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The Clone
First publication.
Cover Artist: Hoot von Zitzewitz
Cover Artist: Hoot von Zitzewitz
143 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1965
4 people are currently reading
311 people want to read
About the author
Theodore L. Thomas
82 books2 followersUsed pseudonyms: Leonard Lockard and Cogswell Thomas. Often credited as Ted Thomas.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
February 16, 2019
250817:the stephen king book he has not written. quick, comic, horrific, this is probably exactly the right media: graphics extensive, too long, movies too short, too unexplained. like a sk short story, no excess, very cinematic, covers society, yes this is basically 'the blob' set in Chicago. goofy fun...
March 15, 2017
Jointly written in 1965 by Theodore L. Thomas and Kate Wilhelm, and based upon Thomas' earlier short story of the same name. The Clone was nominated for a Nebula Award, but lost to a little book by Frank Herbert called Dune. Which itself has since gone on to become a science fiction classic. And a really disturbing David Lynch movie, but we're not here to discuss Herbert's masterpiece. We're here to discuss one of the many novels that it beat out for the Nebula Award!
The Clone begins auspiciously enough. Some janitors in a Chicago office building pour cleaning chemicals containing muriatic acid and trisodium phosphate down the sink and they wind up in the sewer, where they mingle with other refuse (silica gel and hamburger meat most notably). The warm sewer water allows a new life form to spring forth from these combined ingredients: an amorphous blob of green slime which quickly begins spreading through the sewers and aqueducts beneath Chicago, soon flowing up into people's homes through their drains.
The creature is dubbed "the clone." Why? Well, it absorbs and converts the cells of other living things into its own, replicating itself, but never intentionally creating separate copies of itself (although this does happen a couple of times). So I guess this is a kind of cloning, as it "clones" itself by converting its victims into its own mass and growing larger.
But the novel keeps calling it "the clone," so that's what I'll call it.
Its modus operandi is to have pieces of itself, tentacle-like, emerge from drains and faucets and attach itself to people. On contact the person is immediately fused to the clone and the absorbing process begins within seconds. It can even get at you through your clothing, provided you're wearing a specific type of fabric (the clone absorbs more than just organic matter). The assimilation process is totally painless which is the main difference between this and the similar The Blob.
The first thing one notices about the book is how the authors avoid any pretense of mystery about the monster's creation. This is told in great detail in the first chapter. As a result, the reader is aware of the nature of the menace but the characters (such as they are) are not. The characters themselves are mostly ciphers, with the closest thing to a hero being Dr. Mark Kenniston, a junior pathologist who winds up deducing the nature of the clone and how to deal with it.
Here are some highlights:
-Mark's boss, Dr. Agnew, tries to cut off a piece of the clone to experiment with and winds up getting it on his hand, which it starts to absorb. Before it can assimilate the rest of Agnew, Mark's friend Harry cuts Agnew's arm off at the elbow, saving him. Another doctor isn't as lucky; although they cut his hand off him, too, the clone went inside his arm, and the poor bastard is absorbed from the inside-out.
-When the clone attacks a clothing store called Steinway's; I'm unsure if this is a real Chicago store; a suicidal woman named Ellie Hagen sees the all-absorbing monstrosity as an "out" and willingly steps into it and gets absorbed. There's also another shopper, Charlies Hallingford, who gets eaten because he just couldn't leave without that bargain-priced suit he picked out just before the attack (the clone had begun absorbing the jacket and Charles rather foolishly makes a heroic effort to pull it free).
-One of the most heroic characters in the novel is a skeptical mechanic named Dory. And yes, it's a male character. Armed with a blowtorch he rescues several schoolkids being besieged by the clone. The last few don't make it, and Dory sacrifices himself in a vain effort to save them. Dory grabs the most terrified of the children and holds onto him as they begin getting engulfed, and, I may as well just repeat verbatim what the book says: "Dory held the terrified boy until there was nothing left to hold, and nothing left to hold with."
There's other wonderful bits including the fate of abusive dickweed Timothy O'Herlihy whose default response to someone asking you a question is to hit them, and the increasingly hysterical Mayor Slattery. To say nothing of the fact the clone eventually grows so large it one-ups either version of The Blob and begins consuming the entire city.
The episodic nature of the writing means everything jumps from one situation to the next very quickly, and also the chapters are all a handful of very large, long single paragraphs without dialogue, make it difficult for the reader to properly understand what was just described and digest everything (no pun intended), forcing them to repeatedly backtrack and reread to see what, if anything, they missed. This gets tiresome very quickly and I wound up skimming the last half of the book instead of reading it in-depth out of sheer annoyance.
Nevertheless, it's interesting premise (a variation of the tried and true "blob monster" shtick) and deserves a readthrough. Although it's out of print, it can be bought cheap on eBay, Amazon and other websites. It may even, if handled correctly, make a pretty decent movie. An adaptation of a lesser-known novel is certainly better than all the remakes we're getting lately!
The Clone begins auspiciously enough. Some janitors in a Chicago office building pour cleaning chemicals containing muriatic acid and trisodium phosphate down the sink and they wind up in the sewer, where they mingle with other refuse (silica gel and hamburger meat most notably). The warm sewer water allows a new life form to spring forth from these combined ingredients: an amorphous blob of green slime which quickly begins spreading through the sewers and aqueducts beneath Chicago, soon flowing up into people's homes through their drains.
The creature is dubbed "the clone." Why? Well, it absorbs and converts the cells of other living things into its own, replicating itself, but never intentionally creating separate copies of itself (although this does happen a couple of times). So I guess this is a kind of cloning, as it "clones" itself by converting its victims into its own mass and growing larger.
But the novel keeps calling it "the clone," so that's what I'll call it.
Its modus operandi is to have pieces of itself, tentacle-like, emerge from drains and faucets and attach itself to people. On contact the person is immediately fused to the clone and the absorbing process begins within seconds. It can even get at you through your clothing, provided you're wearing a specific type of fabric (the clone absorbs more than just organic matter). The assimilation process is totally painless which is the main difference between this and the similar The Blob.
The first thing one notices about the book is how the authors avoid any pretense of mystery about the monster's creation. This is told in great detail in the first chapter. As a result, the reader is aware of the nature of the menace but the characters (such as they are) are not. The characters themselves are mostly ciphers, with the closest thing to a hero being Dr. Mark Kenniston, a junior pathologist who winds up deducing the nature of the clone and how to deal with it.
Here are some highlights:
-Mark's boss, Dr. Agnew, tries to cut off a piece of the clone to experiment with and winds up getting it on his hand, which it starts to absorb. Before it can assimilate the rest of Agnew, Mark's friend Harry cuts Agnew's arm off at the elbow, saving him. Another doctor isn't as lucky; although they cut his hand off him, too, the clone went inside his arm, and the poor bastard is absorbed from the inside-out.
-When the clone attacks a clothing store called Steinway's; I'm unsure if this is a real Chicago store; a suicidal woman named Ellie Hagen sees the all-absorbing monstrosity as an "out" and willingly steps into it and gets absorbed. There's also another shopper, Charlies Hallingford, who gets eaten because he just couldn't leave without that bargain-priced suit he picked out just before the attack (the clone had begun absorbing the jacket and Charles rather foolishly makes a heroic effort to pull it free).
-One of the most heroic characters in the novel is a skeptical mechanic named Dory. And yes, it's a male character. Armed with a blowtorch he rescues several schoolkids being besieged by the clone. The last few don't make it, and Dory sacrifices himself in a vain effort to save them. Dory grabs the most terrified of the children and holds onto him as they begin getting engulfed, and, I may as well just repeat verbatim what the book says: "Dory held the terrified boy until there was nothing left to hold, and nothing left to hold with."
There's other wonderful bits including the fate of abusive dickweed Timothy O'Herlihy whose default response to someone asking you a question is to hit them, and the increasingly hysterical Mayor Slattery. To say nothing of the fact the clone eventually grows so large it one-ups either version of The Blob and begins consuming the entire city.
The episodic nature of the writing means everything jumps from one situation to the next very quickly, and also the chapters are all a handful of very large, long single paragraphs without dialogue, make it difficult for the reader to properly understand what was just described and digest everything (no pun intended), forcing them to repeatedly backtrack and reread to see what, if anything, they missed. This gets tiresome very quickly and I wound up skimming the last half of the book instead of reading it in-depth out of sheer annoyance.
Nevertheless, it's interesting premise (a variation of the tried and true "blob monster" shtick) and deserves a readthrough. Although it's out of print, it can be bought cheap on eBay, Amazon and other websites. It may even, if handled correctly, make a pretty decent movie. An adaptation of a lesser-known novel is certainly better than all the remakes we're getting lately!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 14, 2011
This starts innocuously enough it will gradually frighten more then any version of the blob ever did. I first read in the mass market paperback and subsequently re read again and again. The amazon review: copied from older review is accurate this is how it opens and unlike the blob which crashed to earth, this one we created just from what we do not some alien, the fright comes from how it begins:
This review is from: The Clone (Vintage Berkley F1169) (Mass Market Paperback)
Book Description:
One night, beneath the streets of the city, four ingredients found their way into the same collector box in the underground sewer system. There these ingredients - muriatic acid; trisodium phosphate; a bit of meat; and a fleck of silica gel - combined in a warm, seething liquid and gave birth to a hideous, destructive force: the clone....
A Microscopic mass at first, the clone grew rapidly, feeding on the nutrients in the sewer, converting everything it touched into its own pulsing tissue. It spread in all directions, filling the pipes beneath the sleeping metropolis. Then seeking more food, the deadly green tissue reached upward and entered the unsuspecting city...
It moved through houses and stores and spread into the streets, absorbing all that lay in its path. Nothing Could Stop it...
It is eventually stopped and some scenes were borrowed and used in movies. Namely all the scenes where someone gets attacked from drains and toilets.
This review is from: The Clone (Vintage Berkley F1169) (Mass Market Paperback)
Book Description:
One night, beneath the streets of the city, four ingredients found their way into the same collector box in the underground sewer system. There these ingredients - muriatic acid; trisodium phosphate; a bit of meat; and a fleck of silica gel - combined in a warm, seething liquid and gave birth to a hideous, destructive force: the clone....
A Microscopic mass at first, the clone grew rapidly, feeding on the nutrients in the sewer, converting everything it touched into its own pulsing tissue. It spread in all directions, filling the pipes beneath the sleeping metropolis. Then seeking more food, the deadly green tissue reached upward and entered the unsuspecting city...
It moved through houses and stores and spread into the streets, absorbing all that lay in its path. Nothing Could Stop it...
It is eventually stopped and some scenes were borrowed and used in movies. Namely all the scenes where someone gets attacked from drains and toilets.
June 2, 2022
This sort of unstoppable-creature-destroys-city-and-threatens-Earth crap usually doesn't interest me, but Thomas (a patent lawyer or some shit who got Kate Wilhelm to help him write this -- I don't know the story) has conceived an original creature this time, the pacing is great, and there's a lot of impressive-sounding hard science thrown about to give what is at heart a cheap pulp horror story sophisticated airs. Gruesome and more entertaining than I could have hoped.
August 26, 2019
Takové standardní sci-fi. Nic ohromujícího, ale na dovolenou dobrý...
October 24, 2023
"La ciudad centelleaba, confiada en la noche".
Publicado originalmente en inglés como "The Clone" (Traducida al español como Invasión Subterránea). La historia se desarrolla en "la ciudad" de Chicago, aunque puede ser cualquier ciudad cosmopolita del mundo.
En las profundidades de la ciudad, entre las tuberías y alcantarillas, nace una una masa gelatinosa, a partir de los desechos químicos, biológicos y minerales que la ciudad ha arrojado a través del tiempo.
Esta masa gelatinosa llamado "Clon" se alimentará constantemente de las personas, los absorberá. No sentirán dolor mientras se ven así mismos mimetizándose con el "Clon", sorprendidos, horrorizados y extasiados lo verán avanzar a través de la extremidad que tuvo contacto con él, hasta llegar a un órgano vital, momento en que la víctima se desvanecerá en un charco de agua.
Finalmente el "Clon" intentará absorber a toda la ciudad, alimentarse de la humanidad, formarla parte de sí misma.
"The Clone" puede considerarse una metáfora, un reflejo degradante, una copia de la peor versión de nosotros mismos. La "sociedad" alimenta a diversos movimientos e ideologías que nacen en los lugares más profundos y ocultos de la ciudad, para salir a superficie en el momento conveniente. La ciudad se dejará tomar lentamente, delante de sus ojos, hasta que se sienta invadida, se encuentre indefensa y finalmente absorbida.
"The Clone" impresiona durante las primeras paginas, es allí donde se produce una de las escenas más memorables, donde el "Clon" intentará devorar al personal de cocina de un restaurante. El protagonista Harry Schwartz trabaja allí como lavaplatos y junto a su amigo Mark Kenniston, un joven patólogo, huyen para luego poder encontrar la manera de enfrentar al "Clon".
Hay quién se pregunta por qué este libro no es más famoso, especialmente después de haber obtenido una nominación a la primera entrega del Premio Nebula. Y talvez pueda dar una respuesta, "The Clone" se limita a la naturaleza de su premisa sencilla, no profundiza más en la mente de los personajes, el lector es solo un espectador. No es más que el espectáculo de un organismo que absorbe todo a su paso, habrán personas que huyen e intentan detenerlo pero nada parece funcionar. Hasta que en el último capítulo, en unas lineas, el "Clon" se desvanece.
Nebula Award Nominee for Best Novel (1965).
August 23, 2024
Brilliant. Stop whatever you are doing, immediately find yourself a copy of this, and read it.
This is Kate's first novel and was nominated for the inaugural Nebula award for 1965. A quick note about Kete’s co-author, Theodore only wrote 2 novels, both of them with Kate. But he did write many short stories solely under his own name and was nominated for the 1967 Nebula for his short story ‘The Doctor’
This book isn’t startlingly original, in fact it’s basically The Blob (1958 movie), but it’s superbly told. And the title isn’t really accurate. The organism is spontaneously created due to chemical reactions in the right conditions, it’s genesis rather than cloning. This is not a spoiler as it all occurs in chapter 1. There is quite a lot of chemical science in this book which I’d attribute to Theodore as he was a chemical engineer. The chemical science doesn’t feel like it’s been forced into story to say, look what I know, it’s integral to the story and flows nicely with the plot and characters.
This book is brutal. There is a very high body count that is up close and personal. The story is partly told as set pieces of characters who then die. I think this is Kate’s influence. Having read a number of her short stories and a couple of books, she is very good at characters. She creates real people with families and children. It’s made me notice that kids (ie 5-15 year olds) are frequently missing from a lot of SF worldbuilding. But they are always included in her work, creating a fully formed society.
This is both a slow catastrophe and a rapid one. It’s slow as it builds across the entire book, but it’s rapid as chapter 1 starts at 12:33 am and the final chapter happens at 5:30pm on the same day. The whole book takes place in 17 hours.
The story reminds me strongly of Greg Bear’s ‘Blood Music’ with the slowly worsening situation as the organism gets bigger and spreads, but here it’s not sentient. It’s also similar in structure with raft of characters who never interact with the central plotline or character.
It also reminds me of John Wyndham’s ‘The Kraken Wakes’ and HG Wells’ ‘War of the Worlds’ with a distanced journalistic narrative perspective that dips into various characters point of view, but dosen’t stay long. Mainly because the character dies.
It’s not a long book. I read the entire thing in 2 sittings, but this is also an indication of the quality. I avoided doing some things I probably should have been doing so I could read for an extra couple of hours. This book is great fun and I highly recommend it.
This is Kate's first novel and was nominated for the inaugural Nebula award for 1965. A quick note about Kete’s co-author, Theodore only wrote 2 novels, both of them with Kate. But he did write many short stories solely under his own name and was nominated for the 1967 Nebula for his short story ‘The Doctor’
This book isn’t startlingly original, in fact it’s basically The Blob (1958 movie), but it’s superbly told. And the title isn’t really accurate. The organism is spontaneously created due to chemical reactions in the right conditions, it’s genesis rather than cloning. This is not a spoiler as it all occurs in chapter 1. There is quite a lot of chemical science in this book which I’d attribute to Theodore as he was a chemical engineer. The chemical science doesn’t feel like it’s been forced into story to say, look what I know, it’s integral to the story and flows nicely with the plot and characters.
This book is brutal. There is a very high body count that is up close and personal. The story is partly told as set pieces of characters who then die. I think this is Kate’s influence. Having read a number of her short stories and a couple of books, she is very good at characters. She creates real people with families and children. It’s made me notice that kids (ie 5-15 year olds) are frequently missing from a lot of SF worldbuilding. But they are always included in her work, creating a fully formed society.
This is both a slow catastrophe and a rapid one. It’s slow as it builds across the entire book, but it’s rapid as chapter 1 starts at 12:33 am and the final chapter happens at 5:30pm on the same day. The whole book takes place in 17 hours.
The story reminds me strongly of Greg Bear’s ‘Blood Music’ with the slowly worsening situation as the organism gets bigger and spreads, but here it’s not sentient. It’s also similar in structure with raft of characters who never interact with the central plotline or character.
It also reminds me of John Wyndham’s ‘The Kraken Wakes’ and HG Wells’ ‘War of the Worlds’ with a distanced journalistic narrative perspective that dips into various characters point of view, but dosen’t stay long. Mainly because the character dies.
It’s not a long book. I read the entire thing in 2 sittings, but this is also an indication of the quality. I avoided doing some things I probably should have been doing so I could read for an extra couple of hours. This book is great fun and I highly recommend it.
August 1, 2023
“The clone was a creature of growth, and all the nutrients it needed were at hand in the pool.”
from the back cover: "One night, beneath the streets of the city, four ingredients found their way into the same collector box in the underground sewer system. There these ingredients - muriatic acid; trisodium phosphate; a bit of meat; and a fleck of silica gel - combined in a warm, seething liquid and gave birth to a hideous, destructive force: the clone..." "Then seeking more food, the deadly green tissue reached upward and entered the unsuspecting city..."
"Nothing could stop it...". And when it comes up from the sewers into a sink in the kitchen of Al’s Restaurant (on Michigan at Eighteenth), Mark Kenniston “…saw a creature or an organism of some sort there capable of dissolving human tissue…”! Then it flows back down the drain…. Leaving “…only a puddle of water and some clothes.”
The clone doesn’t like iodine solution, however. Or Harry’s, meat cleaver, which is in his hand throughout! It even starts absorbing the nutrients from building materials, and slowly starts to destroy the whole city! It's a pretty fun read, even though it is also a warning from the authors (from 1965!) about the dangers of the chemicals poisoning our environment! And, in this story, the danger eats people!!!
Moral of the story: Be careful what you pour down the drain!!!
Or you may find yourself at the wrong end of “…this pusillanimous fleck of gelatinous matter…”!
from the back cover: "One night, beneath the streets of the city, four ingredients found their way into the same collector box in the underground sewer system. There these ingredients - muriatic acid; trisodium phosphate; a bit of meat; and a fleck of silica gel - combined in a warm, seething liquid and gave birth to a hideous, destructive force: the clone..." "Then seeking more food, the deadly green tissue reached upward and entered the unsuspecting city..."
"Nothing could stop it...". And when it comes up from the sewers into a sink in the kitchen of Al’s Restaurant (on Michigan at Eighteenth), Mark Kenniston “…saw a creature or an organism of some sort there capable of dissolving human tissue…”! Then it flows back down the drain…. Leaving “…only a puddle of water and some clothes.”
The clone doesn’t like iodine solution, however. Or Harry’s, meat cleaver, which is in his hand throughout! It even starts absorbing the nutrients from building materials, and slowly starts to destroy the whole city! It's a pretty fun read, even though it is also a warning from the authors (from 1965!) about the dangers of the chemicals poisoning our environment! And, in this story, the danger eats people!!!
Moral of the story: Be careful what you pour down the drain!!!
Or you may find yourself at the wrong end of “…this pusillanimous fleck of gelatinous matter…”!
May 13, 2016
I picked up this book because it said it was co=written by Kate Wilhelm. However, I don't really sense her handprints on it much. Perhaps this Thomas fellow couldn't get published on his own? I'd be interested to know the back story here.
The Blob on steroids is the feel of this. A definite disaster book and of course many die but smart humans band together and prevail in the end.
The Blob on steroids is the feel of this. A definite disaster book and of course many die but smart humans band together and prevail in the end.
Want to read
November 13, 2011Stephen King recommended book. He says "short, but gruesomely effective" in Chapter 2 of Berkley's 1983 paperback edition of Danse Macabre.
May 19, 2023
I am now 63 and first read this whilst at school in probably 1972 or so. I have to thank my schools English Dept and the schools book club that opened my eyes and introduced me to books and then a number of great Sci-Fi books this being one of them (for those interested in the others check out "Earth Abides", by George C Stewart and "Inverted World", by Christopher Priest). It's a simple but fascinating idea considering the multitude of waste materials we tip down the sink or toilets, pour into rivers, dump in seas that this idea of an organism being created from our mess couldn't actually happen!
You certainly see lots of algal growth, etc in rivers that have been polluted.
This novel obviously wouldn't have influenced the making of "The Blob" as of course it came out after but did the film influence this book?
I'm not sure whether a movie has ever been made I hope it hasn't because leaving this type of read to your imagination is so much better than seeing a big lump of jelly coming up through the tap and then an actress screaming with melodramatic music in the background etc!!
Yes no doubt the writing is a bit clumsy and no doubt there's plenty of non-pc things going on that the writers wouldn't have even thought about back but it's fun!
It's a book I have read and re-read a number of times during my life probably once a decade and it's probably time for it to be re-read again along with Earth Abides etc!
You certainly see lots of algal growth, etc in rivers that have been polluted.
This novel obviously wouldn't have influenced the making of "The Blob" as of course it came out after but did the film influence this book?
I'm not sure whether a movie has ever been made I hope it hasn't because leaving this type of read to your imagination is so much better than seeing a big lump of jelly coming up through the tap and then an actress screaming with melodramatic music in the background etc!!
Yes no doubt the writing is a bit clumsy and no doubt there's plenty of non-pc things going on that the writers wouldn't have even thought about back but it's fun!
It's a book I have read and re-read a number of times during my life probably once a decade and it's probably time for it to be re-read again along with Earth Abides etc!
September 16, 2020
Un buon romanzo di fantascienza con alcune sfumature horror. La storia dal punto di vista della crescita del clone (anche se si chiama "clone" pur non essendo un clone di nessun organismo) è molto interessante e le varie reazioni della popolazione al disastro sono davvero interessanti, il tutto costellato da qualche scena con una buona costruzione della tensione. Purtroppo i protagonisti sono poco caratterizzati e ci sono alcuni personaggi con lo stesso nome (cosa che in un libro con così pochi personaggi non è accettabile). Il romanzo comunque risulta scorrevole e non ci sono particolari errori grammaticali o di battitura.
August 29, 2021
A nice short read, published in 1965 and a Nebula nominee. Not even in the same class as that years Nebula winner (Dune) but still enjoyable nonetheless. It could be described as "The Blob eats Chicago," and it was written after that 50's era sci fi horror film was made. In this instance, The Clone is not a creature from outer space, it is instead a product of the chemicals and waste mixed together underneath the city in the sewer system. It is action oriented, intended as horror, and while a product of its times, it describes human behavior that is timeless. I am glad I read it. 2.5 stars.
May 17, 2018
I read this in high school when it came out in 1965. I must have liked it a lot because I read it again a few months later. I didn't get to see THE BLOB movie (similar plot) but late one night when my parents weren't home I did see the cheesy CALTIKI: IMMORTAL MONSTER, another blobesque movie which scared the bejesus out of me.
September 22, 2018
Per quel che posso ricordare un affascinante romanzo di sopravvivenza ben scritto e di godibile lettura
April 11, 2020
The blob meets 60s and 70s disaster movies. Not good by any standard, but it was oddly entertaining to read about americans acting very american and becoming snacks for a blob with the munchies
October 3, 2020
Altro che Blob! Un classico da conoscere
November 2, 2020
60's monster movie fare, but a short, fun read.
November 17, 2020
A pretty good science fiction horror novel, but not as strong as the original short story.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews