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A review by mburnamfink
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.
5.0
A Canticle for Liebowitz is the enduring masterpiece of the post-apocalyptic genre, a dark and atmospheric meditation on endurance, knowledge, vanity, and evil, that follows the monks of the Albertine Order of Saint Liebowitz through the centuries.
At some point in the 20th century, the Cold War goes hot, and the Great Princes of the day trigger nuclear war. The irradiated and mutated survivors of the apocalypse decide to finish the job, as mobs of 'Simpletons' kill the learned and literate for their complicity in the war. In these harsh times, I.E. Liebowitz, an electronics technician and Catholic convert, is permitted to hide away what scraps of knowledge can be maintained in a monastery in the Southwest US. The bookleggers, memorizers, and monks of Liebowitz maintain the records, copying without understanding until civilization can benefit from their precious Memorabilia again. Civilization eventually rebuilds, but mastery of technology does not bring mastery of wisdom, and the new rulers of the world trigger another war as a handful of monks escape in a starship to the colony on Centaurus.
These days nuclear war is kitsch, a rocking atomic 50s that never happened. Our apocalypses are slower and less personal: climate change, plague, economic collapse. At the time this novel was written, nuclear war was very much on the table. This book came out between the Missile Gap Presidential campaign of 1960 and the Cuban Missile Crisis, when we came as close to annihilation as we ever did. The new H-bombs and ICBMs had made civilization ending wars much more possible than they had been in the early Cold War, and the logic of Mutually Assured Destruction had not yet solidified. I can't imagine what it was like to think that you could be among the dead, to think of what would endure. Catholicism is an interesting choice, having survived the rise and fall of multiple empires before. It's not hard to believe that religions could endure where science and technology lose their way, even for an atheist like myself. The whole setting is great, the slow time and spiritual concerns of the monastery made real in a way only matched by The Name of the Rose, the future history drawing from the Middle Ages but not aping it directly.
A Canticle for Liebowitz simply oozes style and devotion to the subject. This is the most literary book in my Hugo read so far. Miller was a man struggling with demons, a tailgunner who participated in the destruction of the abbey at Monte Casino during WW2. Though he wrote short stories, and won a Hugo for one, this was the only novel he published. There's a recurring theme in A Canticle for Liebowitz of things that survive, exemplified by a wooden carving of the saint crafted in the first few chapters, which survives centuries later, it's creator in the monastery forgotten. The book itself feels a lot like that, an icon crafted with near infinite care.
At some point in the 20th century, the Cold War goes hot, and the Great Princes of the day trigger nuclear war. The irradiated and mutated survivors of the apocalypse decide to finish the job, as mobs of 'Simpletons' kill the learned and literate for their complicity in the war. In these harsh times, I.E. Liebowitz, an electronics technician and Catholic convert, is permitted to hide away what scraps of knowledge can be maintained in a monastery in the Southwest US. The bookleggers, memorizers, and monks of Liebowitz maintain the records, copying without understanding until civilization can benefit from their precious Memorabilia again. Civilization eventually rebuilds, but mastery of technology does not bring mastery of wisdom, and the new rulers of the world trigger another war as a handful of monks escape in a starship to the colony on Centaurus.
These days nuclear war is kitsch, a rocking atomic 50s that never happened. Our apocalypses are slower and less personal: climate change, plague, economic collapse. At the time this novel was written, nuclear war was very much on the table. This book came out between the Missile Gap Presidential campaign of 1960 and the Cuban Missile Crisis, when we came as close to annihilation as we ever did. The new H-bombs and ICBMs had made civilization ending wars much more possible than they had been in the early Cold War, and the logic of Mutually Assured Destruction had not yet solidified. I can't imagine what it was like to think that you could be among the dead, to think of what would endure. Catholicism is an interesting choice, having survived the rise and fall of multiple empires before. It's not hard to believe that religions could endure where science and technology lose their way, even for an atheist like myself. The whole setting is great, the slow time and spiritual concerns of the monastery made real in a way only matched by The Name of the Rose, the future history drawing from the Middle Ages but not aping it directly.
A Canticle for Liebowitz simply oozes style and devotion to the subject. This is the most literary book in my Hugo read so far. Miller was a man struggling with demons, a tailgunner who participated in the destruction of the abbey at Monte Casino during WW2. Though he wrote short stories, and won a Hugo for one, this was the only novel he published. There's a recurring theme in A Canticle for Liebowitz of things that survive, exemplified by a wooden carving of the saint crafted in the first few chapters, which survives centuries later, it's creator in the monastery forgotten. The book itself feels a lot like that, an icon crafted with near infinite care.