Review of On Wings of Song by Thomas M. Disch

Based on how strong recency bias has become the past +/- 10 years in speculative fiction, I assume Thomas Disch has only a toe or two in society's collective awareness. Encyclopedias et al have room for everything, but I guess most modern readers' shelves do not have a Disch. Which is a shame. He is quietly one of the greatest science fiction writers of all time. Aware at the macro and micro levels, his fiction features living, breathing humans in existences spiced and peppered by sf devices. But that in itself is not enough to earn him a place in the science fiction pantheon. But what is, are the choices of subject matter and application of said devices—both perennial in nature. No book in Disch's ouevre may speak to this relevance better than On Wings of Song (1979).

Part speculative and part autobiographical, On Wings of Song may be Disch's magnum opus. While indeed speculative given the manner in which it envisions alternate borders within the US, as well as “flight” and penal technology, it's the manner in which it reflects the social, cultural, and political issues the US is still dealing with today that make it perennial. Published more than four decades ago, it often reads like a novel of 2023.

On Wings of Song tells the life story of Daniel Weinreb. While born in NYC, he moves to Iowa at a young age. The move significant, it takes him from a liberal government to a conservative one, the US having fragmented into political divisions that reflect the regions' economic strength, culture, and values. It means his dreams of flying—of using technology to separate mind from body and fly as a fairy over the world—are over. The conservative Iowan government does not allow such tech. While growing up middle class, Weinreb nevertheless finds himself in prison at an early age, wrongly accused of a friend's disappearance. He survives, however, and as he grows into adulthood finds his way back to NYC, a place where flight is legal. But achieving his dreams of one day flying require more courageous choices.

Having lived the life himself, Disch expertly utilizes the similarities and differences between life in Iowa and NYC. Realist rather than jaded, Disch does not seem to hold a grudge against either, each location having its own virtues and vices that help and hinder Daniel as he does that thing we all must to do: grow older.

Despite being published in 1979, On Wings of Song is remarkably a novel for the current, culture-war zeitgeist: a United States fragmented into conservative and liberal sides, with rural and urban areas representing the sides, respectively. Conversations, employment, social position, everyday life, friends—almost everything is jaded by politics and identity. Disch, as appropriate to the book's title, floats above the extremes, however, focusing instead on the individuals who populate his story. The “culture wars” provide backdrop and inform moments, but it's character mindsets, decisions, and actions which provide the substance.

If there is a nit to pick about the novel, it is the ending—the epilogue, in fact (no spoilers). An event transpires that is out of line with the realism of the novel to that point. There are reasonable arguments to be made for it. It fits the theatrics of Daniel's life. It makes the novel a proper “tragedy”. It provides the so-called climactic event such a novel may lack. All good arguments—the yin to the yang of why the event also doesn't feel at home. If Daniel's life was a warp and weft of organic flow, then the prologue is ripping the shuttlecock out of the loom. It does not deconstruct the entire novel, it does nevertheless jar turning the last few pages. That's all I will say.

In the end, On Wings of Song is Disch at his strongest. The diction is subtly precise. The story ebbs and flows at a pleasant pace. There is a deep-seated realism to the characters which lends the proceedings an integrity that the majority of science fiction lacks. And the ultimate substance, of a person finding his way through interesting stages of life, chasing a dream, is something to keep the pages turning. The little bits and pieces of science fiction, the speculative bits, are the frosting on the cake—unnecessary, but all the better for flavor. Disch's name is rarely mentioned these days, but the perennial nature of his novels, particular this novel's relevance to contemporary culture wars, means he remains worth reading today.