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''The Year of the Cloud'' is a 1970 ScienceFiction novel by Theodore L. Thomas (credited as "Ted Thomas") and Kate Wilhelm.
Scientists at an 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. 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.
Meanwhile, oceanographer Dr. Sam Brooks and his colleague Dr. Charlie Frazier 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 gel. With nothing to drink, no rain, no water to irrigate crops and the oceans slowly solidifying into a viscous glop, Brooks, Frazier 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.
This novel was Thomas and Wilhelm's second collaboration following the BlobMonster story ''Literature/TheClone''. The paperback edition was published by Playboy Press, one of ''Magazine/{{Playboy}}'''s more "[[IReadItForTheArticles legitimate]]" enterprises.
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!!Tropes used in this novel:
* ApocalypseHow: Class 4-5 Planetary Total Extinction of everything that requires water to survive unless the heroes find a way to turn the water back to normal. [[spoiler:They succeed, so the novel concludes with, at worst, a Class 1 Planetary Societal Disruption.]]
* ClosedCircle: Due to the ocean taking on the consistency of rubber cement, the characters end up stranded at sea aboared their ship, unable to return to port, completely cut off from civilization.
* CosmicHorrorStory: Of a sort. The cloud isn't a living organism with any agency, but there's nothing like a faceless, uncaring celestial phenomenon we can barely comprehend and whose effects upon our planet are utterly devastating to make mankind feel insignificant and powerless. [[spoiler:In fact, considering that Brooks and co. manages to undo the effects of the cloud and return Earth's water to normal, one could argue that ''The Year of the Cloud'' is Thomas and Wilhelm's middle finger to the very idea of CosmicHorror; humanity may be insignificant but it isn't powerless.]]
* CozyCatastrophe: Much of the story is spent aboard the private yacht, which is stuck at sea in the solidified water, with the characters getting drunk on the ship's prodigious supply of [[LuxuriousLiquor ritzy booze]]. This kind of takes the urgency out of Brooks' efforts to find a means of reversing the cloud's effects, robbing the story of some of its tension.
* NotSoHarmless: The cloud and what it does. The world's water turning into Jell-O may ''seem'' silly at first, but then your remember that solid water which cannot be melted into liquid form means no rain, meaning a potentially world-ending drought.
* WhatTheHellIsThatAccent: [[InsufferableGenius Dr. Yudkin]] is American, but because he thinks Americans expect smart people to have a foreign accent of some sort, he puts on a phony accent of indeterminate, vaguely "European" origin.
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Scientists at an 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. 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.
Meanwhile, oceanographer Dr. Sam Brooks and his colleague Dr. Charlie Frazier 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 gel. With nothing to drink, no rain, no water to irrigate crops and the oceans slowly solidifying into a viscous glop, Brooks, Frazier 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.
This novel was Thomas and Wilhelm's second collaboration following the BlobMonster story ''Literature/TheClone''. The paperback edition was published by Playboy Press, one of ''Magazine/{{Playboy}}'''s more "[[IReadItForTheArticles legitimate]]" enterprises.
----
!!Tropes used in this novel:
* ApocalypseHow: Class 4-5 Planetary Total Extinction of everything that requires water to survive unless the heroes find a way to turn the water back to normal. [[spoiler:They succeed, so the novel concludes with, at worst, a Class 1 Planetary Societal Disruption.]]
* ClosedCircle: Due to the ocean taking on the consistency of rubber cement, the characters end up stranded at sea aboared their ship, unable to return to port, completely cut off from civilization.
* CosmicHorrorStory: Of a sort. The cloud isn't a living organism with any agency, but there's nothing like a faceless, uncaring celestial phenomenon we can barely comprehend and whose effects upon our planet are utterly devastating to make mankind feel insignificant and powerless. [[spoiler:In fact, considering that Brooks and co. manages to undo the effects of the cloud and return Earth's water to normal, one could argue that ''The Year of the Cloud'' is Thomas and Wilhelm's middle finger to the very idea of CosmicHorror; humanity may be insignificant but it isn't powerless.]]
* CozyCatastrophe: Much of the story is spent aboard the private yacht, which is stuck at sea in the solidified water, with the characters getting drunk on the ship's prodigious supply of [[LuxuriousLiquor ritzy booze]]. This kind of takes the urgency out of Brooks' efforts to find a means of reversing the cloud's effects, robbing the story of some of its tension.
* NotSoHarmless: The cloud and what it does. The world's water turning into Jell-O may ''seem'' silly at first, but then your remember that solid water which cannot be melted into liquid form means no rain, meaning a potentially world-ending drought.
* WhatTheHellIsThatAccent: [[InsufferableGenius Dr. Yudkin]] is American, but because he thinks Americans expect smart people to have a foreign accent of some sort, he puts on a phony accent of indeterminate, vaguely "European" origin.
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