Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang in The Alternative Worlds

Dec 16, 2010 Sandi rated it liked it

Shelves: 2010, sci-fi, post-apocalyptic-dystopian

I think that Kate Wilhelm's Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang really needed to be longer. The scope of the novel is much too large for for its short length. (The audio version is about 11 minutes shy of 8 hours.) The story covers several "generations" and many decades.

I found Wilhelm's prose to be beautiful. Her descriptions of the Shenandoah Valley are richly detailed. She brings each season to life in the imagination with words. The problems I had with the story were mainly with the SF details. ...more

11 likes · Like · see review

Sep 06, 2011 Simon rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: sf-masterworks, sf

For me, this was one of those books you come to having heard starkly contrasting opinions about it, that leaves you with confused expectations and wondering what could be so divisive. But now, having finished it, I have to say I didn't find it divisive at all and am left wondering whether the book's harshest critics were even reading the same book.

This was great, well written, thought-provoking SF that explores one of the more interesting themes in SF; how important is individuality and how shou ...more

9 likes · Like · see review

Nov 26, 2007 Sarah rated it it was amazing

Shelves: sf, favorites, speculative-fiction

I first read this book when I was fourteen. I read all of Kate Wilhelm's sf novels that same year, and some of her mysteries. Since then, both book and author have always been on my list of favorites, but in truth, I had completely forgotten the actual content.
On reread a lifetime later, it absolutely stands up. The language is beautiful. The premise is haunting. It follows a small community of survivors of a slow global cataclysm, and the decisions they make to maintain their community. I can s ...more

7 likes · Like · see review

Oct 27, 2022 Kara Babcock rated it liked it

Shelves: post-apocalyptic, science-fiction, posthuman, 2022-read

Apparently a classic, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang was a parabolic story for me. In the beginning, I was intrigued. As the story went on, Kate Wilhelm started to lose me. I was less and less interested in the flaccid lives of these clones. Yet towards the end, my interest was piqued once more, and I started to understand what Wilhelm was trying to do with this book. While I wouldn’t go so far as to declare this a must-read for all, I understand why it has become regarded as a classic, particu Apparently a classic, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang was a parabolic story for me. In the beginning, I was intrigued. As the story went on, Kate Wilhelm started to lose me. I was less and less interested in the flaccid lives of these clones. Yet towards the end, my interest was piqued once more, and I started to understand what Wilhelm was trying to do with this book. While I wouldn’t go so far as to declare this a must-read for all, I understand why it has become regarded as a classic, particularly when discussing clone stories.

Set twenty minutes into the future, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang follows the descendants of a small group of people living in the Appalachians. However, instead of reproducing sexually, this group cloned themselves. A couple of generations later, the clones are trying to solve the copy-of-a-copy problem that tends to crop up in these situations; they are loath to continue using sexual reproduction to offset the degradation of their genes. But there is something more serious happening: as teams of clones begin to venture out of their home valley in search of supplies and information about this post-apocalyptic world, there are worrisome signs that these clones might be less resilient than original humans were. One teenage boy, the illicit sexual offspring of a clone who got a taste of independent thought, offers the key to their survival—if they are willing to take it.

Initially, I wasn’t buying into the hype. The setup felt very trite and obvious: so the clones don’t consider themselves the same species as their human progenitors. Big deal. Seen it before, doesn’t end well. But I kept going, and I’m glad I did. Wilhelm won me over eventually with her careful depiction of an insular and conservative society that ends up too fragile and stagnant for its own good. While this is a predictable result of their nature, the way she gets us there makes for a meditative and fulfilling read.

With the shift in narrative focus to Mark later in the book, we finally get to see a foil to the clones’ sameness. However, his youthful naivety means that he is a very flawed (if sympathetic) hero. I want to cheer for him, yet I also recognized as I was reading why he alone could not sway the clones onto a different path.

Ultimately, while Wilhelm’s story is grounded in the events of the time in which she was writing, the theme feels timeless. This book reminded me a lot of Parable of the Sower , which is not at all about clones but is about the downfall of society. In both books, the fall is happening in the background. Whereas Butler was concerned with chronicling how humans connect and form community during such a fall, Wilhelm instead wanted to look at what we might do to survive. Butler’s book concentrates on the human cost of living after the collapse of civilization; Wilhelm’s is about the cost of living without our humanity.

I wish I could say that neither book felt relevant now—but they both do. As I noted in my review of Parable of the Sower at the start of this year, Butler feels prescient in the worst possible way. While Wilhelm is not quite the same, she does capture, I think, the dangers of expecting technology to get us out of difficult social situations. This parable is meant more the techbros who follow people like Elon Musk, who wax poetic about longtermism and the idea that we can all upload ourselves to a utopian cloud hosted in a Dyson sphere. We won’t clone our way out of the fall of civilization—but I can easily imagine some blockchain-fuelled scam artist trying to convince people on Twitter that’s the solution.

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang did not wow me, didn’t floor me, but that is often the way of the classics for me. I can recognize its value and its power, and I am very glad that I read it.

Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter.

...more

2 likes · Like · see review

Dec 31, 2012 Nicky rated it it was ok

Shelves: speculative-fiction, dystopia, post-apocalyptic

I really wanted to like this book. Other people spoke so highly of it. But it felt so familiar: the themes, the characters (barely sketched out as they were), the whole setting... Parts of the writing are beautiful, but overall to me it felt too moralising, too typical. The idea that cloning will destroy individuality and thus creativity doesn't seem fresh -- though goodness knows, I haven't tried to work out the chronology of that idea: for all I know, Wilhelm was the first. It just didn't work ...more

4 likes · Like · see review

Jul 03, 2009 This Is Not The Michael You're Looking For rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science-fiction, hugo-award, fiction, locus-award, apocalyptic, 2013-wwe-challenge-women-in-sf

Written in the late 70's, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang starts with the impending collapse of civilization due to climate change, war, and disease (you know, pretty much all the things going on right now), and one large family's attempt to ride out the disaster. When fertility rates drop precipitously, the family turns to the only thing they can to keep humans alive...cloning. And this is where the story really gets interesting.

It's easy to see why this book won so many awards. It's an incredi ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Nov 24, 2008 H. R. rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, apocalpyse, fiction, authors_kate_wilhelm

Written 35 years ago, still fresh, arguably helped generate a subgenre of 'genetics end-of-the-world'. The basic premise of environmental catastrophie with a small group of survivors, doomsday preppers, using cloning to perpetuate humanity. Nancy Kress just riffed it with 2012's _after the fall, before fall, during the fall_. Meanwhile technology marches on, and Wilhelm's 70s theme of Infertility because of environmental damage seems more plausable now, thinking about a short story she wrote abo ...more

1 like · Like · see review