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A Canticle For Leibowitz

(St. Leibowitz #1)

Walter M. Miller Jr.

3.98 · Rating details · 100,298 ratings · 5,335 reviews

In a nightmarish ruined world slowly awakening to the light after sleeping in darkness, the infant rediscoveries of science are secretly nourished by cloistered monks dedicated to the study and preservation of the relics and writings of the blessed Saint Isaac Leibowitz. From here the story spans centuries of ignorance, violence, and barbarism, viewing through a sharp, sat ...more

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Paperback, 336 pages

Published November 10th 2020 by Orbit (first published October 1959)

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Dec 20, 2008 Manny rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

I'm not a Christian, but I live in a Christian society, and it's all around me. Reviewing on Goodreads brings home how many authors can be classified as some kind of Christian apologist. I have very different reactions to them. At one end, I can't stand most of C.S. Lewis - I feel he's there with his foot in the door trying to sell me something, and I'm just hoping that I can get him to take his foot away without being openly rude. At the opposite end, I think Dante is a genius, and that The Div ...more

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Oct 05, 2008 Stephen rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook, award-winner-hugo, post-apocalypse, easton-press, science-fiction, 1954-1969, books-about-books, comfort-food, award-nominee-hugo, world-in-the-shitter

Odd as it sounds, this is hot toddy, warm blanket comfort food for me. Admittedly, that’s not the typical description of this cynical, bleak-themed, post-apocalyptic SF classic. However, the easy, breezy style with which Miller explores his melancholy material manages to pluck smiles from me whenever I pick it up. This go around, I listened to the audio version which was recently released it was as mood brightening an experience as my previous read through.

Despite dealing with dark, somber subje ...more

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Sep 08, 2020 Kevin Kuhn rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

Quid enim mirabilius quam monachi in Apocalypse! I don’t know why, but there is something way cool about Monks in the Apocalypse. “A Canticle for Leibowitz” was published in 1959 and Walter M. Miller Jr. won the Hugo in 1961. It was a mainstream bestseller and, I believe, has remained continuously in print ever since. It’s not only considered a science-fiction classic, but also a literary masterpiece.

In 1959 the Cold War was heating up as Russia and the U.S. maneuvered for influence in Southeast Quid enim mirabilius quam monachi in Apocalypse! I don’t know why, but there is something way cool about Monks in the Apocalypse. “A Canticle for Leibowitz” was published in 1959 and Walter M. Miller Jr. won the Hugo in 1961. It was a mainstream bestseller and, I believe, has remained continuously in print ever since. It’s not only considered a science-fiction classic, but also a literary masterpiece.

In 1959 the Cold War was heating up as Russia and the U.S. maneuvered for influence in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. In 1954 the U.S. had completed the Castle Bravo test on Bikini Atoll with a hydrogen bomb that yielded 14.8 megatons. The Soviets followed in 1955 with a 1.6 megaton test. The capability for full mutual destruction wasn’t in place by 1959, but the two superpowers were racing towards it. Meanwhile, earlier during World War II, Walter M. Miller, Jr. flew on a bomber that helped demolish a 6th century Christian monastery at Monte Cassino, Italy, clearly a catalyst for the story.

This was a novel that grew over time. Miller first authored a short story, “A Canticle for Leibowitz” around 1954 which evolved into “Fiat Homo” and was published in 1955. He then published the second section in 1956 and wrote and published the third, “The Last Canticle” in 1957. The growth of the novel allowed Miller to develop a layered, intricate tale that is rich in theme.

The plot begins with Brother Francis on a vigil in the desert. The world has fallen into a new Dark Age. With the help of a mysterious Wanderer, he discovered a fallout shelter with preserved ancient documents from before the “Flame Deluge.” Some of the documents appear to be written by his order’s founder, Leibowitz. Brother Francis and his order attempt to have Leibowitz canonized due to establishment of the Order and his preservation of pre-war knowledge. The second part of the novel sees the ending of the Dark Ages and a Renaissance begins. In the backdrop of warring city states, the Order continues to preserve and study the Leibowitz knowledge and one Brother Kornhoer, develops a treadmill-powered electrical generator. In the third section, we jump forward in time significantly (around 600 years?) and mankind now has starships and colonies on distant worlds as well as nuclear weapons. A city-level nuclear attack occurs and much of the third section deals with the Order both sheltering refugees and preparing for potential nuclear annihilation. I’ll stop there to avoid spoilers.

This book is chocked full of themes and philosophy. It explores mankind’s tendency to rise and fall, the value and danger of scientific knowledge, the tension of Church and State, and other religious conflicts. Its use of a strange title, religious terminology, and extensive Latin passages throughout the book, help to give it solemnity and gravity. However, the novel also has its humorous moments and its most interesting characters are often comical and odd. Miller also dances around mysticism and outright miracles, leaving just enough ambiguity to allow the reader to interpret the incidents.

If this book has faults, they are subtle. As far as I can recall, there are only two significant female character in the book. Even if we allow that the Order is male only, there are no female characters discussed during the ‘palace intrigue’ of State leaders or in the nomadic tribes. It certainly doesn’t pass the Bechdel test. I also found it, despite being in the backdrop of nuclear apocalypse, somewhat emotionally stunted. Most dialog focused on the intellectual aspects of the themes and very rarely on the feelings of the characters. Finally, since characters do not continue on between sections, we need to reengage with new characters in each section. The backdrop, history, and setting are the same, but it’s a little problematic to trade in characters with each section. For me, this lack of feeling and character changeover made it difficult to engage emotionally with the story. However, it didn’t limit my ability to appreciate the witty dialog and intellectual arguments. Not that it’s anywhere near the first apocalyptic novel, but I do appreciate the realistic portrayal of a post-apocalyptic world, complete with the corresponding ignorance, politics, and horror of a fallen modern civilization.

An important, intricate, if detached, exploration of a post-nuclear-war world, seen though the eyes of an eclectic order of monks told over more than a thousand years. ...more

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Feb 07, 2012 Lyn rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Brilliant.

A centuries old story following the evolving world after an apocalypse and centered on the monks of St. Leibowitz, somewhere in the American southwest.

The monks keep ancient artifacts of science and technology. Funny, sad, brutal, irreverent at times, but doggedly hopeful in its underlying themes, this is a science fiction gem but really transcends the genre to make a greater statement.

Scholars and critics have explored the many themes encompassed in the novel, frequently focusing o ...more

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Nov 15, 2018 Glenn Russell added it · review of another edition

Captivating post-apocalyptic tale set in the Southwestern United States centuries following massive nuclear war that plunged the civilized world into a new dark age comparable to Europe's Early Middle Ages where nearly the entire population is illiterate and scattered in rustic tribes. And similar to those chaotic medieval years, Christian monks keep the flame of learning alive by copying and memorizing the contents of books.

A Canticle for Leibowitz is counted among the classic works of science ...more

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May 28, 2008 Ted rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Recommends it for: big fans of pap sci-fi

Shelves: modernfiction, apocalypse

I read this immediately following another well-known 1950s apocalyptic / nuclear holocaust novel "Alas, Babylon." That book, which I gave 4 stars to, was an excellent story and made no pretensions to literature; its prose was plain and transparent. The novel in question, "A Canticle for Leibowitz," turned out to be one of the most irritating kinds of genre sci-fi: one with ambitions to beauty and importance that falls far short of the mark.

Now, I hate to put it that way, because I would never cr ...more

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Mar 26, 2019 Susan Budd rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: english-literature-usa

What did the buzzards of Eden eat? If there even were buzzards in Eden. At least there will be no buzzards in Alpha Centauri. Unless the colonists bring buzzards with them ~ as Memento Mori. But it probably wouldn’t make a difference. After all, it didn’t the first time and it didn’t the second time. Should we be so naive as to think that there won’t be a third? That the colonists to other worlds will not repeat the mistakes of, not one past, but two?

Hope is a virtue whose meaning confounds me, ...more

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Apr 04, 2013 Stuart rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: religion, classic-sf, literature, humanistic-sf, post-apocalyptic

A Canticle for Leibowitz: Are we doomed to destroy ourselves time after time?
(Listened to the audiobook since so many readers disagreed with my view. Lengthy comments at Fantasy Literature)

This 1959 Hugo-winning SF classic is certainly an odd fish in the genre. It’s central character is the Order of Saint Leibowitz that survives after the nuclear holocaust (the Flame Deluge), and the story spans over a thousand years as humanity seems determined to repeat its mistakes and destroy itself over and ...more

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Feb 19, 2018 J.L. Sutton rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz is imaginative and thought-provoking. I enjoyed reading it and enjoyed it even more during a second go. While this work has very little in common with Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series (in terms of setting or character or even plot), I kept being reminded of Asimov's classic. Miller presents a primitive post apocalyptic world in which knowledge has been stowed away in a monastery (in what used to be Utah). This monastery might not be the far end of the uni ...more

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Jun 02, 2011 Apatt rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: pre-80s-sf, sci-fi

“Have we no choice but to play the Phoenix in an unending sequence of rise and fall?
Are we doomed to it, Lord, chained to the pendulum of our own mad clockwork, helpless to halt its swing?”

Looks like we are, at least according to Walter M. Miller Jr.

A Canticle for Leibowitz is a bona fide sci-fi classic, you'd be hard pressed to find a list of “all-time great sci-fi novels” without it. I remember being given a copy of this book in my teens when I was starting to become a serious sci-fi fan. I wa ...more

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Dec 06, 2011 Megan Baxter rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A Canticle for Leibowitz is Catholic science fiction, clearly written in the aftermath of Hiroshima and the shadow of the Cold War. It is mesmerizing, drawing on history and speculating on the future, focused around a small monastery in the American Southwest. It is also profoundly pessimistic about the fate of man and the inevitability of nuclear war.

Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the recent changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this d ...more

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Jun 12, 2011 Jan-Maat added it · review of another edition

Shelves: usa, 20th-century, novel, science-fiction

This is a story about humanity. It was born of the author's experiences taking part in the destruction of the monastery of Monte Cassino during WWII and the reasonable fear of nuclear annihilation that haunted many people for many years.

If in The Day of the Triffids there is a certain gladness on the part of the author that a society they didn't much like has been destroyed by a bright comet and wandering killer plants and now they can get on with rebuilding a new order much more to their own t This is a story about humanity. It was born of the author's experiences taking part in the destruction of the monastery of Monte Cassino during WWII and the reasonable fear of nuclear annihilation that haunted many people for many years.

If in The Day of the Triffids there is a certain gladness on the part of the author that a society they didn't much like has been destroyed by a bright comet and wandering killer plants and now they can get on with rebuilding a new order much more to their own taste, then in this book there is more a search through faith for forgiveness and meaning. Monte Cassino can be rebuilt in the author's imagination. A new order of monks can, will, must, repeat the Benedictine mission. There is absolution for the author. Man is sinful, God is love. God's love is so incomprehensibly generous that Grace is freely offered through the Catholic Church to the sinful creatures that can, will, must apparently, repeatedly destroy Monte Cassino.

Every age has its own fears. Miller's version of a nuclear war sufficiently destructive enough to end civilisation and create a few mutants but not so devastating as to end all life on the planet seems to me to be something that was only a prospect for a few brief years after the end of WWII. In that sense the story aged as rapidly as the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Perhaps the world turn upside down fantasies of J. G. Ballard or Brian Aldiss are better suited to our current situation when environmental change and the end of an oil economy offers the unenticing promise of an alien future.

This is a book born out of guilt and the threat of nuclear annihilation in the 50s. The book consists of three moments imagined by Miller from the future history of a world that has survived the above mentioned moderately destructive nuclear war. Each moment is a separate story, each taking place largely in the same monastery. Just as the Catholic Church survived the fall of the Roman Empire and played a role in the development of new polities and civilisations so we see over the course of three stories, each separated in time, the renewal or redevelopment of an increasingly sophisticated society. Essentially this is St.Augustine updated. The earthy Rome, the earthly city has fallen and will fall repeatedly because of man's inherent sinfulness, the city of God, however lives on offering the hope of Salvation. A hope which in the final story is to be offered out beyond our planet to other worlds.

Each story is centred on the monastery, and it's monks, who are devoted to the memory of Leibowitz, a figure so obscure that we never get to learn how he came to be regarded as holy. In the first story scraps from the pre-nuclear period are regarded as relics and a monk spends years creating an illuminated copy of a blueprint. By the time of the second story set hundreds of years later new nation states have emerged in what was the USA. Then in the final story complex technological states dominate the world which stands again on the brink of a catastrophic war.

While humanity in Miller's vision is stuck in a self-destructive cycle the Church continues to offer hope of redemption and freedom from the inherent sin that perpetuates the vicious circle. The centrality of the Church as only provider of salvation on Earth is underlined by the names of the Abbots, the first begins with an A the last with a Z. The church is the Alpha and Omega, Christ's earthly body. Possibly this is where the Wandering Jew comes in. He appears in each of the three stories. The story goes that the poor fellow was doomed to wander until the second coming of Christ. This event might be taking place at the end of the final story with the pregnant woman who seems to be something both of a Mary and an Eve - this is a very Christian and specifically pre-Vatican II Catholic post apocalyptic story.

I find this book less impressive each time I go back to it. Ideally I should have read it once and never seen it again. The chapter titles Fiat Homo, Fiat Lux, Fiat Voluntas Tua like the names of the abbots seem at first clever but like the B Sharps in The Simpsons episode the cleverness wears thin at a steady rate. And, yes, Fiat Lux (Let there be light) is the chapter in which the light bulb is rediscovered. There is also my unwarranted dislike of the fact that the monk in the first story faints so often. I'm not familiar with pre-Vatican II or US-Catholic culture so I'm sure a lot is passing me by - like the significance of the Wandering Jew (actually a reference that I find disturbing), or the use of Latin. But ultimately this is an extremely constrained and bleak vision. Although Monte Cassino is rebuilt by the earnest child, the mirthful toddler will knock the blocks down again, and again and again. The final story in a way makes this worse. Now not only is life on Earth a scratched record jumping back to the beginning, repeatedly but this same pattern is now going to be stamped on other worlds throughout the universe. ...more

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Nov 13, 2010 mark monday rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: after-the-fall, scifi-classic

bleak themes with a light touch. although not an easy book to get into, once i realized the effort was a worthy one, it became an increasingly absorbing read. the structure in particular was interesting, challenging - and distancing. novels with religion at their core are often absorbing to me personally, and this novel is all about the impact of religion on the building and rebuilding of society. i appreciated the humanist values and found myself agreeing with the at times progressive, other ti ...more

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May 01, 2015 Petra thinks angsty emails should stay as drafts rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2015-reviews, fiction, 2013-reviews, reviewed

I am very cross. This is yet another book that I rated and reviewed and has disappeared from my shelves. I wonder if it happened when some librarian decided to add series information to it and thereby change the title? If it is no. 1 in a series there has to be a no. 2. There isn't. It isn't a series. According to Wikipedia,

"A Canticle for Leibowitz is based on three short stories Miller contributed to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.[1][2] It is the only novel published by the author ...more

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Aug 25, 2012 Dave Schaafsma rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

“When mass murder's been answered with mass murder, rape with rape, hate with hate, there's no longer much meaning in asking whose ax is bloodier. Evil, on evil, piled on evil. Was there any justification for what they did—or was there?”

I first read A Canticle for Leibowitz in high school and may have read it again soon after finishing it. It was my way then with books I had heard were “deep” and that I didn’t fully understand. Like Steppenwolf, by Herman Hesse, which I read maybe three times m “When mass murder's been answered with mass murder, rape with rape, hate with hate, there's no longer much meaning in asking whose ax is bloodier. Evil, on evil, piled on evil. Was there any justification for what they did—or was there?”

I first read A Canticle for Leibowitz in high school and may have read it again soon after finishing it. It was my way then with books I had heard were “deep” and that I didn’t fully understand. Like Steppenwolf, by Herman Hesse, which I read maybe three times my senior year. Canticle is one of the great science fiction novels, considered a masterpiece of the genre, won the 1961 Hugo Award, and Walter Miller only published in addition to it a couple collections of stories in his lifetime. A sequel to Canticle was completed years after his death from a manuscript he had worked on for decades.

Canticle, which was published in 1959, is a compilation of three novellas Miller had published in a sci fi magazine. It focuses on three different but related stories set at an obscure abbey in the southwestern US some time after a nuclear war that eliminated most of the earth’s population. The Leibowitz Abbey was named for St. Leibowitz, whose fallout shelter the monks discovered near the abbey. In a box in that shelter the monks found shopping lists, illustrations of mechanical devices, and other trivia. They didn’t know what to make of it, but assumed it was important. They couldn’t read, or were just learning to decipher language in print.

Isaac Leibowitz had been a Jewish electrical engineer working for the US military. After the war, a massive campaign called The Simplification focused on the fact that education and the development of science and technology had helped create the Bomb, so deschooling, illiteracy, became the standard. Knowledge only leads to self-destruction, so simplify. Books were burned. Angry mobs blew up buildings housing cultural artifacts.

“Ignorance is king. Many would not profit by his abdication. Many enrich themselves by means of his dark monarchy. They are his Court, and in his name they defraud and govern, enrich themselves and perpetuate their power. Even literacy they fear, for the written word is another channel of communication that might cause their enemies to become united. Their weapons are keen-honed, and they use them with skill. They will press the battle upon the world when their interests are threatened, and the violence which follows will last until the structure of society as it now exists is leveled to rubble, and a new society emerges.”

Leibowitz joined the monastery to hide from the assault of ignorance, converted to Catholicism, and was eventually canonized as a saint, though the focus on his “writings” as relics makes the first part of the story at least seem like a satire. Why keep all this stuff? Why recopy it and deify it?

But this novel, I learned, came about because Miller had been a pilot who helped bomb the monastery at the Battle of Monte Cassino during World War II. He was all his life traumatized by having done this terrible thing. (Think of Kurt Vonnegut writing Slaughterhouse Five after participating, as a soldier, in the bombing of Dresden). Miller became a Catholic, and ultimately in the novel honors the Catholic Church for helping, through its monastic orders in particular, preserve important knowledge and culture across history. (Yes, eventually they save more than shopping lists.)

But Miller’s primary goal in the book is to address the question of nuclear annihilation. The second section, Let There Be Light, is set five centuries later where we see the reinvention of electricity, thanks to the monks saving documents and becoming literate. Knowledge matters. A hopeful section, overall.

The third section happens six centuries later, with nuclear energy and weapons present again, cyclical history, So The Church helped to preserve and advance knowledge, but will humankind use it to save itself?

“Listen, are we helpless? Are we doomed to do it again and again and again? Have we no choice but to play the Phoenix in an unending sequence of rise and fall? Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, Rome, the Empires of Charlemagne and the Turk: Ground to dust and plowed with salt. Spain, France, Britain, America—burned into the oblivion of the centuries. And again and again and again. Are we doomed to it, Lord, chained to the pendulum of our own mad clockwork, helpless to halt its swing? This time, it will swing us clean to oblivion.”

I found this a powerful post-apocalyptic or dystopian book about nuclear annihilation that takes a deep look at the present--the post WWII Atomic Bomb present in which it was written, and the present now with the saber-rattling of ignorant, anti-science, self-obsessed leaders around the world happening again. There are some compelling characters, but something I don’t like is that they are often unnamed, occupying categories such as The Poet, The Doctor, The Abbot, the Scholar, as if to make it clear this is a book of ideas more than human relationships, that the characters speaking reflect different aspects of human history and society, different approaches to meaning. Bakhtin said the best of novels work as a cultural forum, and that fits this novel, but these characters don’t come alive quite as effectively as they do in a book such as The Brother Karamazov (though that’s a pretty high bar, I’ll admit).

A good book to read now. The more popular anti-nuclear book of the period was Nevil Shute’s On the Beach, but this is better all around, Ultimately a great, great book that asks whether knowledge can ever be combined with wisdom. I am also reading the bleak Falter by Bill McKibben, and it would appear we are now bent on destroying the human race once again, but don't say we weren't warned. ...more

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May 01, 2011 Jennifer (formerly Eccentric Muse) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

ETA 09/03/13: Cloud Atlas to the reading path, below.

-----

I was conceived somewhere late summer/early fall of 1963, roundabout the time the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was signed by the US, UK and Soviet Union; close to a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis and about two months before JFK's assassination. There had been an earlier miscarriage, a child who would have been a year or so older than me.

I may have picked up, in the womb, an interest in the politics of that time. My father, in particular, ...more

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Jun 18, 2011 carol. rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it, sci-fi

Crazy complex, a meditation on humanity and civilization. Divided into three parts, the first after what seems to have been a nuclear war, the second partway into a time of political consolidation and the rise of nation-states, but also the rebirth of scholarship, and the third at a toe-to-toe arms face-off. There are threads that connect the three very disparate sections; the canticle for Leibowitz standing in for the concept of knowledge, the monastery devoted to knowledge preservation, a wild ...more

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Dec 21, 2016 Markus rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2016, dystopia, post-apocalyptic

This is essentially a book about knowledge.

What happens to the human life that survives beyond the destruction of the world?

In the ruins of what was once the United States of America, the Order of Saint Leibowitz works relentlessly to discover and preserve bits and pieces of knowledge from the time prior to the Flame Deluge. And when Brother Francis of Utah stumbles across a series of ancient writings by the holy Leibowitz himself, the discovery starts a chain of events that spans centuries of t This is essentially a book about knowledge.

What happens to the human life that survives beyond the destruction of the world?

In the ruins of what was once the United States of America, the Order of Saint Leibowitz works relentlessly to discover and preserve bits and pieces of knowledge from the time prior to the Flame Deluge. And when Brother Francis of Utah stumbles across a series of ancient writings by the holy Leibowitz himself, the discovery starts a chain of events that spans centuries of the creation and life of a new world…

A Canticle for Leibowitz is divided into three parts. The first follows the desperate search for the knowledge of a lost world. The second follows the rise and expansion of new kingdoms in a world coming out of the dark ages. The third takes mankind to the brink of annihilation once more.
Again, it is more than anything a book about knowledge. It follows the gathering and the use of knowledge after it has been lost. It explores the themes of truth, science, thought and religion, and in doing so becomes a postapocalyptic masterpiece.

And finally, Walter J. Miller’s description of the apocalypse must be the most gorgeous account of any horrible event ever written:

And the prince smote the cities of his enemies with the new fire, and for three days and nights did his great catapults and metal birds rain wrath upon them. Over each city a sun appeared and was brighter than the sun of heaven, and immediately that city withered and melted as wax under the torch, and the people thereof did stop in the streets and their skins smoked and they became as fagots thrown on the coals. And when the fury of the sun had faded, the city was in flames; and a great thunder came out of the sky, like the great battering-ram PIK-A-DON, to crush it utterly. Poisonous fumes fell over all the land, and the land was aglow by night with the afterfire and the curse of the afterfire which caused a scurf on the skin and made the hair to fall and the blood to die in the veins. ...more

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Dec 07, 2007 Ruth rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: dof-didnotfinish

I'd heard about this book for years. Finally decided now was the time. Turned out it wasn't. The beginning held my interest, although I did think the writing was a little self conscious. That got me through about 1/3 of the book. Then of a sudden, things shifted, and so did my attitude. Yawn. Skim. Skip. That got me through the 2nd 3rd. At that point I got wise. I am 75 years old. If I'm going to read even a portion of everything I want to read before I conk off, I can't afford to waste my time ...more

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Sep 01, 2017 Algernon (Darth Anyan) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2017

[9/10]

... for in those days, the Lord God had suffered the wise men to know the means by which the world itself might be destroyed ...
He also suffered them to know how it might be saved, and, as always, let them chose for themselves...

Walter M Miller published a single novel in his lifetime, so I guess he wanted to pour into it everything that was important in his life: his scientific training as an engineer, the trauma of destroying the ancient abbey of Monte Cassino from a bomber aircraft in ...more

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Aug 08, 2021 Gabrielle rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: dystopian, classics, read-in-2021, reviewed, own-a-copy, post-apocalypse, speculative-fiction, sci-fi

Catholic science-fiction about nuclear annihilation. OK, I definitely need to check this out, I thought, pulling it out of my husband’s grandmother’s enormous stash of sci-fi books. In a world where anti-science imbeciles are the reason I have barely left my apartment in 18 months (just get vaccinated, you filthy animals!), it was difficult not to cringe at times, reading a book about how a culture of anti-intellectualism effectively ruined everything. It is also fascinating to see that religion Catholic science-fiction about nuclear annihilation. OK, I definitely need to check this out, I thought, pulling it out of my husband’s grandmother’s enormous stash of sci-fi books. In a world where anti-science imbeciles are the reason I have barely left my apartment in 18 months (just get vaccinated, you filthy animals!), it was difficult not to cringe at times, reading a book about how a culture of anti-intellectualism effectively ruined everything. It is also fascinating to see that religion can be built around the most mundane silliness, which gets elevated to holiness because it’s not understood quite right.

I read a little bit about Mr. Miller, who used his experience as a soldier in WWII, his trauma and the way he was helped and sheltered by the monks of a Catholic monastery, as strong sources of inspiration for the three connected stories that make up “A Canticle for Leibowitz”. But there is quite a bit to unpack with this book.

Made of three novellas, each set about 600 years apart, this book describes a world where a nuclear war has destroyed most of our civilization and brought what's left of humanity back to an almost medieval society. But not everything has been lost: an engineer sought refuge with a religious community during the Simplification, when the uneducated masses blamed scientists for what had happened to humanity and destroyed all science and technology, and they have been keeping his documents safe for hundreds of years. Collectively known as the Memorabilia, those documents are preserved and copied by monks. Eventually, this knowledge will be brought back to light, and slowly but surely, humanity will rebuilt itself to a level closer to the one we are familiar with, but at what cost? And are the mistakes of the past bound to repeat themselves?

This book is an obvious product of Cold War anxiety, but it is also an very interesting thought-experiment on the cyclical nature of history, the way empires rise to glorious peaks of prosperity and sophisticated technology only to crumble, bring everyone back down to a miserable dark age, which is then followed by a slow rebuilt. Rinse and repeat. Miller seemed to think we were on the brink of tipping ourselves straight back into darkness, and alas, a quick look at current events makes it hard to disagree with him entirely. It is also a brilliantly realized post-apocalyptic story, and using the monastery devoted to St. Leibowitz as the central location that binds the three different stories together is absolutely genius. Little elements that may or may not be supernatural, thrown in for good measure, remind us that not matter how mundane our reality is, there is always a small element of the unexplained in life that we have to reconcile with our view of reality. The writing is strong, the pacing flows very well and the society imagined by Miller rings alarmingly believable.

Alas, like most Golden Age Sci-Fi, there are precious few coherent and meaningful female characters, and while I can admire the ideas, and the prose of a book like this one, this unevenness always bugs me a little. It takes over 200 pages for a female character to get a single line, and yes, I get that this isn't the point of this story, that an all-male monastery won't exactly be crawling with female characters... but it's impossible for me not to be in the least bit annoyed with this, hence the 4 stars instead of 5. I can't help but feel like, while Miller had a wild and rich imagination about what might happen post-nuclear disaster, his imagination was not rich enough to imagine what role women would play in that world, which bums me out.

Regardless, this is a fantastic and strong book, which is well deserving of it's classic status in the pantheon of science-fiction, and which completely deserved the Nebula it was awarded. ...more

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Jan 26, 2022 Lena rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Cruel, but realistic demonstration of the famous saying that we doomed to repeat our history. Apocalyptic chronicle shows the ugliest sides of society and human nature. If it wasn't so religious I would liked it even more. ...more

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Aug 20, 2018 Nick Borrelli rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Along with Hyperion, one of my all-time favorite SF books. It's a total crime that it wasn't included in Goodreads Top 50 Science-Fiction novels. ...more

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Apr 06, 2017 Maria rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A Canticle for Leibowitz is set in a post apocalyptic world where a nuclear holocaust has laid waste to the earth. In the aftermath, people burned books and renounced all scientific knowledge, which they saw as the root cause of the massive destruction they had to live through. The novel starts about 600 years after this incident, and follows the monks of a monastery in the Utah desert, as they strive to preserve what little scraps of writing that has survived from before the world was burned to ...more

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Apr 19, 2020 Joy D rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: war, classics-20th-century, religion, social-commentary, favorites, science-fiction, reviewed, 2020-top-50, survival, zck

“Listen, are we helpless? Are we doomed to do it again and again and again? Have we no choice but to play the Phoenix in an unending sequence of rise and fall?” – Walter M. Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz

This book is a trio of interrelated episodes, set hundreds of years apart. All are set in the Leibowitz Abbey, a monastery in the southwestern desert of what was formerly America. The first episode opens in the 26th century, 600 years after the Flame Deluge has wiped out most of civilizati “Listen, are we helpless? Are we doomed to do it again and again and again? Have we no choice but to play the Phoenix in an unending sequence of rise and fall?” – Walter M. Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz

This book is a trio of interrelated episodes, set hundreds of years apart. All are set in the Leibowitz Abbey, a monastery in the southwestern desert of what was formerly America. The first episode opens in the 26th century, 600 years after the Flame Deluge has wiped out most of civilization. The remaining people are largely illiterate. Some are deformed due to radiation fallout. The monks of the abbey, working by candlelight, are dedicated to preserving the written Memorabilia of the pre-apocalyptic society, which Leibowitz, a 20th century scientist, tried to preserve during the Flame Deluge. The book closes in the 38th century.

The narrative is filled with irony. For example, the monks carefully preserve documents that the reader will recognize as a shopping list, common circuit diagram, and portions of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. They cannot tell the trivial from the profound, so they preserve everything. The author explores the relationships among religion, scientific knowledge, and humankind’s violent inclinations. It is rich in symbolism, subject to a variety of interpretations, and can be read on many levels. There are theological, historical, literary, scientific, political, and ethical overtones, which may be analyzed or ignored depending on the reader’s inclinations.

Due to the subject matter, it will not come as a surprise that this book is not cheery, but the dark humor, irony, and tiny rays of hope help soften it. There are only a few women and children depicted, but when they appear, their impact is significant. The reader may want to keep a Latin translation tool handy. Published in 1959, it is obviously influenced by the Cold War era, but holds up remarkably well. It is thought-provoking, well written, and deserving of its status as a classic of apocalyptic science fiction. ...more

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Sep 09, 2015 Veronica Belmont rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: sword-and-laser, scifi, fiction

There are some books that are called "classics," but you don't really understand why until you read it and feel that you've been changed. You know, for certain, that even though the themes have been played again and again, that the story is as everlasting as the bricks in an ancient abbey.

I'll save the rest of my thoughts for the Sword & Laser recap, but I'm glad that we've also read The Sparrow as an interesting comparison on the themes in both. Fantastic book, even if you don't speak a lick o ...more

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Dec 20, 2011 Ted rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-20s, lit-american, sci-fi, classics, beach-fun-fiction, multiple-reads

An early classic in the post-nuclear holocaust genre. I have read the book two or three times in the last 50 years.

Miller was the prototypical one-hit wonder. Though he did write a lot of SF short stories before he published Canticle, he never wrote another novel.

But hey, if you only publish one novel, and it's like this one? Not bad at all.

I suppose I need to read it again, I can't really remember how it ends. Or maybe it doesn't really end, just fades away? Or returns endlessly. ...more

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Aug 02, 2009 K.D. Absolutely rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to K.D. by: 501 Must Read Books

Shelves: 501, dystopian, sci-fi, disaster, drama, post-apocalyptic

One of the best sci-fi that I've read so far.

A Canticle for Leibowitz is composed of three parts. In between each part is a period of 6 centuries. This reminded me of Roberto Bolano's 2666 (5 stars) that I recently read and found amazing. I am not sure whether Bolano got the idea from here but if it was a coincidence then there must be something happening around that time. Creepy. This first part, Fiat Homo or "Let There Be Man" happens 6 centuries from the 20th century. This book, the only one One of the best sci-fi that I've read so far.

A Canticle for Leibowitz is composed of three parts. In between each part is a period of 6 centuries. This reminded me of Roberto Bolano's 2666 (5 stars) that I recently read and found amazing. I am not sure whether Bolano got the idea from here but if it was a coincidence then there must be something happening around that time. Creepy. This first part, Fiat Homo or "Let There Be Man" happens 6 centuries from the 20th century. This book, the only one by Walter M. Miller, Jr, was first published in 1960. He used to be a aircraft pilot during World War II and was part of the Allied forces that bombed an ancient monastery in Italy. That experience inspired him to write this part of the novel. The main character in this part is Brother Francis who has found the entrance to the ancient fallout center of the mysterious order founded by the blessed Isaac Edward Leibowitz during the 20th century. Blessed Leibowitz used to work as an engineer before the nuclear war. Prior to hiding in that shelter, he founded the Order of Liebowitz whose main purpose was to preserve the religious artifacts that had become meaningless to men.

The second part, Fiat Lux or "Let There Be Light" happens after another 6 centuries or to be exact in 3174. The setting is in the same mysterious shelter now turned into an abbey where a brilliant engineer, Brother Kornhoer has just discovered a fancy but powerful lamp. The said lamp becomes the focal point for the inter-state wars involving religious fanatics that resulted to executions and excommunications. In the part, religion is back and plays a big role in running the state.

The third part, Fiat Voluntas Tua or "Let Your Will Be Done" happens after another 6 centuries or in 3781 to be exact. The nuclear war is back but this time the fight has moved outside Earth. The battle for supremacy between the two world's superpowers, Asian conglomerates called Asian Coalition (is Philippines part of this, no mention in the book) and Atlantic Confederacy. The shelter in the first that turned into an abbey in the second parts of this book still exists but it is ultra-modern and has more sophisticated weapons. In this part, the fight of dominion over how to rule the state between church and government reached its highest point and is resolved at the end of the story.

The stories are all mind-boggling and the telling is exceptionally brilliant. Well, compared to the other sci-fi novels that I've read so far. It is circular in pattern because of the re-appearance of some incidents or elements (like the nuclear war) or the issue on the separation between church and state. However, unlike "Finnegans Wake" by James Joyce or "Cloud Atlas" by David Mitchell, the story or the narration does not literally go back to where it started.

I enjoyed this book. If you can tolerate reading at least one sci-fi, go for this book. Definitely satisfying. ...more

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Sep 10, 2008 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to Jenny (Reading Envy) by: Bill H

Shelves: own, post-apocalypse-and-dystopia, read2012, league-extraordinary-dorks

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Before reviewing this book, I read a little bit about the back story as well as listening to the SFBRP episode that covers it. These helped a lot. I'd had this on my post-apocalyptic reading list for quite some time, but had the wrong impressions of the book.

1. I thought it was funny.
Well, there are a few little chuckly bits at the beginning, as you see the monks try to make sense of our culture, only found in fragments. Grocery lists take on great meaning, as do diagrams of circuitry. But the e Before reviewing this book, I read a little bit about the back story as well as listening to the SFBRP episode that covers it. These helped a lot. I'd had this on my post-apocalyptic reading list for quite some time, but had the wrong impressions of the book.

1. I thought it was funny.
Well, there are a few little chuckly bits at the beginning, as you see the monks try to make sense of our culture, only found in fragments. Grocery lists take on great meaning, as do diagrams of circuitry. But the end is dark, so dark, and the humor turns black. I was expecting more bagel humor! That's how it has always been sold to me in the past.

2. I thought it centered around the quest of some guy named Leibowitz.
Haha, not so much. Leibowitz is revered as the story begins, but has been long gone. Funny that a bunch of Christian monks are asking a guy named Leibowitz to intercede for them? Absolutely.

In fact, it doesn't center around one guy at all. This "novel" is really three short stories that tie together around the central mythology of Leibowitz and what used to be our world. The first story is just a few centuries after mass destruction by nuclear war. The second is a few more centuries, where a ruler has amassed forces, and some of the science is being recreated. The third is far, far into the future, where history is just about to repeat itself. With one creepy twist. Someone other than me will have to determine if this passes the Bechdel test (referring to the tomato woman).

From Walter M. Miller Jr.'s perspective, I can see how sending the message that history is going to repeat, and that we needed to TAKE HEED, was an important thing to do. I think he does this effectively. I keep reminding myself that this book comes over 20 years before The Stand, and 30 before Swan Song. Both of these novels are bleak and scary, but A Canticle for Leibowitz may be even scarier. A society that can't learn from its mistakes, and can't provide for its citizens anything more than regulated suicide? Maybe we deserve to die. ...more

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Mar 21, 2008 Werner rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Fans of serious science fiction

Recommended to Werner by: It was required reading for a course I took on science fiction

Shelves: science-fiction

Following the destruction of 20th-century civilization in a nuclear war, Jewish nuclear scientist Edward Isaac Leibowitz converted to Catholicism and founded a monastic order charged with salvaging the books that record humanity's heritage of literature and knowledge. Though the novel opens centuries after his death, his influence lingers throughout it, as the Order of Leibowitz fulfills its mission (like their monastic predecessors after the fall of the Roman Empire) to preserve written culture ...more

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About Walter M. Miller Jr.

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From the Wikipedia article, "Walter M. Miller, Jr.":

Miller was born in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Educated at the University of Tennessee and the University of Texas, he worked as an engineer. During World War II, he served in the Army Air Corps as a radioman and tail gunner, flying more than fifty bombing missions over Italy. He took part in the bombing of the Benedictine Abbey at Monte Cassino, From the Wikipedia article, "Walter M. Miller, Jr.":

Miller was born in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Educated at the University of Tennessee and the University of Texas, he worked as an engineer. During World War II, he served in the Army Air Corps as a radioman and tail gunner, flying more than fifty bombing missions over Italy. He took part in the bombing of the Benedictine Abbey at Monte Cassino, which proved a traumatic experience for him. Joe Haldeman reported that Miller "had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for 30 years before it had a name".

After the war, Miller converted to Catholicism. He married Anna Louise Becker in 1945, and they had four children. For several months in 1953 he lived with science-fiction writer Judith Merril, ex-wife of Frederik Pohl and a noted science-fiction author in her own right.

Between 1951 and 1957, Miller published over three dozen science fiction short stories, winning a Hugo Award in 1955 for the story "The Darfsteller". He also wrote scripts for the television show Captain Video in 1953. Late in the 1950s, Miller assembled a novel from three closely related novellas he had published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1955, 1956, and 1957. The novel, entitled A Canticle for Leibowitz, was published in 1959.

A Canticle for Leibowitz is a post-apocalyptic (post-holocaust) novel revolving around the canonisation of Saint Leibowitz and is considered a masterpiece of the genre. It won the 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel. The novel is also a powerful meditation on the cycles of world history and Roman Catholicism as a force of stability during history's dark times.

After the success of A Canticle for Leibowitz, Miller never published another new novel or story in his lifetime, although several compilations of Miller's earlier stories were issued in the 1960s and 1970s.

In Miller's later years, he became a recluse, avoiding contact with nearly everyone, including family members; he never allowed his literary agent, Don Congdon, to meet him. According to science fiction writer Terry Bisson, Miller struggled with depression during his later years, but had managed to nearly complete a 600-page manuscript for the sequel to Canticle before taking his own life with a gun in January 1996, shortly after his wife's death. The sequel, titled Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, was completed by Bisson and published in 1997. ...more

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“The closer men came to perfecting for themselves a paradise, the more impatient they became with it, and with themselves as well. They made a garden of pleasure, and became progressively more miserable with it as it grew in richness and power and beauty; for then, perhaps, it was easier to see something was missing in the garden, some tree or shrub that would not grow. When the world was in darkness and wretchedness, it could believe in perfection and yearn for it. But when the world became bright with reason and riches, it began to sense the narrowness of the needle's eye, and that rankled for a world no longer willing to believe or yearn.” — 117 likes

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