Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang in Beyond Reality

Nov 23, 2009 Candiss rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, sff-masterworks, speculative-fiction, sf-mistressworks

I should have read Kate Wilhelm’s stellar Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang years ago. I had it in the back of my mind as a seminal work, a must-read, for just short of forever, yet I never found myself actually diving in to that first page. Then I won a copy through the Goodreads Firstreads contest, and I knew my time with this speculative classic had finally come. I received my copy, became flush with excitement…and reverently shelved the book, as I didn’t have the time and energy to do justice I should have read Kate Wilhelm’s stellar Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang years ago. I had it in the back of my mind as a seminal work, a must-read, for just short of forever, yet I never found myself actually diving in to that first page. Then I won a copy through the Goodreads Firstreads contest, and I knew my time with this speculative classic had finally come. I received my copy, became flush with excitement…and reverently shelved the book, as I didn’t have the time and energy to do justice to a story I’d been anticipating for so very long.

Finally, the time was right, so I pulled the book from my shelves and was immediately charmed by the story’s warmth and humanity. The first few chapters perfectly set the stage for what is to come, introducing the central family at a time when things are mostly normal, a time before the world began to disintegrate and life took on a thousand forms of adversity and complexity. I liked this family, appreciated their strong loyalties and values. I wanted things to go well for them.

But things do not go well, or at least not as planned. Ecological, economic, and environmental turmoil ensues, and the process is wholly believable to a modern reader. Wilhelm was remarkably prescient in her writing, and the book feels neither dated nor far-fetched in its allusions to these societal troubles. She writes as a realist, neither heavy-handed nor preachy. Yet she is unflinching in authenticity, and I was fully convinced that her future is not only plausible, but at least partially probable. This apocalypse makes a bang for the world at large, but in the microcosm of the world of the central family, the effect is more akin to a whisper spreading out through the generations, impossible to ignore, until finally it is the only sound left.

Lest I spoil anything essential, I will only circle around the novel’s plot beyond what is plainly told on a dust jacket synopsis. Due to the aforementioned worldly catastrophes, fertility is drastically impaired – both for animals and humans. One large, extended family, blessed both with resources and the ingenuity of a number of brilliant and resourceful individuals, devises a long-long-term plan to both allow the family to survive and to provide for the clan in the future. The result is the single most insightful, well-rounded, and horrific exploration of the wider implications of cloning I’ve ever encountered, (Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go included) as well as a true-ringing exploration of one family's struggle in a post-apocalyptic world. Labeling these people "tenacious" only scratches the surface of their character. I kept hearing Robert A. Heinlein in my head, chanting a litany: "Specialization is for insects." Indeed, specialization is what initially allows the family to survive, through their polymathic panoply of diversely-skilled members. But over time, an almost insect-like efficiency and homogeneity prevails and affords the family the strengths it needs to thrive. (Of course, as things tend to be cyclic in nature, what goes around comes around again...)

The book is organized into sections focusing on successive generations of the family, and each is at once more alien and more familiar than the last. Wilhelm is adept at engendering empathy in the reader, coaxing you to understand the motives and choices the family must employ, even when those paths seem unthinkable or distasteful. Whatever gets to you on a personal level - a young man struggling with unrequited or lost love, a young woman determined to be independent even at the expense of her heart, a father figure making hard decisions for his family, a woman wanting something better for her child, a boy striving to fit in yet be different, a woman afforded no rights, a scientist desperately seeking solutions, an artist seeing the world differently, a youth determined to make his own path in the world...selfish, selfless, self-sacrificing, self-centered - they're all here, and more. In fact, nearly every conceivable facet of "the self" can be found in the whole of the entity of "the family", filtered through thematic lenses of adaptation vs stagnation, conformity vs self-determination, tradition vs innovation. This is social/anthropological/archetypal science fiction at its absolute best, exploring with unclouded eyes the ability of humanity to endure through adaptation, through re-inventing itself as something new as many times as necessary, to discover, re-discover, and explore territory both new and old, and to finally emerge from its chrysalis reborn, yet perhaps even more fully human than ever.

I feel Kate Wilhelm has created an absolute classic of speculative literature which is tragically under-exposed. I was enormously enriched by this reading experience, and I know I will revisit this title again and again over the years, now that its seed has been sown in me. (In fact, it took me many weeks after reading to be able to fully express my thoughts, as well as to gain enough distance for an even marginally-objective review.) I enthusiastically recommend Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang to all fans of intelligent fiction. ...more

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Jan 26, 2018 Tomislav rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: ethical-society-sf-book-club, read-3-times, science-fiction

third read - 26 September 2022 - ****. An early example of the technological cloning of humans in speculative fiction is in Aldous Huxley’s 1931 novel Brave New World, where it is part of the overall dystopian world. The hazards and risks of human cloning have become a common trope in science fiction, and less commonly, there are also positive or indifferent portrayals. Kate Wilhelm’s Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang is a captivating short novel, but with bad science. Some slack in that regard is third read - 26 September 2022 - ****. An early example of the technological cloning of humans in speculative fiction is in Aldous Huxley’s 1931 novel Brave New World, where it is part of the overall dystopian world. The hazards and risks of human cloning have become a common trope in science fiction, and less commonly, there are also positive or indifferent portrayals. Kate Wilhelm’s Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang is a captivating short novel, but with bad science. Some slack in that regard is appropriate, because the novel was written some twenty years before even the first successful mammalian cloning (Dolly the sheep) was performed in 1996. The actual technique involves artificial creation of the fertilized egg, implanted in a living mother – rather than in an artificial placenta, as in the novel. Commercial cloning of livestock began in 2003. The mortality rate for cloned animals is higher than those born of natural processes, but loss of fertility in the repeatedly cloned organisms, while pivotal to the novel, is not actually reported. In fact, commercial cloning has been driven primarily for breeding purposes. The novel also supposes a minor degree of telepathy, and loss of creative intelligence among the cloned humans. This remains unevidenced speculation, and honestly that seems far-fetched even to 1976 sensibilities (I first read the novel when it was new).

However, it does set up the primary conceptual tension in the novel – a conflict between individuality and conformity. The inevitable conclusion stresses the importance of individual action to species survival. Wilhelm creates a handful of primary characters for the reader to identify with, and their stories are told descriptively and sympathetically. While the extreme phobias of the cloned people seem contrived, the sections describing passages through wildernesses unpopulated by human or even other higher organisms are poignant. Almost 50 years after it was written, this is a now beautifully told, but implausible story.

It is a winner of the Hugo and Locus Awards, and was also nominated for the Nebula Award in 1977. The novel is a 1976 expansion of Wilhelm’s award-nominated 1974 novella, of the same title, first published in Damon Knight’s Orbit 15 anthology. The author passed away in 2018.

second read - 4 November 1992 - ***. I was less impressed on this re-read, perhaps because the concept of apocalypse survival through cloning seemed less innovative by then.

first read - February 1978 - *****. I read this shortly after college, because it was the winner of the 1977 Hugo Award for best novel. ...more

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Aug 01, 2010 Marty rated it liked it

it's easy to read and interesting as you read it. But i found it ultimately unsatisfying. ...more

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Jan 20, 2010 Stephen rated it liked it

Shelves: multiple-award-nominee, award-nominee-nebula, award-nominee-hugo, award-nominee-locus, multiple-award-winners, audiobook, easton-press, sf-apocalyptic-and-post-apocalyptic, award-nominee-campbell, award-winner-hugo

3.5 stars. Well-written, well thought out post-apocalyptic science fiction story exploring the nature of individuality and what it means to be human. Worth reading.

Winner: Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction novel
Winner: Locus Award for Best Science Fiction novel
Nominee: Nebula Award for Best Science Fiction novel

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Sep 12, 2009 Frank Taranto rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

A superb post-apocalyptic story. It centers on one family, and their attempt to save the human race through cloning.
When the cloned children don't act the way their 'parents' expect them to, the conflict is set up.

...more

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