#92 Remaking humanity: Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (1976) by Kate Wilhelm

04/19/23 • 6 min

An expansion of her 1974 novella, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang is Kate Wilhelm's best-known work in the science fiction genre. Winner of three major awards for Best Novel in 1977, it is often called one of the most important SF novels to deal with the issue of cloning. This episode looks at how Wilhelm's scientific shortcomings are compensated for by her philosophical thoughtfulness.

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#91 “An action game like no other”: Oni (2001)

The anime-inspired third-person action game Oni is often thought of mainly as "Bungie's forgotten game". But in fact, this classic deserves to be recognised as something much more than just a footnote in the history of the studio that made Halo. This review does a dream dive into what makes Oni special, and makes the case that it should be a cult classic.

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#93 An enemy of the Culture: Consider Phlebas (1987) by Iain M. Banks

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Classic SF with Andy Johnson - #92 Remaking humanity: Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (1976) by Kate Wilhelm

Transcript

By the time that Kate Wilhelm died in March 2018, she was arguably best known as a writer of mystery novels. She had first come to prominence, though, through her science fiction and had a long career in that genre beginning in 1956. Her career in SF peaked in the 1970s, when she contributed to the long-running Orbit series of anthologies, and taught at the famous Clarion Workshop for aspiring SF and fantasy w