cloud, traveling aimlessly through outer space with no end goal in mind; that it happened to cross paths with Earth is pure chance.

Secondly, there's the scale of the disaster. In The Clone, the eponymous monster only threatens Chicago; there is the threat of it spreading beyond the city limits and into the rest of Illinois and eventually the country/the world, but the authorities, led by the heroic Dr. Mark Kenniston, are able to successfully beat it. In this novel, however, the entire world is already under threat from the cloud's effects; the damage is done and it's up to Brooks and co. to reverse rather than prevent the apocalypse.

And thirdly, although there are other characters, unlike The Clone, The Year of the Cloud is primarily concerned with the people on the yacht, and said core group are more or less stuck; Mark, his girlfriend Nurse Edie Hempstead and his friend Harry Schwartz run around from place to place in Chicago aiding the authorities, but Brooks, Loudermilch and co. are pretty much stranded on the boat for the duration.

So the two books are similar but different and it's nice to see that Thomas and Wilhelm don't repeat ALL of their previous novel's themes.

[Kevin Phyland · Rating 3 out of 5]

A large but tenuous cloud of organic matter has enveloped Earth for a few days and then gone, but the effects are starting to appear to a pair of crews. Sam Brookes and Carl Loudermilch, marine biologist and science reporter respectively; and Hugh Winthrop, a seemingly indolent trust fund baby, and his partner Gail Cooper, both aboard the Donado off the Bahamas. What both seem to have discovered is that the organic molecules from space have increased the viscosity of global water by at least a hundredfold. This has dire effects. Waves don’t break, they roll; condensation nuclei don’t form, thus drought; and most chilling of all, blood gets thicker causing serious medical issues for all animals including humans. Ted Thomas and Kate Wilhelm have cobbled together a nice little disaster novel (possibly triggered by the polywater controversy around at the time), and with carefully thought out and logical consequences. The solution to the problem lies in the concept of swift adaptation but it will require quite a bit of suspension of disbelief. Not the worst way to while away a day.

[Brown Robin · Rating 2 out of 5]

A cosy catastrophe penned by Americans. Zounds! This is Ballardian in affect, and Hoylean in focus on the science. A winner worth the effort to procure. Another lost gem, though very, very, very 20th century in outlook. (The presence of Wilhelm on the masthead does not prevent the somewhat ancillary presence of females in the story, alas.)

[Claudio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un vecchio Urania comprato su una bancarella di Cesenatico, mai letto prima. Titolo originale: Year of the Cloud, 1970. Non male, mostra la sua età ma si legge ancora bene. Abbastanza avvincente e realistico secondo me.

[Nicola Strangis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ottimo libro da ombrellone! Non si tratta di un capolavoro, anzi, il lessico è piuttosto povero ma la storia nel complesso si regge bene e palesa diversi significati ambientalisti. Io me lo sono goduto.

Molto divertente il racconto finale di Richard Curtis (Zoo 2000).

[Marsha Valance · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kate Wilhelm & Ted Thomas write of a quest to save the world from destruction by drought. A Science Fiction Book Club selection.

[Diann · Rating 3 out of 5]

It has gaps like most end of the world disasters have. I haven't read this type of disaster before.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book when I was in my third year of college and my roommate had read it and recommended it way back in 1973. I enjoyed it although the constant consumption of Heineken was a bit much, Heineken here, Heineken there, and everywhere as I recall. Funny that it sticks in my mind so much. The overall story was somewhat more involved than that though. I had difficulty remembering the title but combining the correct words on google succeeded and now I know the title once again.

[Andrei88 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good