Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (1984) – Kate Wilhelm
Arrow | ISBN: 9780099148005
Condition: Good | Sold by Crappy Old Books

Humanity. A remarkably inventive species that has spent thousands of years developing agriculture, medicine, civilisation and increasingly sophisticated ways of destroying the very planet upon which its continued existence depends. Naturally, when environmental catastrophe and widespread infertility threaten to bring the whole enterprise to an undignified conclusion, somebody decides that the obvious solution is to manufacture replacement human beings.

What could possibly go wrong?

Welcome to Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, Kate Wilhelm’s haunting, intelligent and deeply unsettling science-fiction masterpiece, in which the survival of humanity becomes an exercise in genetic engineering, social conformity and the rather inconvenient question of what it actually means to be human.

As civilisation collapses under the combined pressures of environmental disaster, disease and reproductive failure, an isolated extended family retreats to a secluded valley, hoping to preserve something of the world that is disappearing around them.

Unfortunately, maintaining civilisation proves considerably more difficult when humanity has developed the unfortunate habit of being unable to reproduce.

The survivors turn to cloning, developing the technology to create genetically identical individuals who might provide a means of ensuring the species’ continuation.

At first, the results appear promising. The clones cooperate, share responsibilities and develop an exceptionally close collective identity. Compared with the quarrelsome, competitive and frequently irrational individuals who previously populated the Earth, they might even seem like an improvement.

Unfortunately, there is a small complication.

Individuality.

As successive generations emerge, the distinction between collective survival and personal freedom becomes increasingly troubling. The clones value conformity and shared identity, while independent thought begins to appear less like a human virtue and more like an unfortunate administrative defect.

Wilhelm explores the consequences with extraordinary psychological subtlety, examining memory, creativity, emotional independence and the delicate relationship between individuals and the societies that sustain them.

Her novel asks whether humanity can genuinely survive if the very qualities that make human beings distinctive are gradually eliminated in pursuit of efficiency and collective stability.

There is something magnificently ironic about saving civilisation by creating a population so perfectly cooperative that nobody possesses the necessary individuality to question whether civilisation is actually worth saving.

Originally published in 1976, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang won the Hugo and Locus Awards and has remained one of the most admired works of literary science fiction.

Unlike more conventional post-apocalyptic adventures, where civilisation’s collapse provides an excuse for endless gun battles and men wearing improbable quantities of leather, Wilhelm concentrates upon the intellectual and emotional consequences of humanity’s struggle to survive.

This 1984 Arrow edition, offered in Good condition by Crappy Old Books, is an excellent acquisition for admirers of thoughtful science fiction, dystopian literature and stories exploring genetic engineering, environmental collapse and the meaning of individuality.

A beautifully written, disturbing and profoundly human novel about survival, freedom and the dangers of sacrificing everything that makes life meaningful merely to ensure that life continues.

Because reproducing human beings in a laboratory might eventually prove relatively straightforward.

Reproducing imagination, independence, compassion and the stubborn determination to be different is another matter entirely.

And if humanity’s future depends upon everybody agreeing about absolutely everything, extinction might begin to look suspiciously like the more interesting option.

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