"Remember the voices of the trees”: The turn from technology in Kate Wilhelm’s Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang | Anne Maxwell

Summary: Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Anne Maxwell 1970s science fiction frequently featured environmental catastrophes of apocalyptic proportions as a starting point to imagine a better kind of society. My paper examines one such science-fiction work: Kate Wilhelm’s haunting novel Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (1976), which features the wide-scale implementation of cloning precisely in order to condemn the technologically dependent life style of late modernity. I argue that in the clones’ inability to display individuality, creativity and self-reliance, and the novel’s wilderness setting, we can discern more than just a dislike and distrust of science and technology; more even than a long-standing desire to reverse the process of deforestation that had started with the decision to open up the American west to settlement, and to stop the pollution of America’s soils and waterways by acid rain and release of toxic chemicals. For what this setting suggests is a deep nostalgia for the more organic, largely agrarian lifestyle that prevailed before the large-scale settlement of America. Anne Maxwell is a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Melbourne.