Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

I'm on a re-reading jag at the moment, and I've picked up Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by my favourite writer Kate Wilhelm, whom I have mentioned before.

It was first published in 1976, but though it was conceived 30 years ago, it seems more relevant now than it did then.

Science Fiction, as anyone who reads enough of it knows, is always "about" the present in which it is written, whether it is set in the future or not. Quite often, a writer will simply extrapolate or exaggerate present conditions in order to imagine a future. Such fiction is occasionally called Speculative Fiction, carrying the same SF acronym. I don't particularly care what you call it. You can call it Sci Fi if you want - it doesn't hurt me.

So it's interesting to think that WLtSBS was published in the year of the great UK drought, the year of Minister for Drought and bricks in the cistern. And of course, it came just 3 short years after the 1973 oil crises and the subsequent economic shenanigans, for which some African countries are still paying.

WLtSBS is primarily a novel about cloning, but it's also part of that rich subset of SF, the post-apocalyptic novel, so it's also about the conditions that lead a group of people to embark upon an experiment in human cloning.

Imagine, if you will, another drought like that in the summer of '76. Imagine the hosepipe bans, the water shortages, the messages about putting bricks in the toilet cistern and only using 3 inches of bath water. Imagine you have that, and then the next year: same thing. And the year after that. I doubt it would take even three years to bring us to the edge of a real crisis.

Add to the drought, or climate change, the spread of dangerous infections immune to modern antibiotics. MRSA etc. And Avian Flu, and all the other current threats, like increasing levels of infertility. Factor in a collapse in oil supplies, the resulting social breakdown (first the petrol stations close occasionally, then more often, and then forever), and you have the initial premise of WLtSBS.

Although everything I just wrote could be found in any daily newspaper at the moment, Wilhelm was imagining it all in 1975/6.

A closely knit family/clan decides, early on, to build a private hospital in a remote place, and as society collapses around them, the family repair to their valley to wait out the apocalypse. They blow a damn to flood the valley below and clear it of squatters. They build secret laboratories in caves beneath the hospital and start to clone animals and people.

They discover problems early on. Cloning works for 1,2,3 generations, but then defects begin to appear. But that's compensated by the return of fertility in the 3rd and subsequent generations. So they think they can clone for a few generations, and then get what start being called "breeders" back again.

But the cloned generations have different ideas. They share a connection and togetherness that the "naturals" don't have, and a schism forms in the society. One of the last 40-odd humans tries to destroy their experiments, but is caught and exiled.

And so it goes. It's interesting stuff, and it makes you think. I love her descriptions of forests growing to take over roads, rivers changing course, and nature generally taking over. She's a superb writer, which makes it all the more bewildering that her novels aren't easily found - you'll never find her in Waterstones, believe me. I've been looking for 30 years.

But the internet is a wonderful thing, and as such there's no excuse. WLtSBS should be required reading (especially for scientists and politicians), in the same vein as To Kill a Mockingbird.