Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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51 of 52 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Repetition Does Not Make Perfect, 30 Jun 2003
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)
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33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Religion and SF in one story, 19 Nov 2002
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.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A classic grandiose sweep of future history., 8 Jun 2003
One of the earlier, and still the best, post-nuclear-holocaust novels around. Walter Miller treated the concept in a broad historical view, breaking the story into three parts at successive intervals of 600 years after the "Flame Deluge" (nuclear war) which presumably occurs in the late 20th or early 21st century. All three focus on the perspective of a new monastic order which emerges in its aftermath, dedicated to the preservation of scientific and technical literature saved by their founder, an engineer later known as Saint Leibowitz.
To quickly summarize: part 1 is in the depths of a new dark age, begun by the widespread rejection of technology and learning following the holocaust. The monks, isolated in the North American desert, illuminate manuscripts based on ancient circuit diagrams and fearfully unearth a fallout shelter. Part 2 sees a second renaissance beginning amid warring city-states and nomadic raiders, with a gifted would-be scientist struggling to retrieve knowledge from the monastery's memorabilia. In part 3, as far from today as today is from the time of Hadrian, mankind has climbed back to and exceeded the heights of technology from which it fell. But in a supermodern age of robot traffic and interstellar colonization - and reinvented nuclear weapons - nations still vie with each other just as they always have. Is the only lesson of history to be that we never learn anything from history?
The religious framework is the chief continuity between the three periods, and gives a real sense of history - putting the far imagined future into a format with which one can identify is no small achievement for the author. Characters, though seeming somewhat po-faced, do come through and are more than two-dimensional. What is best, though, is the subtle detail of settings and circumstances which makes it thoroughly believable. The shift between different historical mindsets and perspectives is well-accomplished. My only criticism is that some pseudo-Scriptural passages require a Latin dictionary.
Miller can hardly be blamed for not fully realising the severe environmental consequences of a global nuclear exchange, such as the nuclear winter - he was writing before the relevant studies had been made.
Though not the longest novel of its kind around, quality is certainly evident over quantity. Anyone who enjoys intelligent and serious speculation should give this book a chance.
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