The answer to the question posed by GUEST at 08:20 is yes.

Fred Hoyle wrote not only the Black Cloud, but a couple of other novels, and also A for Andromeda for TV. This portrayed scientists as real people, Fred of course being both. It also put forward the idea that scientists could have lab assistants who looked like Julie Christie. Both the Black Cloud and A for Andromeda portray alien life forms which are very different from ourselves, so not unrelated to the original post.

Sadly, most of A for Andromeda is lost. There was a remake in 2006, but it was a pale shadow.

Fred Hoyle was really rather a fine writer. He was also a great scientist. Although his two headline ideas, steady state cosmology and the origin of life in comets have not stood the test of time, his work on stellar nucleosynthesis with the Burbidges and Fowler has, and is one of the cornerstones of modern astrophysics.