Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang in Beyond Reality

Apr 10, 2013 Bradley rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2016-shelf, sci-fi, dystopia-yes-pls, worldbuilding-sf

1977 Hugo winner for best novel.

We've got some serious competition out here for best dystopia, but what about the old SF classics that decided to do it first, and often better, than all the modern trash out here?

Sure, there's a seriously 70's vibe here, man, with all the deep concerns for community versus individuality, but it's not like we've really outgrown the issues. You can read the novel as a deep condemnation for conformity and group-think and the logical extremes of extroversion and as a 1977 Hugo winner for best novel.

We've got some serious competition out here for best dystopia, but what about the old SF classics that decided to do it first, and often better, than all the modern trash out here?

Sure, there's a seriously 70's vibe here, man, with all the deep concerns for community versus individuality, but it's not like we've really outgrown the issues. You can read the novel as a deep condemnation for conformity and group-think and the logical extremes of extroversion and as a reader identify with the introverted outcasts and their iconoclast talents, even if such things are considered, among most, as a euthanizable offence. Sound familiar, modern YA dystopia readers?

Well this isn't a YA novel, either. It starts out as a pretty horrific descent into chaos as the world turns sterile and plagues decimate the population, but fortunately, for the deeply optimistic and appreciated optimism of SF of the day, science comes to the rescue... with Clones! Cool, right?

Just think, an Army of Clones! I mean, it's such a classic idea, right? I mean, first Star Wars did it, and then everyone just... ooh... wait... I think I'm mixing up cause and effect here... Still, this novel isn't a war novel. If anything, it's a bit humorous watching a nature boy lead a bunch of cloned children through the forest to go on raids. Sure, the world has gone to hell, but Science Wins. I can't fault the optimism, and all of these characters are very well drawn.

We've taken free love into whole new territories, decided that art therapy can have seriously bad repercussions, and that individuals really out to be allowed to be, you know, individual. :) But I did find it just as fascinating to see how their society dealt with Extreme Communalism. :) Scary, too. The breeding farms were major-ick.

I would have been killed as a kid as a nonfunctional unit. :) They'd have expressed sympathy and all, but it doesn't change the fact that I'd be pasteurized.

This may not be my favorite SF novel ever, mind you, but I really enjoyed it. It didn't decide to be very dark and wallow in all the things that modern dystopias pride themselves on... like complete and utter hopelessness. :)

Definitely a worthwhile read. ...more

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Aug 03, 2021 Anthony rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: sf, nebula-nominees, locus-award-winners, 2021-popsugar-challenge, sf-group-2018, hugo-winners

I am baffled by the reputation this book enjoys. I found it to be a muddled, diffuse slog, and its central idea — that clones would not inherently be capable of any form of imagination or individuality — to be preposterous.

Ah well, on to more fulfilling books, I hope.

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Apr 07, 2011 Althea Ann rated it liked it · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I had read this before, but so long ago (early teens?) that I couldn't really remember it. I've liked other stories by Wilhelm, so decided to re-read. Starts off with a nicely promising apocalypse, but quickly becomes a story of oh-no-the-clones! They're not Human!

The (very thin) scientific premise is that individuality must be developed at an early age, and if a group of clones grows and develops together, they will fail to develop individuality (and associated traits like creativity, imaginat ...more

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

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

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 13, 2013 Helen French rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sffh

The world is heading towards some sort of apocalyptic meltdown. Populations are falling, animals and human alike, but one wealthy and extended family pulls together to survive the upcoming disaster. They build a laboratory/hospital near their home in a relatively secluded valley.

The book is split into three chunks - a different narrator for each - and we start with David, who helps assist with the first sets of human clones they create. But it soon becomes clear that there is something 'differen ...more

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Apr 16, 2020 Cheryl added it · review of another edition

Coulda sworn I read this while on GR. The green cover with the red band across the middle looks so familiar. Maybe I'll be able to make time to try it again for Lady Vaults May 2020. It should be avl. (at one of my online library sources) and pretty interesting, given the number of editions and different cover images that there have been.
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Lady Vaults group died, and I can't get a digital library copy of this. The more I read about it, the more familiar it seems, and I don't particul ...more

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