Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm
"Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang" is a science fiction novel by Kate Wilhelm that explores the themes of individuality, conformity, and the implications of cloning in a dystopian future. The story unfolds in three episodes, beginning with the character David Sumner, who conducts secret cloning experiments amidst an environmental catastrophe that leads to widespread sterility and epidemics. Following this disaster, a community of clones evolves, characterized by their physical identically and intuitive connections, as they reject traditional family structures in favor of communal living.
As the narrative progresses, individual members of this clone society begin to grapple with their identities and the limitations imposed by their conformist culture. Central to the plot is Molly, a female character who initially feels lost without her clone sisters but ultimately seeks individuality through her art. The story takes a turn with her son, Mark, who embodies both the potential for creativity and the threat to the established order. As the clone society begins to stagnate, Mark's unique talents become critical, leading him to challenge the community's rigid norms. His journey culminates in the establishment of a new society that embraces diversity, thus serving as a commentary on the value of individuality in a conformist world. The novel raises profound questions regarding the nature of humanity and the consequences of sacrificing individuality for the sake of community.
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Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
First published: 1976 (part 1 in Orbit 15, 1974)
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Science fiction—post-holocaust
Time of work: The 1970’s to the mid-twenty-first century
Locale: Rural Virginia
The Plot
Kate Wilhelm’s futuristic plot exaggerates the familiar conflict between an individual and the community by supplanting the nuclear family with sterile clans of six to ten physically identical, intuitively connected clones. With increasing force in each of three episodes, highly individualistic protagonists struggle first to understand their separateness and then to save the community.
In the first episode, as radiation pollution spreads blight, sterility, and epidemics throughout the world, young David Sumner pursues secret cloning research in his wealthy family’s isolated Virginia compound. Following an environmental holocaust, generations of Sumners, bonding in groups of six codependent, identical clones, create a happy, peaceful, and prolific community in a wholesome natural environment. They reject the original plan to return to sexual reproduction and nuclear families. David, in his old age, attempts to sabotage his whole cloning operation. When he fails, the clones sentence him to permanent exile, which is their version of capital punishment.
Years pass, and the expanded clone community sends six unrelated persons downriver to ravaged, uninhabited Washington, D.C., to map changed terrain and gather technical equipment. Separation from their clone groups individualizes members of the reconnaissance party, making them leaders or driving them mad. Molly, the sole woman, is the mapmaker. She is initially terrified without her sisters, but she returns to the community an aspiring artist who disturbs the others with her drawings and her desire for privacy in which to work. Exiled to the old Sumner mansion, where she happily paints, Molly takes as her lover a doctor who had shared the journey to Washington. After he is exiled, Molly gives birth and rears their son in secret to the age of five, when his uncles seize him and force Molly to join the breeders, the few women capable of conception. In the isolated breeders’ compound, Molly is drugged and artificially inseminated repeatedly for two years before she escapes for a brief final interlude with her son.
Molly’s son, Mark, becomes both the bane and the hope of the clones. An artist, a reader, and an expert camper, Mark thrives in the isolation with which the clones punish him for mischievously questioning their rigid conformity. When extended expeditions to the ruined cities require Mark’s unique skills in wood lore and orienteering, he acquires power that makes him dangerous. Meanwhile, growing generations of new clones exhibit a fatal absence of imagination and problem-solving skills. As leaders move to kill Mark, he escapes a group of young clones and ten breeders to create a new society, a simple farming colony in which all the children will be different.