The Hugo Winners list contains an abundance of brilliance in speculative fiction, as well a veritable road map of the evolution of genre writing throughout the past half century. Looking at the list of the honorees, my biggest problem was choosing just one.

My favorite novel ever is Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game (winner, 1975), but our Sara Paige had that one covered and it therefore seemed foolish to tackle its sequel, Speaker for the Dead (winner, 1976). I could have re-read Heinlein’s revelatory Stranger in a Strange Land (winner, 1962) -- I mean, that one was important enough even to rate a mention in “We Didn’t Start the Fire” -- but our K. Burtt had already signed on to review his favorite, Starship Troopers (winner, 1960), so that might have been superfluous. Of course, there were Roger Zelazny’s … And Call Me Conrad (winner, 1966) and Lord of Light (winner, 1968), but after last month’s Zelazny Zealotry, that felt like overkill. Bujold adherent Kate Nagy decided on Paladin of Souls (winner, 2004) which meant the Hugo-earning Miles Vorkosigans were out (1991, 1992 and 1995); Cathy Thomson had Harry Potter in hand (winner, 2001 -- can you believe Goblet of Fire, of the entire series, was the one to win the Hugo?); and our Rachel Day was looking at Susanna Clarke’s much-praised Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (winner, 2005). So what was left for me? A Canticle for Leibowitz (1961)? Neuromancer (1985)? Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars books (1994, 1997)? Asimov (1973, 1983)? Arthur C. Clarke (1974, 1980)? Dune (1966)?

Of them all, many much beloved of me -- Cyteen! Ringworld! Not one but two David Brins! -- I decided to take a stab at a Best Novel I’d not yet read, nor even really heard of before: the Hugo winner of 1977, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm.

Great title, huh? I love a book that kicks off with a Shakespeare quote.

This is one of those books that takes you places you never quite imagined it might when first you picked it up. It starts off with a family holiday celebration at a farm in the Northeastern US, at a time perhaps not terribly removed from its date of publication. We meet young David, grumbling because the grown-ups are talking about him as though he’s invisible. We follow David to college, where he studies biology; we follow David as he confesses his love for, and to, his cousin Celia; and we follow David as the world goes MAD and is ravaged by plague, war and famine due to humanity’s carelessness with our environment… then suddenly every living thing is infertile and we’re talking about cloning.

The remainder of the book is kind of the Clone Civil Wars, with a happy few rebelling against dictatorial and ruthless groupthink rule. In addition, there’s a good deal of sexual morality shattering and uncomfortable taboo breaking -- that kind of thing was very popular with a certain type of female fictioneer in the 70’s -- and quite a lot of doomsaying and post-Apocalyptic tripping across the ruins of Western civilization that we, of course, brought on ourselves. But mostly it’s kind of a treatise on the value of individual liberties, almost an anti-Socialism manifesto, certainly a passionate argument against conformity. There’s also a decided Last Man on Earth feeling to it all, and quite a bit of What it Means to Be Human. You get the impression that author Kate Wilhelm is a very devout follower of Lord Baden-Powell.

It rains a lot.

This isn’t a long book, but it’s the kind that will stay with you long after the final page is turned. The questions it asks are often irksome and not a little daunting, and I’m not at all sure that I am equipped with adequate answers. And while it may, at first, seem alarmist and melodramatic in its warnings of the coming Apocalypse -- of a future in which genetic slavery will seem a viable mode of procreation and in which innovation will become increasingly rare -- when one really stops to think about it, as Wilhelm rather insists one must, hers is an all too likely vision of an all too possible future. We can only hope, if the time ever comes, that we too have a hero of the revolution as clever, and as canny a woodsman, as the one this novel delivers up.

A quick look at Kate Wilhelm’s Amazon page shows that she largely abandoned the genre after this successful outing and has subsequently made a home for herself in the world of legal thrillers and murder mysteries. (And yet I still hadn’t heard of her… weird.) I can only say that I think this is a tremendous shame. Not that When Late the Sweet Birds Sang is an untramelled delight -- incest is still icky, no matter what the circumstances -- but it is assuredly a book I am pleased to have read, one I am thrilled won itself a Hugo, and one that I have no hesitation in recommending.

And now I’ve decided that maybe learning a few woodland survival skills might not be the worst idea in the world, just in case of a sudden global breakdown, the like of which this book foretells. I wonder what the upper age limit is for the Girl Scouts? (And if I join, do I get free Thin Mints?)

  -- Rachel Hyland