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  • Published: 19 September 2012
  • ISBN: 9780141196428
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $26.00

The Purple Cloud



Strange, macabre and utterly unsettling: the first great science fiction work of the twentieth century

The Purple Cloud tells the grandly bleak story of Adam Jeffson: the first man to reach the North Pole and the last man left alive on earth. A sweet-smelling, deadly cloud of poisonous gas has devastated the world, and as Jeffson travels the stricken globe in search of human life, he slowly succumbs to madness, and unleashes fire and destruction on his planet. Dark, desolate and fantastical, The Purple Cloud was a pioneer in the genre of apocalyptic novels, and the first great science fiction work of the twentieth century.

  • Published: 19 September 2012
  • ISBN: 9780141196428
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $26.00

Other books in the series

Maldoror and Poems
On Sparta
Love
Annals
Military Dispatches

Also by M P Shiel

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Praise for The Purple Cloud

Fantastic, weird, macabre...imaginative, fascinating, convincing, as some dreadful nightmare...a remarkable piece of work...head and shoulders above the average tale of fantastic adventure

New York Times Book Review

Delivered with a skill and artistry falling little short of actual majesty

H P Lovecraft

The first great science fiction novel of the science fiction century

John Clute

One of the best last-man books, The Purple Cloud still surprises with its passionate despair and prescient scenes of mass extinction, motorcars, electrified billboards and telephone sex by undersea cable

Times Literary Supplement