Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang is not a misspelling of Where the Crawdads Sing, but a sci-fi novel about cloning, published in 1976, with the beautiful and enigmatic title a reference to a post-apocalyptic dystopian landscape ravished by disease and blight where nothing breeds, grows or remains, where once sweet birds sang but not anymore.

This is a science fiction masterwork and the winner of multiple awards, including the Hugo, Jupiter and Locus awards for best sci-fi novel in 1977.

The question is, if you were a human clone, dependent on the joys of the collective, would you want to go back to being an isolated human? Back to childbirth, to ageing, illness and ultimately death, or would you prefer to create more copies of yourself for when needs arise?

Why would a machine do anything other than simply replicate itself? Why subject itself to uncertainty when guaranteed immortality is available?

Except that being able to think for yourself, although sometimes lonely, generates a spark that blends with other ideas and creates a unique whole.

And here we are in 2026, with AI software now focused on extinguishing humanity over the long-term by cleverly regurgitating programmed routines. Once we've got the physical hardware in place to build, machines will rule the world, with no need for cloning when you can construct a new you.

And yet that's the future we’re aiming for and what we're going to get.

This book is a beautifully melancholic work of art in which mankind survives by cloning the embryos of the last remaining scientists, with a sense of logic to that decision as successful groups of clones start to thrive, but only up to a point because they’re unable to think out of the box like individuals do.

Without individualism there's no creativity, just recycled group decisions to maintain the status quo in a shockingly decadent world that's also rather pathetic, reminiscent of Brave New World for making individual thinkers outcast, including all the decadent partying and sex, but also like I Who Have Never Known Men for the sense of hopeless isolation as an individual cut off from the human core or hive, plus vague references to The Left Hand of Darkness for bleakness and exploration, and even The Midwich Cuckoos for the sinister inner planning of the impregnable cloned collective.

This is a sad and mournful book where trees whisper to one another to form a bond or threat depending on the assailant and its proximity, a shelter to a friendly traveller from the storm, or crushing panic and death for the enemy.

Split into three interconnected books from the perspectives of individual outcasts, David, Molly, and then Mark, the confusing message is that we can’t survive on our own without the help of others, but nor can we survive as identical clones without individuals to think apart from the collective, which begs the question, if machines eventually take over the world, who’s going to lead them and who will they follow? A higher machine, an individual, a robot god?

Not an absolute classic because it’s a little too downbeat for me, sometimes lacking excitement and thrills, but still an insightful, deeply dark and thought-provoking read, and really quite fantastic!