A Canticle for Leibowitz (Bantam Spectra Book) [Mass Market Paperback]

Canticle is one of the best post-holocaust stories ever written. Told in three separate sections that were originally published as separate stories, it details a post-nuclear war society where (once more) the Catholic church has become the repository for what little learning there still is, complete with monk scribes happily copying by hand the few remaining books. But at least for the first section of the book, the scribes don't understand what they're copying. When they uncover some ancient relics of Saint Leibowitz (a twentieth century engineer who tried to stop the book burnings and other atrocities) they end up enshrining one of his grocery lists and venerate a common blue-print as rare and sacred. Later portions of the book detail the resurgence of science, fueled by the church's repositories of knowledge, but as becomes increasingly obvious as you go further in the book, there is still no change in mankind's basic human nature, and war enters the picture again (and again) - covering almost a two-thousand year span.

There is a large amount of ironical humor suffused throughout this book, which makes its prime message that man is doomed to continuously repeat his mistakes, leavened only by the love of a distant God, much easier to take. In many ways this book is a hard look at both the ultimate value of religion and at basic human nature, couched alongside some heavy symbolism (the Wandering Jew makes multiple appearances) and some very sharp satire. The story itself is told with such emotional power that I found myself both plumbing the depths of despair and laughing uproariously, while the moral and ethical questions raised kept poking sharp daggers into my under-brain, just waiting for the chance to come to the fore of my consciousness and force me to re-live this book again and again.

Within each section of the book, characterization is excellent, from the young initiate Francis in the first section to the Caesar-like Hannegan and Brother Taddeo of the middle section to Abbot Zerchi of the final section. But the very fact that it is told as three separate stories leads to a little disjointedness, as the characters you have come to know and love in one section disappear in the next and a whole new set make their appearance. The unifying force between these sections is obviously the church, the one constant across all the years, and this provides the foundation for not only the story, but a framework for all the philosophical questions to reverberate against. Questions of is man inherently evil, what role God should play in an individual's life and his surrounding society, when does pride become hubris, what constitutes sin and can an earthly representative of God truly provide forgiveness, why do good deeds so often seem to lead to bad consequences, and many more. Miller does not really provide any answers to these questions - nor should he, as these questions are really only answerable at the individual level, but his story provides some powerful illumination of these questions, and his ending does leave some room for possibly the most enduring of human emotions, hope.

This book is what science fiction should be, a book that enlightens what the human condition is within a context of an all-too believable future world, literate and profound without hammering the reader on the head. Winner of the 1961 Hugo award, it clearly out-classed all the other contenders for that year, and ranks as one of the best the field has to offer.

--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)

I don't usually give books 5 stars so you'll understand that I thought this book to be exceptional. Yet it's a little hard to say why. Possibly it's the combination of religion and SF, which happens very rarely and even more rarely succeeds.

A little about the plot. This is a post-apocalyptic novel as is obvious in the first chapter when a monk of the order of St. Leibowitz is wodering why metal cores are found so often in rocks - said rocks being concrete rubble. The Catholic church has relocated to New Rome, somewhere in the American southwest, and the main setting is the monastery of St. Leibowitz, somewhere in the desert in the American southwest. The main characters are the monks. The action of the story takes place over around 1,000 years, consisting of three stories, each one hundereds of years apart from the others.

The order of St. Leibowitz is dedicated to preserving knowledge in the Memorabilia, a collection of pre-apocalyptic writings and documents. For this, they were persecuted in the immediate post apocalyptic period as the survivors of a nuclear war rose up, enraged, against technology. The first story takes place a few hundred years after this, when civilisation is just starting to be even thought about again. The Church of New Rome is a repository of knowledge (especially the Order of St. Leibowitz) and a force for social cohesion. There are obvious (and, I'm sure, intentional) parallels with the European Dark Ages after the fall of Rome here. As there are in the second part, which deals with the rise of an empire (perhaps based on Charlemagne?) that looks like it might unify the American southwest but, perhaps inevitably, comes into conflict with the Church. Again, historical parallels can be seen.

But the three stories should be taken as one and the underlying theme of the nature of man and the conflicts between politics and ethics go through all three stories. At the end of the third story, Man has again achieved civilisation, and with it, nuclear weapons. Are we fated to repeat history? Or will the sure knowledge of what happened last time act as a restraint?

There is far more to the book than this, but i don't want to spoil the plot or the ending. I will say that in every way this book forces you to think about what you may beleive. And few books can do that.

This post-apocalyptic tale is narrated by the survivors of a 20th century "Flame Deluge" (nuclear war). Modern civilisation is decimated and the world's population largely annihilated. The anger of the few survivors is channelled toward the remaining scientists and politicians, leading to a cull of the inteligencia which culminates in book burning and the slaughter of anyone who can read. The novel is set mostly within the walls of an abbey constructed to preserve the remaining knowledge until the population is ready to understand it and rebuild. The author revisits the abbey three times over the next two thousand years, charting the technological and philosophical development of civilisation at each point in history. The subsequent emergence and renaissance of this fictional civilisation parallels that of our own and the author uses this as a plot device to discuss the failings of humanity and the propensity of society to make the same mistakes throughout history. Is history destined to repeat itself?

So the cold war brought the world to the brink of the apocalypse, this may be so, but this period instilled a level of fear and paranoia in the mind that can germinate great creative ideas, and this book is full of them, I can't recommend it highly enough! The prose is beautifully written and incredibly readable, although at points intensely depressing I was surprised how richly comic I found this novel given the subject matter.

I'm a massive Sci-fi fan but must concede that although some of the great literary ideas are produced in this genera, the quality of the writing and characterisation frequently falls short of the mark. I would often tar even the `greats' such as Azimov and Clark with this brush, although don't get me wrong, I hugely enjoyed some of their books. This novel, alongside precious few others, including Frank Herbert's Dune and John Wyndham's, "The Day of the Triffids" is in my opinion an exception to this rule. The opening is reminiscent of John Wyndham's post-apocalyptic classic, "The Chrysalides" and the subtext and social commentary of these two novels is similar. "Ignorance and failure to communicate are potent sources of bigotry and prejudice which frequently lead to conflict and war." The multilayered ideas and deep philosophical content of Canticle is reminiscent Kurt Vonneget's "Slaughterhouse 5", despite the contrasting style of these authors. Contemporary works of post apocalyptic fiction such as the excellent "The Road" by Cormack Mccarthy owe a great debt to this highly original and thought provoking novel.

Although an atheist, I much enjoyed the religious symbolism in Canticle, indeed the "Wandering Jew" makes several appearances throughout a two millennia time span, and thus the reader witnesses the failure of humanity again and again through his eyes; make no mistake, this is a deeply pessimistic novel. The catholic doctrine is fervently espoused by various characters, particularly in the context of euthanasia and suicide; however, a passionate secular counter argument is also put forward and this makes for compelling reading, it's as though the author is wrestling with his conscience and thrashing out these ideas in his mind. I found this aspect to be very interesting, indeed, the strength of the catholic arguments put forward in this novel adds to the deep irony as well as the monumental tragedy of the author's suicide.