The Mile-Long Spaceship, Kate Wilhelm

The Mile-Long Spaceship, Kate Wilhelm (1963)
Review by Joachim Boaz

Kate Wilhelm, famous for her Hugo-winning masterwork Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (1976), started her writing career with more modest works. The Mile-Long Spaceship collects some of her earliest short stories from the late 50s and a few written for the collection in the early 60s — Clone, her first novel, co-written with Theodore L Thomas would come out in 1965. However, her best sf was published in the late 60s to the mid-70s. Before then her work tended to be straight-forward with an occasional interesting idea or poignant scene but generally unremarkable….

Three stories are worth reading in this collection: an early work of feminist science fiction – ‘No Light in the Window’ (1963), a moody rumination on the claustrophobia of space travel – ‘The Man Without a Planet’ (1962), and an intriguing but underwhelming first contact story – ‘The Mile-Long Spaceship’ (1957).

Recommended for fans of Wilhelm who are curious about her earliest forays into the genre or those (like myself) who are obsessed with 50s + 60s sf. Less fanatical sf fans will be disappointed.

‘The Mile-Long Spaceship’ (1957): Telepathic alien explorers make mental contact (of the non-verbal kind) with an Earthman. Unfortunately, contact causes him to crash his car and end up in a hospital. In their moments of contact the telepaths “transport” him to a conjured mile-long spaceship. The aliens attempt to find out how to visit Earth by suggesting he watch various “films” on the “spaceship” in order for him to identify stars which might suggest Earth’s location. But the Earthman doesn’t have much interest in astronomy, and assumes his delusions are a result of his crash…. A slightly atmospheric tale — but lacking wonder.

‘Fear is a Cold Black’ (1963): Wilhelm’s take on sf/horror is a slightly claustrophobic tale but plods over old ground. An interstellar space cruiser is stricken with a mysterious illness after investigating an abandoned spaceship wreck. The passengers are transformed by their fear: “Giroden making plans for his funereal pyre, Perez creating an enemy to be destroyed, even poor Custens, the least imaginative man on the ship, theorizing that the thing traveled with the food, depriving himself of the sustenance hoping to forestall further spread” (p21). Soon, the true nature of the disease is discovered and the captain has to make a controversial decision to save the crew.

‘Jenny with Wings’ (1963): A downright silly fantasy installment better suited for the Romance sf subgenre — a girl born with wings is raised by her grandfather and scares off all the boys who fall for her when she reveals her wings. They either think she’s an angel and start praying or want to sell her to the circus for some quick cash. She gets word of a nice doctor who cares for others with strange abnormalities (for example, people who sleep underwater). Her doctor’s office visit is filled with sexual tension as the doctor inquires about her life and examines her. She admits she is not well versed in the ways of sex — the doctors reveals (well, in an early 60s manner) that there are other positions. When she flies off to meet her “love” she discovers his true intentions…. Thankfully, there’s someone who really understands her. And they fly off together. A single word comes to mind, “lame.”

‘A is for Automation’ (1959): A sinister tale that ultimately fails to deliver. An automated factory — whose brain center is named Sarah — creates robotic toys. A government inspection arrives to see whether the facility is safe, if it is there’s the possibility of a lucrative Defense Department contract. Old Man Mike, kept on the payroll for goodwill purposes alone due to the automated nature of the factory, detects some strange occurrences but no one believes him — one better not “teach” Sarah too much or “she” might try to reproduce…

‘Gift from the Stars’ (1958): An unscrupulous urban developed wants to get his grubby hands on an entire city block… Unfortunately for him an electronics store with ridiculously low prices is the only business that won’t leave. Mr Talbot is convinced the store is a front for a racket of some sort — he breaks his watch on purpose in order to get the opportunity to scout out the place — he discovers, a (wait for it), “gift from the stars”. A simple, predictable, alien presence on Earth type short story with similar theme to ‘The Mile-Long Spaceship’ — mankind is too stupid, self-centered, and ignorant for first contact.

‘No Light in the Window’ (1963): Easily the best story in the collection…. A thought-provoking work of early feminist social science fiction dealing with relevant themes — in this case, the ramifications of careers on marriage. Connie, a biochemist, and Hank, an astrophysicist are recently married. However, looming over their shoulder is the possibility that both of them will not be selected for one of the few positions on a colonizing spaceship. Hank is calm and convinced that he’ll be going along with his wife. However, Connie is convinced that she will not be going and struggles to digest the potential ramifications for her marriage. Surprisingly, she is selected for the mission and Hank is not….

‘One for the Road’ (1959): A commentary on cold war paranoia, which strangely retains the “scientists are idealists that wouldn’t dream of hurting others” narrative instead of complicating said narrative. The scientist remains guiltless while the public is simply a paranoid mob needing guidance. Massive riots spread across the world due to a badly edited radio broadcast that claimed that the radioactivity due to atomic testing overseen by scientists would cause most people to die from cancer (the proper context removed entirely from the broadcast). Of course, science comes to the rescue before the rioting gets out of hand. A story weakened by its naive message… Of course, when the true ramifications of nuclear testing became known to the American public such stories would be strangely out of place…

‘Andover and the Android’ (1963): Roger thinks women are “simpering females” and would never dream of getting married. However, if he doesn’t get married he won’t get promoted to the vice-presidency of a company. So, he marries a robot. And falls in love with her…. A satirical take on 50s/60s views of women — humorous but far too slapstick for my taste.

‘The Man Without a Planet’ (1962): The second best story in the collection — a moody, psychologically taught story about the strains of a lengthy space voyage to colonize Mars. And, as the crew feels the effects of close quarters, seat thirteen with its strange occupant casts an aura of unease. This dark and contained rumination hints at the heights reached by Wilhelm’s later masterpieces.

‘The Apostolic Travelers’ (1963): A satirical tale about immortality… The Longevity Board on Earth randomly grants a few individuals every year immortality — all the others on Earth can live a prescribed 250 years. Two Brothers (of the monkish variety) of rather dubious standing are selected to appear before the Board in order to become immortal. The true downside of immortality is revealed but the monks agree anyway so that they can convert others for the faith… So they’re supplied with a FTL spaceship in order to prevent the overpopulation of worlds (if everyone could be immortal…).

‘The Last Days of the Captain’ (1962): The idea behind ‘The Last Days of the Captain’ is far superior than the forced/unexciting/dry delivery — Captain Winters is attempting to move all the colonist on a planet to the evacuation extraction point due to a suspected alien invasion. He holds the planet-bound colonists in low esteem — as do all spacers. However, he becomes personally responsible for moving to the extraction point a colonist named Marilyn, who is unsure whether her son and husband will get to the extraction point in time. Eventually, he overcomes some of his prejudice against the simple folk of the farms.

This review originally appeared on Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations.

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, Kate Wilhelm

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, Kate Wilhelm (1976)
Review by Shannon Turlington

In this post-apocalyptic novel, civilization has been destroyed by some unspecified means involving environmental degradation, pandemics and famine. But one extended family, seeing the end coming, has used their wealth to isolate themselves in a well-protected valley and has constructed the hospital, labs and mill they will need to survive. Short on food, they develop cloning techniques to produce more livestock. When they find that most of them have become infertile, they start cloning themselves as well, with unforeseen consequences.

The story is told in three parts, each following a similar arc, each ending in a main character leaving the family’s compound. In the first section, a brilliant doctor helps develop the cloning process but is ousted by his own younger clones, who are already exhibiting disturbing behaviors; they appear to be losing their individual identities. In the second part, a clone is separated from her sister clones when she goes on an expedition to look for supplies in the ruined cities. As a result, she develops an individual personality and an artistic vision that the other clones interpret as madness when she returns to the compound. She must flee to keep from living a life as a drugged-up “breeder.” In the final section, her son is being raised by the clones but clearly doesn’t belong among them. Only he has the ingenuity and creativity necessary for continued survival as the machines and systems set up by the original survivalists begin to break down, and he leads a group out of the compound to start a new settlement.

What I thought about as I read this book was recent news stories about children so micro-managed by their “helicopter” parents that they have no ability to cope with the real world and break down as soon as they get to college. The young clones in the story reminded me of younger generations so coddled that they cannot make a decision on their own. How can we survive and advance as a species when we lose our individuality and cannot think for ourselves? is the question.

This is exactly the dilemma faced by the clones. They become so used to a life where they never have to think for themselves that they lose all of their creativity and problem-solving abilities. They become dependent on machines they don’t understand, and when those break down, they cannot come up with creative ways to fix them. So they are doomed. Only those who can establish an individual identity through isolation from the main group are able to learn how to survive.

It may seem on the surface that this novel is a somewhat dated horror story about cloning. But look deeper – the story brings up issues that are very relevant today. Wilhelm is raising a warning flag that we should safeguard our individuality and nurture our creativity if we want to survive.

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang won the Hugo Award in 1977 and was nominated for the Nebula Award.

Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang, Kate Wilhelm

Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang, Kate Wilhelm (1976)
Review by Larry Nolen

In my reviews of Samuel Delany’s Dhalgren and J.G. Ballard’s The Drowned World, I noted how in the 1960s and 1970s the New Wave of SF writers had begun focusing more on social, cultural, and environmental matters than had previous generations of SF writers. In her 1974 novel, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, American writer Kate Wilhelm tackles some of the same environmental issues that Ballard did in his 1962 work, except Wilhelm’s focuses more on the deleterious effects of human manipulations than Ballard’s depiction of humans as being hopelessly adrift in the face of environmental change. Wilhelm also explores the issue of human cloning, decades before Dolly the cloned sheep led to global knee-jerk reactions to the ethical nature of animal cloning. It is an interesting combination of two related issues, the effects of human nuclear testing on the environment and the consequences of creating a society of clones, a combination that works to some extent but perhaps lacks the power that such a contentious commingling should have achieved.

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang take place over several generations in an isolated part of the Shenandoah Valley along the Virginia-West Virginia border. A far-seeing wealthy individual, Grandfather Sumner, has spent years developing advanced biological technology in an isolated part of the United States as a way of preserving the human race from what he sees as a looming catastrophe caused by nuclear radiation destroying the protective atmospheric layers. The world at the time of the story’s opening has seen mass famines and extinction events seem set to occur as the radiation levels affect the ability of animals, including humans, to reproduce. Here is how Grandfather Sumner describes it to his grandson, David, who possesses much of the technological know-how that would be essential for ensuring the success of his grandfather’s plans to preserve the human race:

“I know the signs, David. The pollution’s catching up to us faster than anyone knows. There’s more radiation in the atmosphere than there’s been since Hiroshima – French tests, China’s tests. Leaks. God knows where all of it’s coming from. We reached zero population growth a couple of years ago, but, David, we were trying, and other nations are getting there too, and they aren’t trying. There’s famine in one-fourth of the world right now. Not ten years from now, not six months from now. The famines are here and they’ve been here for three, four years already, and they’re getting worse. There’re more diseases than there’s ever been since the good Lord sent the plagues to visit the Egyptians. And they’re plagues that we don’t know anything about.

“There’s more drought and more flooding that there’s ever been. England’s changing into a desert, the bogs and moors are drying up. Entire species of fish are gone, just damn gone, and in only a year or two. The anchovies are gone. The codfish industry is gone. The cod they are catching are diseased, unfit to use. There’s no fishing off the west coast of the Americas.

“Every damn protein crop on earth has some sort of blight that gets worse and worse. Corn blight. Wheat rust. Soybean blight. We’re restricting our exports of food now, and next year we’ll stop them altogether. We’re having shortages no one ever dreamed of. Tin, copper, aluminum, paper. Chlorine, by God! And what do you think will happen in the world when we suddenly can’t even purify our drinking water?” (pp. 13-14)

Grandfather Sumner’s dire predictions do come true. A super-plague, combined with the increased pace of the famines, droughts, and other environmental disasters, wipes out virtually all of the human race, except in isolated pockets such as the compound that the Sumners occupy. However, even those remnants suffer one last cruelty – all are now infertile, doomed to die unless they are able to reproduce themselves via clones. Yet there is no evidence than anyone outside of Grandfather Sumner planned ahead for this eventuality, so the human race, in the second generation of this tale, apparently is limited to a small stretch of the Appalachian region, where clones of most of the surviving family members are now being produced in vats.

Yet there are some unforeseen problems associated with this. Wilhelm does a good job in exploring the social climate that might develop if there were groups of vat-produced carbon copies of prior human selves. Would there be a true sense of self-identity? Or would the clones tend to view themselves as being parts of a whole rather than sharing in the evolutionary urges of traditional, sexually-produced humans? These are provocative questions, particularly during a time in which debates on the environment, particularly the nature vs. nurture argument of how to raise children, raged in the United States and in certain parts of Western Europe.

Wilhelm’s approach to these issues is to use an accidental, sexually-reproduced human boy, Mark, to illustrate the problems she saw inherent in a static society where all are viewed as parts of a larger whole. Doubtless to readers in the 1970s, the clone society, where sexual reproduction was discouraged, could be seen as a metaphor for the stifling control mechanisms in place in Communist regimes during that time. Today, however, such a connection might not be as readily apparent to younger readers who did not grow up in fear of the nefarious power of the Evil Empire. It is an interesting, if albeit quaint, discussion on matters of originality versus conformity, of freedom versus security.

Yet despite the intriguing setting, Wilhelm’s story lacks some of the power that it should have, considering the nature of the story. In reflecting back on my reactions to this story, I found myself feeling as though she rushed through large periods of time in order to create a narrative that could stretch three generations and yet be barely 250 pages in length. There are times where I was uncertain if she wanted to focus more on the environmental problems created by humans or on the consequences of having a clone society. This division of focus dampened my appreciation for the novel, in part because Wilhelm failed to integrate these vital components of her story as well as she could have done if she had taken just a bit more space to delve further into the connections between environment and human societal creation.

This is not to say that Wilhelm’s work is poor. It is a flawed work, yes, yet its flaws serve to underscore just how ambitious her story truly was, especially for the mid-1970s. It is not the most gracile of narratives, as outside of Mark, who is told more through the eyes of the clones rather than his own voice, the characterizations are mostly sketchy, due in part to narrative constraints. But behind the flaws lies a thought-provoking story, one that still has some power thirty-six years after its initial publication. While its power might be weakened from the flaws I mention above, it still contains a narrative force that is stronger than much of the SF produced then and afterward. Is it a true “Mistresswork”? That is a debatable question. Considering that it still feels relevant today, I would argue that yes, yes it is worthy of consideration of being a “Mistresswork,” but with the caveat that some of the narrative elements will feel quite dated today, particularly the metaphorical references to Communism. Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang deserves to be read by younger generations of SF readers, if only to see first-hand some of the concerns that Westerners in general had a generation or two ago in regards to the environment, how to raise children, and the worries about the insidious nature of Communism as Westerners tended to view that centralized system of government. It has its problems, but the rewards outweigh those deficiencies.

This review originally appeared on The SF and Fantasy Masterworks Reading Project.