"Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang" - Full Discussion *Spoilers*

[Sarah]

How was the book? Did people love it, hate it, meh? Let's hear about it.

[Cheryl]

I liked it more than I thought I would. But I'm not sure I think it's "important" or wise or provoking or whatever enough to be an award-winning classic.

First, I want to know, did anyone else feel that the themes resembled those of Ayn Rand?

[Kristin B.]

I also enjoyed it more than I thought it would. I probably wouldn't ever consider it a favorite, but it had some really interesting concepts that really stuck with me.

There were only two things I struggled with, but not to the point where I wanted to give up on the book. Trying to keep all the characters straight was quite a task. With all the original characters and then all the clone groups and who they originated from, I just couldn't keep track. Along the same lines, the time jumps made it difficult to figure out where I was in the narrative. The story would jump anywhere from days to years over the course of a paragraph or two.

It was interesting to see the change in main characters. First we followed David, then Molly and finally Mark. Most books follow one character through the entire story. Often this results in a choppy experience, but it was handled well here. Though I ended up wondering what became of David and Molly. We never did find out where they ended up.

I think I enjoyed Mark's section the most. The group feared him because he was different, but they needed him for that very reason. Mark embodied the dangers of valuing the individual. He was unpredictable and selfish, shown in how he responded to his relationship with Rose. On the other side, he also showed the benefits of the individual. He had talent and creativity that is lost with the clone groups. He was brave where they couldn't function with the unknown.

Overall, I'm glad I read the book. It was quick and had a satisfying conclusion. Definitely something I wouldn't have picked up on my own. Which is why I really love this group. It's been fun to branch out from my norm.

[Viv]

I'm not quite sure what to make of this book! I thought it did raise some interesting points about individuality vs community, but wasn't sure what the scientific explanation for the clones losing that ability was? Maybe I missed something somewhere along the line.

I really liked Mark as a character because he certainly wasn't your average hero - a lot of the time he acted like an immature jerk, and I thought that was pretty realistic.

I found the pacing of the book a little bid odd - the beginning felt rushed, the middle section too slow. I think this could have been a longer novel, which would have allowed a bit more exploration of the themes. For me, there was an overall eerie feel all the way through, which I liked.

I found the whole group sex incest thing a bit ewwwww though, I must admit. No wonder Mark freaked out when he found out about it!

[Sarah]

Viv wrote: "I found the whole group sex incest thing a bit ewwwww though, I must admit. No wonder Mark freaked out when he found out about it! ..."

Eww is a good way to put it. I was kind of horrified when I realized that was what was going on.

[Hank]

I had a hard time with the notion that the community was so insular that they had no outdoor skills and were actually afraid of it. There is no way a society could collapse and humans not be forced to live much closer to nature. Without some sort of non-city skills and the ability to live off a wide/large portion of land any group of people are doomed quickly.

I liked the whole notion that Mark the individual was much better due to his forced problem solving, but I wasn't buying the complete ineptitude of the clones.

[Cheryl]

Hank wrote: "I had a hard time with the notion that the community was so insular that they had no outdoor skills and were actually afraid of it. There is no way a society could collapse and humans not be forced..."

I agree, but I thought the author was making a distinction between the tamed (inherited) land of the farm and pasture, and the unknown wilderness. As a farm-bred girl myself, I know there's a big difference. To a child, even a copse of second-growth saplings is "the woods" and to go into them is thrilling.

[Kristin B.]

Viv wrote: "I found the whole group sex incest thing a bit ewwwww though, I must admit. No wonder Mark freaked out when he found out about it! ..."

This was definitely an awkward concept to swallow. However, if you think about the way the clones were raised it makes sense. They hid nothing from each other and were encouraged to be promiscuous in order to discover fertile members of the community. Incest was also the only choice, as family was all that was left. As much as the whole thing makes me personally uncomfortable, Mark's reaction to it in the circumstance was almost more out of place. We're taught through our upbringing what is morally right and what is morally wrong when it comes to sex and relationships. He grew up in a community where the group sex and incest was the norm. So being upset by it doesn't make as much sense. (On a personal level though, agreed. Ew.)

Cheryl wrote: Hank wrote: "I had a hard time with the notion that the community was so insular that they had no outdoor skills and were actually afraid of it. There is no way a society could collapse and humans not be forced..."

I agree, but I thought the author was making a distinction between the tamed (inherited) land of the farm and pasture, and the unknown wilderness. ..."

I had trouble with this as well. I can certainly see Cheryl's point about farmland being much different than untamed forest. I could certainly see how it would be unnerving. But, I did feel like it was taken a bit too far. To be so terrified by it that you are traumatized after a short walk. Or even so scared at night that you run around blindly, ultimately falling to your death. That seemed a bit much. It was a useful tool to illustrate the differences between the clones and Mark.

[Sarah]

I think they needed the safety of the herd and in the dark they would have felt alone, which they had never been before. Maybe something more like agoraphobia?

[Lena]

I went in expecting to like this selection, so I may be experiencing confirmation bias, but I really liked this book. I enjoyed the three-part story of David, Molly, and Mark which I thought was an interesting and clever device for telling a story over time. David saw a functioning collective as the solution for humanity and it was cool to see how the needs of society changed through those three characters. Molly was forced into individualism for the good of the collective and then rejected while her son, Mark, was revered AND feared for those very traits. I even liked the time jumps as it gave my imagination a good stretch. I did think Mark's reaction to the mat party was a little out of place, but probably because he was falling in love. Bottom line: I'm really glad I read this and it gave me a lot to think about. Another great selection. BZ.

[Valerie]

I really enjoyed this book. I have to admit, the cover put me off a bit. (Yes, I'm one of those). But, I was delighted. I feel like it aged well, but then, I am not a geneticist.

I really thought the concept was interesting. I love that the very planning that helped save humanity ended up being its greatest threat.

I didn't really have any issues with the group sex. To me sexuality was more of a basic function of comfort and affection. It wasn't that far fetched of an idea to me how this could evolve without the pressures of societal mores and judgement.

I did also question their lack of nature skills. I eventually resolved my mental conflict by categorizing this as another limitation of the specialized insular society that was created and that it was yet another flaw of the system. They developed their plan SO well, that it did not encourage deviation and the eventual result was that they ended up stifling the very exploration needed for long term survival.

Once again, I have to give this group props for introducing me to a great read.

[Sarah]

I totally agree about the cover :)

[Carol]

I generally enjoyed it. It's dated, of course, by the technology level at the beginning before the fall. I found it interesting in the light of current climate change concerns that this book has a rapid (relatively) onset of a cooling trend/incipient ice age once man is no longer polluting the atmosphere. The change is in the right direction, but from what I'm reading about our current situation, I think it would take longer to happen.

Ditto that I wished we were told what happened to David, Molly, and Ben.

I thought Mark's reaction to the group sex wasn't because it was group sex, but because HIS special person was being "unfaithful" and that it is revealed to him that she only kept coming to him because she was afraid of him. I agree that he was falling in love, and plainly she wasn't and that was what upset him so much. As an "individual" he is possessive, while the clones aren't.

As a biologist, I can't really explain why the clones would have lost only certain things over the generations. They lost fertility, which makes sense, but they should have lost overall viability as well. They continued to be strong and healthy, but lost creativity and inventiveness. That didn't make sense. There is a special connectedness between identical twins, including that they may have their own language when they're little. (See the movie "Nell"). Mostly this doesn't go very far in our society because they're surrounded by individuals who force them to interact as individuals. Wilhelm seems to be expanding on this twin effect, with these larger cohorts of clones who all grew up together and are genetically identical. It's plausible to me that they would really suffer if separated.

[Cheryl]

TY for a biologist's informed perspective. Interesting....

[Michael]

Carol wrote: "I thought Mark's reaction to the group sex wasn't because it was group sex, but because HIS special person was being "unfaithful" and that it is revealed to him that she only kept coming to him because she was afraid of him. I agree that he was falling in love, and plainly she wasn't and that was what upset him so much. As an "individual" he is possessive, while the clones aren't."

I agree. An adolescent who is coming of age and experiencing sex for the first time is very vulnerable. To have his "girlfriend's" sex life thrown in his face like that, basically as the two brothers laughed at him, seemed very traumatic and I would have run off to the woods if it were me, too.

I'm not sure the group sex was for fertility, though. The (sex) mats that each group of clones had in their room was for the brothers or sisters to experiment by themselves. There was no reproductive possibility for those sex activities. And the group thinking was they hoped to eliminate sexual reproduction entirely if possible. I thought she was just showing one way that sex relationships might evolve in a cloned multiples society.

[Michael]

I keep wavering between 3 and 4 stars for this one. Sarah Anne - can you tag this thread with the book, so that we can see the star ratings for everyone?

What I liked:

I thought the storytelling was magnificent – an almost calm, soothing writing style with very little info dumps and a lot of characterization through actions and interactions of the characters. I loved how she broke it into three parts and focused on a character in a different generation each time. In fact, that part was very powerful because it seemed like we were witnessing an iterative attempt to escape the cloning of conformity that was dooming them – each character gradually achieving more success. I cared about each main character (as well as a few others) and was invested in their fate.

The juxtaposition of very specific local setting against the ruined world at large was also very powerful. I got the sense of a tiny flower bud in a snowdrift or a desert landscape, struggling to survive. The interactions with nature highlighted how they were cutting themselves off even more from the surrounding environment/resources.

What I didn’t like:

The main theme seemed to be conformity vs. individuality, but doing this through cloning science seemed like a witch hunt to me. Did they really think clones were a different species in 1976? That seems hard to believe. They kept talking about them as non-human in the book. Do they not understanding that cloning means the exact same DNA?!? Certainly they had access to multiple birth data back then, even anecdotal data would show you that twins do not conform to each other and stifle individual thought! There might have been another explanation for their behavior, but if so it should have been mentioned and described. I don't think the science was too young: Brave New World did a much better job of describing the science of conformity and conditioning and it was written over 40 years ealier.

Also, the ending, while on the one hand a rousing endorsement of the survival of individuality and problem-solving, on the other hand was just as doomed as the other solution, but they acted like it wasn't. You can't continue the human species through reproduction from just 40 people. Does anyone know what the number has to be? And did they know that number in 1976??

[Michael]

Carol wrote: "As a biologist, I can't really explain why the clones would have lost only certain things over the generations. They lost fertility, which makes sense, but they should have lost overall viability as well. They continued to be strong and healthy, but lost creativity and inventiveness. That didn't make sense."

Can you shed any more light on this? Why would they have lost fertility? The book's thesis was actually the contrary - they started out with infertility and through cloning they were able to reestablish fertility. Clones are clones, why would anything change at all, besides whatever might occur during gestation? This didn't make any sense to me, unless they were implying it was something in the chemicals they were using in the vats.

A lot of the science details were vague, which allowed it to age a little better, but it also felt like you were not being told the whole story. It made it hard to connect the dots.

[Sarah]

Michael wrote: "Sarah Anne - can you tag this thread with the book, so that we can see the star ratings for everyone? ..."

It's fixed now. For some reason this particular book is being very finicky. This is the third time I've fixed one of the threads.

[Viv]

Michael wrote: "Carol wrote: "I thought Mark's reaction to the group sex wasn't because it was group sex, but because HIS special person was being "unfaithful" and that it is revealed to him that she only kept com..."

I got the impression that the group sex was not for fertility so much as a kind of bonding/stress relief thing?

[Sarah]

I did too

[Lena]

I think the functional purpose of free and open group sex is to identify breeders, which i found to be a particularly dark and upsetting theme.

[Michael]

Sarah Anne wrote: "It's fixed now."

Thanks!

[Michael]

Lenarae wrote: "I think the functional purpose of free and open group sex is to identify breeders, which i found to be a particularly dark and upsetting theme."

So, to clarify, I thought there were three things going on. First, the cloned -tuplets were having sex with each other, so that was all same sex and no possibility of reproduction. Second, they would have these festivals where singles or groups of sisters or brothers could put their bracelet on the opposite sex and have sex that way, sometimes just a pair, but more often group sex. This seemed like some kind of social ritual, although breeding may be one result. The third thing was when pregnancy occurred, where they identified a "breeder", either through the result of a festival, or the result of casual male-female sex that occurred outside the festivals. But, surprise surprise, this society is sexist, too, and only the woman gets tagged and goes to the barn to get doped up and become an incubation chamber for all the new babies they need.

This last part was quite disturbing, partly because the men were never labelled "breeders" and put in the barn as sperm donors, it was just the women and the men got away scot free. It was also disturbing because it was really against their nature. It seems to me that what they would have done instinctively is that the sisters would have stuck together as a family of sisters, and have the baby as a group. They would love and support the pregnant one like they did when one of their sisters returned from gathering supplies from the cities. Then, the child might not stay with them, it might get raised in the nursery or whatever, but the sisters would not get split up, and there would be no ritual of The Lost One or whatever.

Separating the pregnant one seemed "unnatural", and it also made no sense because they didn't actually use her reproductive ability. Instead, after the first baby, they just artificially implanted more clones in her, they didn't use her eggs at all. I guess the way they defined "fertility" might just apply to the ability to carry a child to term, but in that case it would make more sense to implant clones in all of the women and see which ones could carry to term. They don't need the new sperm-egg variations that come from sex reproduction if they are just going to use the women as clone incubators after that. I'm getting ill just sorting through this because it is such a treatment of women as livestock, it was unclear if it was all men that were deciding what to do about the pregnant women or if the women were also part of the decision-making...

[aPriL does feral sometimes]

I think Wilhelm wanted to provoke, so she concentrated her ideas into the plot, like Ayn Rand (I despise Rand, but I think Wilhelm was warning us against single-minded cultists who reduce people to five traits, like Rand, and declare those five traits the only things worthy). I did not think she put much into characterization or the science; and I think her pacing completely sucked. However, I liked the book's warnings about cults with single-minded ideas of saving Mankind.

Religious people are not the only kinds of folks who can become idealogues if they try to prune off all of the rough, troublesome 'bits' of humanity. This particular cult was a science cult of cloning, and it seemed to me they decided to fix all of that DNA they had decided was bad for Mankind based on the past. The problem of course, is what is YOUR defined 'evil', is MY joy or necessity (FGM).

These scientists were singularly myopic and concentrated about cloning, and as each generation took over, that generation was even more about cloning, as if there was nothing else of value to be attentive about - like weather, electricity, survival skills without electricity, but I think the DNA pruning was ongoing in each batch. They were driving towards a cul-de-sac, but they were blind to it.

In art, you have the picture in front of you, but there is also the unseen backstory. I think Wilhelm included an unseen backstory - the ecological disaster Mankind also caused. She refers to it, it is the reason for the cloning cult to build a fort of isolation - but it may be why these clones thought to remove the human out of their version of Human. They thought a simplified human meant controlled certainty, and it was. They were blaming the uncontrolled Darwinism of natural selection as the reason for humans' destruction of the environment.

The ending proved a simplified controlled human was a false trail, but Mark is simply a renewed 'Adam'. Eventually the uncontrolled 'selfish genes' of Mankind would run riot over the earth again! Will they get it right? Who knows.

[aPriL does feral sometimes]

The clones valued sex, I think, for the pleasure, but by the nature of the cult, only each other was safe for sex because it was among their copies, the approved versions of humans - themselves, and only themselves. BTW, every island culture indulges in incest, be it little islands in the South Seas or Afghan towns or the Middle Ages aristocracy or Mormon orthodoxy.

[Cheryl]

Michael, I found some ideas on a Straight Dope message board about how many ppl would be needed to breed a revival of the human race. Not sure, of course, of the accuracy of the information, but I find interesting, and true so far as I can understand with my limited prior knowledge, this :

"The Bounty left Tahiti for its Pitcairn Island quest in 1789. Accompanying the nine mutineers were 6 Polynesian men and 12 Polynesian women. Each of the Englishmen had a wife or female companion. It is uncertain which of the natives joined the Englishmen by choice. "

Of course, it immediately descended into a lot of murder and suicide in the first few years:

"The natives resented this unfair treatment, which caused relationships between the Englishmen and the Polynesians to deteriorate. The hostility increased when Jack William's wife died, and one of the Polynesians' consorts was "given" to Williams as a "replacement". Despite Fletcher Christian's efforts to maintain peace, the Polynesian men revolted against their English oppressors in 1794. Several mutineers were killed, among them Fletcher Christian. The revolt of the natives enraged the widows of the dead mutineers. To avenge their husbands' deaths, the Tahitian women killed the remaining Polynesian men. "

Sixty-one years later:

"By 1855, the population had grown to nearly 200, and the tiny island, with only 88 acres of flat land, could no longer sustain its people."


The message board thread, http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/s..., went on to talk about other considerations than just genetics, and there's also this: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/s.... "Blake" seems to be the most knowledgeable.

Carol, what do you think/ understand?

[Lena]

Michael wrote: "Lenarae wrote: "I think the functional purpose of free and open group sex is to identify breeders, which i found to be a particularly dark and upsetting theme."

So, to clarify, I thought there wer..."

Michael wrote: "Lenarae wrote: "I think the functional purpose of free and open group sex is to identify breeders, which i found to be a particularly dark and upsetting theme."

So, to clarify, I thought there wer..."

I agree. I thought it was distressing that the men weren't tagged as breeders. I also wondered if it wouldn't be better for the collective if the sisters all raised the babies together because, like you said, they were implanted with clones after sexually reproducing. It wasn't eggs they were after, it was a womb. I always find books that explore the idea of keeping women as chattel especially dark and (unfortunately) timely.

[Michael]

Cheryl wrote: "Michael, I found some ideas on a Straight Dope message board about how many ppl would be needed to breed a revival of the human race. Not sure, of course, of the accuracy of the information, but I ..."

Thank you, Cheryl!

Color me mistaken, I had no idea this was the case, and in fact some people on the thread claim humans could really survive starting from just two people! A comment on that thread led me to Wiki's page on the European Bison, which claims: "The modern herds are managed as two separate lines – one consisting of only Bison bonasus bonasus (all descended from only seven animals) and one consisting of all 12 ancestors... The total worldwide population is around 4,663 (including 2,701 free-ranging) and has been increasing"

Wow. Sexual reproduction really is adaptable. Down with clones!!

And that makes for a more satisfying ending for me, at least. I had figured they were as doomed as doomed could be.

[Cheryl]

Tx Michael... "all descended from seven (or twelve) ancestors." Interesting.

[Michael]

Okay, let's talk about David and Molly. More than one person has said they wished the author followed up on what happened to them later on in the book, and this surprised me a little, because I was pretty sure they both committed suicide. In fact, that is what I thought Kim's "To Be or Not To Be" thread was about (it isn't).

At the end of Part I, the colony basically gives David his 40 acres and a mule, and sends him down the river. However, "in the morning he continued south, leaving the cart behind, taking only enough food for the next few days... On the sixth day he reached the Wiston farm... The white oak tree that was his friend was the same... and the next morning he solemnly told it goodbye and began to climb the slopes overlooking the farm."

It ends with him sleeping under the antique forest, where birds sing only in his dream. Abandoning his supplies, saying a solemn goodbye to the tree that was his life companion, and lying down to rest, all seemed like preparation for dying to me. I assumed he would just waste away (or hang himself if he got impatient).

At the end of Part II, Molly decides to flee the colony on her own, not willing to suffer in the breeders' barn. She tells Mark she is going to look for his father, Ben, down the river to the Shenandoah, but when she heads off, the imagery tells a different story:

"All that night the trees whispered to her. When she awakened, she knew the trees had accepted her; they didn't stop their murmuring as they always had done in the past when she stirred about. Over and under and through their voices she could hear the voice of the river, still far off, and beyond it, she was certain she could Ben's voice, growing stronger as she hurried toward him... the voices of the river and the trees and Ben's voice blended as they called to her to hurry... He caught her and together they floated down, down into the cool, sweet water."

The fact that the last sequence sounded kind of hallucinogenic, coupled with her perception that she and Ben were going down, down into the water and not floating along on top of it implied to me that she drowned herself in the river.

I thought interpreting things this way had a nice kind of progression to it - the first noncomformist leaves unwillingly and dies, the second noncomformist leaves willingly this time and still dies, but after first planting the seed of a plan in her son, who then becomes the third noncomformist, who not only leaves willingly but also has a plan for survival.

That kind of leaves Ben's thread unresolved, though. He was supposed to be exiled at the base camp for future colonies. Do we know what happened to that camp?

I admit, the author is using a lot of suggestion instead of saying things outright here, which can be nice for stirring emotions and sounding poetic, but isn't so great if it makes it hard to know what is actually going on. Are people reading these sections differently than I am?

[Chris]

For me, this was an idea book; plot and characters felt OK at best.

Much has been said about individual vs. collective, but I saw that idea as part of a larger dialogue about comfort. The central problem with the community was that life had settled into a pattern that was easy and comfortable. Molly's and Mark's stories make the case that it's good to be uncomfortable from time to time. From a practical perspective, feeling unequal to the challenges (usually presented by nature in the novel) can motivate one to develop skills to be more competent. From an intellectual perspective, being uncomfortable can be a clue that one doesn't understand everything and needs to struggle with ideas that clash with what is currently accepted.

I think that Wilhelm was making a counterpoint to Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. Asimov's Foundation preserved knowledge from the dark age of the collapse of a galactic empire. Foundation treats knowledge as one dimensional — more vs. less — so more knowledge, in the hands of good people, is a good thing. Wilhem is saying that the real problem with the societal collapse is that people have become too interdependent. Looking at our own lives, we can see how many devices and tools and systems we use and rely upon everyday. How many of these could you make yourself? Could you at least figure out how to make what you need to survive? If what you do is so specialized that you are useless on your own, what are the prospects for a group of such people who have been severed from the systems that made use of all these specialties?

[Monica]

I just pulled this sentence from one of the versions of the book (2006 Trafalgar Square edition). Did anyone actually read this version of the book?

Sweeping, dramatic, rich with humanity & rigorous in its science, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang is widely regarded as a high point of both humanistic & hard SF, and won a Hugo Award & Locus Award on its first publication.

It must have been dramatically different than the version I read. In particular "rigorous in its science" gave me pause. I don't think I would classify this book as hard SF at all.

[Sarah]

I also stared at the "rigorous" part for a bit before reading the rest. :)

[aPriL does feral sometimes]

My book's blurb had rigorous accurate science as a book description too, which caused me to smirk often as I read. Obviously Mad Men at work.

[Scott]

I agree about the science not being clean or rigorous, but I also didn't worry about it. The science was used as a premise from which she was able to launch into the themes she wanted to explore. So I just accepted the premise and went with it.

What I liked about this book was that it was about cloning, but it was also not about cloning. By the end, I was less convinced this collective was a result of the science and breeding practices so much as a repeated distillation of the values the members thought they required for continuing survival.

[aPriL does feral sometimes]

Scott wrote: "I agree about the science not being clean or rigorous, but I also didn't worry about it. The science was used as a premise from which she was able to launch into the themes she wanted to explore. S..."

Kind of an unintentional 'Chinese Whispers game of accumulated errors. I agree.

[JW]

Lenarae wrote: "I went in expecting to like this selection, so I may be experiencing confirmation bias, but I really liked this book. I enjoyed the three-part story of David, Molly, and Mark which I thought was an..."

Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I like this technique of 3 separate protagonists to carry the story. And the fact that they completely drop out of the narrative once their work is done. I don't think Wilhelm executed it all that well, tbh, or that it was more than a device to push things along (sort of awkwardly). But I was trying to figure out if I've encountered that before, and I can't think of any examples. Think Wilhelm stumbled onto something cool there.

Now the rest of the book....

[Tessa]

I really enjoyed the book. I love the woods and appreciated the descriptions immensely. Those who saw Rand themes in this--a lot of older scifi liked to deal with this theme. For me, I saw a lot of similarities with Frank Herbert's hive theme books. Those I pretty much hated and consider a type of horror novel. This had its creepy moments, but I liked it and its main characters.

Did anyone else wonder if there really were voices in the woods? The clones were tapping into some type of paranormal senses; I wondered if they were sensing some sort of paranormal life in the forest, and it was so alien or hostile that it traumatized them. She never followed that thread though.

[Tessa]

Also, the group sex thing was also fairly recurrent in older scifi--Stranger in a strange land, again also Herbert, Silverberg, Le Guin. It was the alien nature of it, using nature as we know it in foreign ways. Note the description of the scene Mark encounters with writhing bodies--reminds us of snakes or zombies or bugs, etc. Not an unusual feature of scifi at all, and relatively mild when compared to, say, Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl's violence. IMO.

[Hank]

JW wrote: "Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I like this technique of 3 separate protagonists to carry the story."

A Canticle for Leibowitz is very similar. Three parts with three different narrators.

[Michael]

Also Hugh Howey's Wool.

[Michael]

Justin Cronin's The Passage?

[Monica]

Tessa wrote: "Also, the group sex thing was also fairly recurrent in older scifi--Stranger in a strange land, again also Herbert, Silverberg, Le Guin. It was the alien nature of it, using nature as we know it in..."

I've been processing this book through a type of historical lens. I've been trying to sync up what Wilhelm was trying to say with what was going on during the time the book was written. The "group sex thing" I of took as an expression of what was going on during that time. The 70s being the extension of the sexual revolution in the 60s with women becoming/striving for equality in all ways including sex. With the notion that sex can be pleasurable for all etc. I didn't see the scene as written as grotesque actually it was written with an odd sort of innocence. Not really intended to titillate, but a description of every day life in the commune. In contrast, the Wind Up Girl was absolutely (in my mind) grotesque, and frankly quite a cynical view of sex in general and the nature of man in particular. In a way, I think both Wilhelm and Baccigalupi had similar views on the future of mankind (as well as the nature of mankind), but perhaps Wilhelm's portrait comes across a lot less cynical though in both visions mankind is doomed.

[Tessa]

I agree with your assessment of Mark's innocence, and others' interpretation of Mark's reaction being due to his falling in love with her. Also, I think it would have been overwhelming for him, since he had always been excluded and isolated from that aspect of communal life. Although one wonders about that since he shared the room with Barry and his brothers...another contradiction.

The three protagonists added to the book, for me, and it has been used to good effect by many. Not at all unusual these days (Cloud Atlas won awards doing it).

[Cheryl]

oops, fell behind, sorry... to go back to Michael's quotes that support his understanding that David and Molly said good-bye permanently: spot-on. I'm embarrassed to admit that my hope for their respective futures caused me to read less carefully than I should have, but now I see that I was wrong. Thank you Michael.

[JW]

@Michael re: the fates of David and Molly (ie, suicide) -- that's a close reading, pretty convincing. Did others pick up on that? Geez, I think Wilhelm let her pen sing in those passages and I just zoned out on the message being conveyed. Probably need more literary fiction in my diet.

[JW]

@Hank @Michael. ahh, nothing new under the sun after all. Never read ACfL, should get on that. Wool, right. Good example.

[Tessa]

ACfL is not pleasant reading, just so you know.

[Hank]

JW wrote: "@Hank @Michael. ahh, nothing new under the sun after all. Never read ACfL, should get on that. Wool, right. Good example."

I keep thinking of that Barenaked Ladies song "It's all been done"

[Roberta]

Cheryl said "First, I want to know, did anyone else feel that the themes resembled those of Ayn Rand?" Rand's "Anthem" was heavily influenced by E. Zamyatin's "We"; as were Aldous Huxley and George Orwell. "Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang" includes similar ideas and their possible implications in a society environmentally devastated. Wilhelm writes poetically, presenting possibilities, exploring personalities within and outside of the Hive (similar to We and Brave New World);not scientific predictions.

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