Looking för en bok som liknar "The Blob"., Med namnet "The Clone" eller "Clone" tror jag?

Klonen , en 1965-roman av Theodore L. Thomas och Kate Wilhelm . Det är en utvidgning av Thomas novell med samma titel , som först publicerades i Fantastiska Science Fiction Stories , december 1959 och finns på Internetarkiv .

Från en recension av Algis Budrys på Galaxy Magazine , juni 1966 , tillgänglig på Internetarkiv :

One of the favorite pocket universes is the one in which nameless and overwhelming horror lurks behind every closet door and under every antimacassar. Some years ago, Theodore L. Thomas wrote a short story called "The Clone", which might very well have been called "The Thing from the Drain". He and Kate Wilhelm have now expanded this to a novel of the same title, and Berkley has published it.

The clone is a living organism which results from a chance combination of lifeless ingredients in the catch basin of a Chicago drain. By a perfectly believable combination of circumstances these various chemicals are warmed and nurtured to the point where a living cell begins to feed, react to stimuli and multiply. It then grows through the Chicago sewer system — and I am perfectly prepared to believe it has been there for years — chomping voraciously on everything it considers edible. Because its chemistry is somewhat different from ours, when it chomps on people, or, rather, absorbs them into its tissue, it rejects approximately seventy per cent of their water content.. Thus while these people and the reader dissolve, a freshet of slightly brackish water pours from the advancing line of clone tissue working its way through flesh and muscle, blood and bone, eating the animal-organic clothing worn by the unfortunate victim, rejecting such items as cotton. After a while, all that remains is a puddle of water with a T-shirt floating in it. When you translate this into a department storeful of victims, with the clone grown up to the point where it covers an area miles square, this becomes a flood, a cataract, a torrent of warmish, mineral laden water cascading down the stairways, escalators and elevator shafts, spilling out into the street and choking the gutters. As the clone consumes its food supply, it begins to hunt for new sources of energy and nutriment. It develops the ability to shoot pseudopods in all directions. It develops the ability to extract nourishment from materials it had previously disdained, such as the lath behind a plaster wall, and the various other organic material associated with building materials. As a result, not only people but buildings, and all the other accoutrements of normal civilization, begin to totter and dissolve into the green heaving mass of the insenate clone.

Jag har inte sett romanen, men i novellen är klonen verkligen allergisk mot jod:

The Pathologist had with him a cotton-stoppered bottle containing a small piece of living Clone. Talking over the radio with Army headquarters he explained all he had learned about the Clone: it was a living organism; it lived in the waste pipes under the city; it absorbed nitrogen-containing and calcium-containing matter at fantastic rates of speed; and, most important of all, a solution of iodine in water killed it.

Jag tror att det är Mutant 59: The Plastic Eaters (1971), av Kit Pedler och Gerry Davis.

(Gerry Davis har skrivit flera skript för Doctor Who , förresten). Jag inkluderar inte bilder av boken, eftersom det fanns flera utgåvor.

Jag vet att det var en av mina favoriter då. Det är ganska svårt sci-fi i moderna London, som beskriver vad-om-scenariot och dess effekt på staden / världen.

En förbittrad lone gammal forskare experimenterar i sitt hem med uppfödning av olika slag (av bakterier eller något jag tror), försöker göra något mer organiserat liv. Han lyckas äntligen med någonting och triumfens ögonblick är för mycket för honom och han blir död med någon hjärtslag jag tror. Han stannar bredvid labben sjunker i det ögonblicket, så Petri-skålen (?) Faller in i den och bryter, sen senare spolas den i stadens avlopp av en intet ont anande charlady.

Organismen kallas ständigt som "mutanten" och "klonen" i hela boken.

Huvudpersonen var en läkare, som samtidigt försökte navigera i den förlamade London och undvika / lära sig mer om klonen, krossade jodflaskan någonstans där den försökte förlängas.

Jag tyckte om det för att det i detalj beskriver de moderna kommunikationerna, avlopp etc, och hur och varför "klonen" verkligen kunde fungera.

länk

In the shaft leading to the [ventilation] grille a mindless, groping mass of malodorous corruption was thrusting its way silently towards the surface. Buoyed up by bubbling foam it steadily rose. Single units in an obscene abrogation of normal order divided and made two. Two became four and four, eight. Endlessly supplied with food, each unit absorbed nutrient and in a soft, ancient certainty fulfilled its only purpose - to multiply, to extend and to multiply... "

In the Coburg Street control room of the London Underground system,there was a full emergency... In a dozen tunnels, trains ground down to a halt. Hordes of terrified commuters made their way anxiously along dark, musty tunnels to the lights and safety of the next station. There were minor explosions, fires, and the failure of a million wires and cables. As the dissolution of plastic proceeded and accelerated in rate,the elegant order of the system gradually turned into complete chaos.

On the surface, in the freezing December air, the smell of the rotting plastic began to hang permanently in the air. A cloying, wet, rotting smell similar to the smell of long-dead flesh. It filled streets and homes, basements and factories. Traffic lights failed, causing irresolvable jams.... The breakdown of plastic spread into Broadcasting House.... A gas main with polypropylene seals on its pressure regulators erupted into flame.... Plastic cold-water pipes softened, ballooned, and burst, flooding into shops, homes, and restaurants. Slowly and inexorably, the rate of dissolution increased; failures occurred in increasing succession until, within forty-eight hours, the center of London had become a freezing chaos without light, heat, or communication.

Se även den här översynen från Quill och tangentbordet:

The central character is Luke Gerrard, a doctor working for a chemical company run by the scientist Arnold Kramer which has pioneered a plastic for bottles, Degron, which disintegrates after use.

Luke investigates what is happening to plastic components which appear to be failing. He is sent to to look at a robot that runs amok in a toy shop, and then at melting cables in a Tube tunnel, along with a journalist, Anne Kramer, wife of the magnate. Whilst they are down there there are series of catastrophic explosions in the underground which bring the centre of London to a halt. These are caused, we eventually learn, by Degron combining with a plastic eating virus, Mutant 59, which has accidentally been released into the sewer system.

The result is an organism which melts plastic, gives off gas, and spreads rapidly. The central part of the novel describes Luke and Anne’s exhausting trek to escape from the underground, and the desperate efforts of the government to stop the infection, which include imposing a military cordon that seals off much of central London. In the final part of the novel Arnold Kramer takes the infection onto a trans-Atlantic jet airliner which horrifically melts around the crew and passengers in mid-flight, while Luke succeeeds in finding an antidote to the virus at the eleventh hour (as they always do in such novels).