History Literature / ThePurpleCloud

* FramingDevice: The book presents itself as the work of a {{seer|s}} who can look into the future and read as yet unpublished texts, as do two of Shiel's other novels, ''Literature/TheLastMiracle'' and ''Literature/TheLordOfTheSea''.

* Fiction500: Adam realises that this trope applies to him now that all other property owners are dead. He spends seventeen years constructing a massive palace of gold and jet with a self-replenishing lake of wine, and decorates the house with paintings he took from the Louvre.

* CatScare: Adam returns to his old home in London. While trying to navigate in the dark, he accidentally touches a body, and as he pulls back, he stumbles over a table. Then he hears the unearthly voice of his fiancée Clodagh say, 'Things being as they are in the matter of the death of Peter...' Adam flees the house in horror. The next morning he returns to the house and discovers what actually happened: someone was listening to a phonograph, which became stopped up when the cloud hit. Adam knocked the phonograph off the table and jolted it into playing for a few more seconds.

* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: The book takes place 'some fifteen or thirty years' into the future.

* TheCameo: Adam finds the corpse of Shiel's friend Arthur Machen, who was trying to complete his last poem when the cloud reached him. Adam thinks about how noble it was for him to keep writing even though no one except God would read his work.

* Fiction500: Adam realises that this trope applies to him now that all other property owners are dead. He spends seventeen years constructing a massive palace of gold and jet with a self-replenishing lake of wine, decorated with paintings he took from the Louvre.

* Fiction500: Adam realises that this trope applies to him now that all other property owners are dead. He spends seventeen years constructing a massive palace of gold and jet with a self-replenishing lake of wine.

* CrowdPanic: Adam learns from discarded newspapers that the cloud originated somewhere in the vicinity of New Zealand and expanded north and west at a rate of about four miles per hour, giving millions of people months to try to escape. In Norway and England, the bodies of Europeans are outnumbered by dark-skinned people who travelled thousands of miles before the cloud caught up with them. Docks and train stations in particular are completely clogged with people, some of whom were run over by trains trying to outrun the cloud. Adam also finds that some people tried to hide in blocked-off mines, only for panicked hordes to break down the barriers and let the cloud in.

* TearsOfJoy: After several years on the Arctic Ocean, Adam finally lands on a tiny, deserted northern island. Not yet knowing that everyone is dead, he sits down in the snow and cries from relief.

* CrowdPanic: Adam learns from discarded newspapers that the cloud originated somewhere in the vicinity of New Zealand and expanded north and west at a rate of about four miles per hour, giving millions of people months to try to escape. In Norway and England, the bodies of Europeans are outnumbered by dark-skinned people who travelled thousands of miles, only for the cloud to catch up with them. Docks and train stations in particular are completely clogged with people, some of whom were run over by trains trying to outrun the cloud. Adam also finds that some people tried to hide in blocked-off mines, only for panicked hordes to break down the barriers and let the cloud in.

* WhileRomeBurns: Most of the victims Adam finds on land died in a state of panic, except for a few people who died partying or writing poetry.

* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: The book takes place some fifteen or thirty years into the future.

* FramingDevice: The book presents itself as the work of a {{seer}}s who can look into the future and read as yet unpublished texts, as do two of Shiel's other novels, ''Literature/TheLastMiracle'' and ''Literature/TheLordOfTheSea''.

* DepopulationBomb: As Adam travels south, he finds increasing quantities of dead animals, mostly birds, scattered across the ice. He is greatly relieved to pass a shoal of porpoises, the only living mammals he's seen.

* FramingDevice: The book presents itself as the work of a {{seer}} who can look into the future and read as yet unpublished texts, as do two of Shiel's other novels, ''Literature/TheLastMiracle'' and ''Literature/TheLordOfTheSea''.

* DepopulationBomb: As Adam travels south, he finds increasing quantities of dead animals, mostly birds, scattered across the ice. Then he starts to encounter ghost ships full of corpses. He is greatly relieved to pass a shoal of porpoises, the only living mammals he's seen.