Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
Cover of first edition (hardcover)
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| Author | Kate Wilhelm |
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| Cover artist | M. C. Escher |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction novel dystopian |
| Publisher | Harper & Row |
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Publication date
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1976 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 207 pp |
| Awards | Locus Award for Best Novel (1977) |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 1529187 |
| 813/.5/4 | |
| LC Class | PZ4.W678 Wh PS3573.I434 |
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang is a science fiction novel written by Kate Wilhelm, published in 1976. The novel is composed of three parts, "Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang," "Shenandoah," and "At the Still Point," and is set in a post-apocalyptic era, a concept popular among authors who took part in the New Wave Science Fiction movement in the 1960s.
Before the publication of Wilhelm's novel in 1976, part one of Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang was featured in the fifteenth edition of Orbit. Kate Wilhelm was a regular contributor to the Orbit anthology series, and assisted Damon Knight and other contributors with the anthology's editing. In its time, Orbit was known for publishing works of SF that differed from the mainstream of science fiction being published at the time.
The title of the book is a quotation from William Shakespeare's Sonnet 73.
The novel takes place in Virginia, somewhere near the Shenandoah River, and quickly establishes its plot line in a post-apocalyptic era. The collapse of civilization around the worlds resulted from massive environmental changes and global disease, which was attributed to large-scale pollution. With a range of members privileged by virtue of education and monetary resources, one large family founds an isolated community in an attempt to survive the still developing global disasters. As the death toll rises, mainly to disease and nuclear warfare, they discover that the human population left on earth is universally infertile. From cloning experiments conducted through the study of mice, the scientists in the small community theorize that the infertility might be reversed after multiple generations of cloning, and the family begins cloning themselves in an effort to survive. The assumption is that after a few generations of cloning, the people will be able to revert to traditional biological reproduction.
However, to the horror of the few surviving members of the original group, the clones who are finally coming of age reject the idea of sexual reproduction in favor of further cloning. The original members of the community, too old and outnumbered by the clones to resist, are forced to accept the new social order and the complications that arise.
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Wikipedia