Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang is a science fiction novel by American writer Kate Wilhelm, published in 1976. The novel is composed of three parts, "Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang," "Shenandoah," and "At the Still Point," and is set in a post-apocalyptic era, a concept popular among authors who took part in the New Wave Science Fiction movement in the 1960s.Before the publication of Wilhelm's novel in 1976, part one of Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang was featured in the fifteenth edition of Orbit. Kate Wilhelm was a regular contributor to the Orbit anthology series, and assisted Damon Knight and other contributors with the anthology's editing. In its time, Orbit was known for publishing works of SF that differed from the mainstream of science fiction being published at the time.The title of the book is a quotation from William Shakespeare's Sonnet 73.