"Kate Wilhelm's cautionary message comes through loud and clear."
New York Times

"The best novel about cloning written to date."Locus

"One of the best treatments of cloning in SF."New Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

When the first warm breeze of Doomsday came wafting over the Shenandoah Valley, the
Sumners were ready. Using their enormous wealth, the family had forged an isolated post
holocaust citadel. Their descendants would have everything they needed to raise food and
do the scientific research necessary for survival. But the family was soon plagued by sterility,
and the creation of clones offered the only answer. And that final pocket of human civilization
lost the very human spirit it was meant to preserve as man and mannequin turned on one
another.

Sweeping, dramatic, rich with humanity and rigorous in its science, Where Late the Sweet
Birds Sang is widely regarded as a high point of both humanistic and hard science fiction.
It won science fiction's Hugo Award and Locus Award on its first publication and is as compelling
today as it was then.