A Canticle for Leibowitz

This book really did catch me off guard when I read it. I picked it up at the recommendation of an employee at my local bookstore, and while I have read several good books via a strangers recommendation, I have never read one as good as this.

This book is basically one story split into three sections titled "Fiat Homo", "Fiat Lux" and "Fiat Voluntas Tua". They all take place after the 'Flame Deluge', which is when mankinds ignorance and evil have culmanated into a nuclear holocaust. The story is about an abby named after a man of science who learned the errors of his ways late in life and sought to preserve our knowledge, while ignorance roamed the land in the dark times after the flame deluge. The plot is a straight forward one and I while I was able to speed read some parts of the book, I had to slow down and sometimes reread sections that dealt with some serious philisophical matters that, even now I find myself thinking about. This book is truly thought-provoking and I thought, for once, the jacket aptly described it when it says this book is a book that ranks with 1984 and Brave New World. I even think in some ways it is better than those two. It's very seldom when reading a book of the sci-fi genre (my favorite along with fantasy) that one reads a book that let's one reflect on themselves and human nature in general and provides such valuable insights into life.

I give this the highest rating I can. I advise you get it as soon as possible. I am glad I did, I had never heard of it and it is almost fifty years old too.

Had I expected to read I futuristic novel I could probably say better things but I was strangely dissappointed in the lack of more comedic aspects to the plot. When I read the back of the book it sounded like I would be reading something of a parady on the common misconception of what the world would be like after a second dark age. Over all after discovering the true content of the novel I was pleased with the characters and the setting but was bored with the dull dialog and changing time frame. The character Brother Francis was probably the best at making the story interesting next to the obnoxious Poet who, in his twisted perception, added greatly to the story at points when it didn't seem worth reading anymore. If you like science fiction and have some time on yourhands you will love this book.

Drawing many parallels between the European dark age which followed the collapse of the Roman Empire around AD 476, and a dark age on planet earth which comes after a nuclear war in the twentieth century, this brilliant book is the story of an order of Roman Catholic monks whose founder (or at least inspiration) was a twentieth-century Jewish scientist whose life work helped place humanity in the very darkness his order seeks to combat. The monks of the Order of the Blessed Leibowitz keep written knowledge in the library of their monastery in the desert of what had, six and more centuries before, been the southwestern United States. The monks live in a world wrecked and ruined by the "flame deluge' as the semi-mythical nuclear war of a technologically glorious past age is called. What had been the United States of America is, like Europe after the loss of central Roman authority, divided into a number of petty kingdoms, who make war on one another on an almost non-stop basis. In this time of rebuilding and place where genetic mutants are as common as lepers were in the landscape of the Middle Ages, the one light of learning left on a planet of illiterate savages is the Roman Catholic Church, now headquartered near the river confluence that had once been the site of St. Louis, Missouri.

In the first section of this novel, entitled Fiat Homo (Let There Be Man) a young man in training for the life of monk, discovers a ruin from the age of the flame deluge that holds within it relics of the great scientist Leibowitz, upon whose work the order was founded centuries ago. The young Catholic Brother is sent by his superiors on a journey to present his discovery to the court of the Holy Father, and the description of his pilgrimage across a broken, danger-ridden landscape makes up much of this first section.

The second part of A Canticle For Leibowitz, Fiat Lux ( Let There Be Light) takes place several hundred years into the future of the first section and sees the world in a slightly better state. Nations have replaced the warlord-run petty kingdoms of the past and technology has advanced to a level where gunpowder is again employed. Against the wishes of the men of God, a terrible war between the nations of Texarkana and Denver is about to be fought, and the rulers of Texarkana are allying with barbarian forces who dwell on the great grasslands, herding cattle and maintaining a horse-worshiping nomadic life. To the abbey of the Order of Leibowitz is sent a delegation from Texarkana, which contains a man of such intellect and learning that his like had not been seen since the time of Leonardo. This man is enthusiastically greeted by the monks of the Order, who have long awaited such an individual to whom they can show their precious library in the hopes he might make use of their knowledge and aid mankind in its quest for a return to technological greatness.

The concluding section of this novel is set more than a thousand years into the future from where it began, and is called Fiat Voluntas Tua (Thy Will Be Done). The world of this age has advanced to surpass in technology, population and capability that of the twentieth century at the time of the flame deluge (as our world has surpassed that of Rome). The Order of Leibowitz is still extant, though in an irreligious age, al but forgotten. The learned leaders of the Order see that mankind will go on throughout its existence making the same mistakes over and over no matter how many chances God in his patience affords it. For that reason, with the threat of another nuclear war looming, the Order has devised a spaceship from which a select group of colonists may leave behind the earth in the hopes of founding a better world in some far away corner of the galaxy. The ship is no sooner launched than the war comes and society again falls into darkness, and the thoughts of a dying monk, perhaps the very last member of the Order of Leibowitz, is on how tired God must be of the folly of man to waste all it is capable of with the many gifts it has been given.

Walter Miller's novel is a fantastic vision of how things might truly be if (when) our society collapses, for whatever reason. I really found my mind stimulated by the concepts here, with history presented on a grand scale and the psychology of humankind explored, judged, convicted of its inherent tragic failings. This ranks among my all-time favorite books.

We grew up in the shadow of the very real possibility of nuclear warfare. As children we lived with the Red specter of the East haunting the outskirts of our otherwise safe and peaceful childhood. Our parents had just fought a long bloody war against a Nazi Germany and an Imperialistic Japan. We saw the black and white images of that war played across the grainy screens of a new modern wonder we called a television. But the Red menace of atomic warfare had no face we could see and focus on. Perhaps the sight of a silly old man at the UN pounding on the desk with his shoe as he threatened to bury us, was the closest personification we had of that threat. So we went through the 1950's and early 1960's. It would be another 30 some years before that Red specter collapsed under the weight of its own inconsistencies and illusions.

Of all the nuclear apocalyptic literature of that era, A Canticle for Leibowitz remains the most profound and classic. It was one of the few Sci-Fi books I choose to keep in my library.

After thirty some years, I recently read it again. From the perspective of an Evangelical Christian, I found it even more profound the second time around. Miller wrote Canticle during the Roman Catholic period of his life, but the issues and questions regarding the relationship of morality to science and life that he wrestles with in this book are fundamental to all of mankind as a whole.

At the end of the book there is an allusion to the words of Jesus in Matthew 10:14-15. To understand that allusion, you will need to not only be familiar with that passage of the Bible, but also know that this last scene takes place around the year 3781 A.D., about 1800 years after the world had first blown itself up in nuclear warfare, out of which carnage it had relapsed back into another long dark age in which knowledge had once again been preserved in the monastery. Out of the ancient ashes of that 20th century collapse, civilization has finally risen again only to once again self-destruct.

Let me start out by saying that this is not the kind of book I normally read. I enjoy Science Fiction on occasion, but I prefer fantasy and when I read Science Fiction, I usually read the fantastical future variety. This is a book that I never would have even picked up off the bookshelf much less bought if it hadn't been one of the books of the month in one of my book clubs.

I am, however, very glad that I did. While it's not what I normally read, it was interesting and engaging, and I found myself anxious to read more and unwilling to put it down.

Canticle for Leibowitz is divided up into three sections, each one dealing with a different part of history, each a turning point in the circumstances at the Abbey of Saint Leibowitz. The first part is only a few hundred years after the destruction of civilization, when mankind is back in the dark era. The second is the renaissance when things are being rediscovered, and the last is when technology has again reached the point it had reached before the last nuclear destruction.

The second part was my favorite, though my favorite character was Brother Francis from the first part. The third part was my least favorite all around, likely because it was the most depressing. The beginning and middle were full of hope, desperate hope, but hope nonetheless, and the end made the destruction of humanity seem inevitable, which wasn't pleasant to read.

Each part was confusing at first, as they all started in the middle of something, but once I was able to figure out what was going on (usually after a few pages), I got into it a lot. The characters were engaging and well developed and Miller made me care about what happened to them.

One thing that I really liked about the book was the symmetry. Each part began in the middle of some insignificant task that lead to something greater, and each part ended with a death and circling buzzards and the passage of a lot of time. It gave finality to each part and kept them separate, yet at the same time linked them together.

While I was disappointed by the ending (I had wanted things to end on a more hopeful note than they did), I think that the story accomplished what it had set out to accomplish-show the reader what things would be like if the world continued the way it was going. It was written in 1959, back when nuclear bombs were being developed at terrific paces, and it was obviously a commentary on that. I'm not sure how much it managed to change things, but it was a well-done social commentary and one that was pleasant to read at that. Some of the things could still be applied to today, though with the Cold War over, it's not quite as urgent as it must have seemed to Miller then. I'm very interested to see how he deals with the world situation that was presenting himself when he wrote the sequel 40 years after the original.

Unlike a lot of reviewers of A Canticle for Leibowitz, I found the story more gripping early on and was only disappointed by the third section. I found the premise compelling from the beginning, as I had no idea it was a post-apocalyptic story. I didn't know anything about it, in fact, except that it was called science fiction. I don't consider it a science-fiction novel. It is a post-apocalyptic novel, but it is so much more -- philosophical, theological, moralistic, contemplative. It contemplates a few important questions, but doesn't really provide any answers. Not that it has to, but as a thinking, feeling human being, I don't really feel any different after reading it. I don't feel any different about humanity, science, religion, the Catholic Church, war, good, evil, our future, our past, or our nature.

I want to be clear that I fully understand why a lot of people like and even love this novel, but I don't get why *such a high proportion* of reviewers give it 5 stars and say it moved them *so deeply*.

A summary of why the novel fell short of moving me would be: It is very light on plot and characterization, though to be sure, neither of those was supposed to be a strength of this novel. The novel's focus, the deeper issues and questions and flaws that humanity must struggle with, didn't strike me as particularly special or moving. Certainly nothing unique. Whatever points about human nature, religion, God, knowledge, etc. that Miller wanted to make, I felt that he could have made them better in a work of nonfiction or in a novel with more engrossing plot and characters.

My more detailed reasoning follows, which includes some minor spoilers:

I just didn't find anything in A Canticle for Leibowitz that was deep enough or provocative enough to endure in my mind or in my soul. I really wish I had. I wish it had moved me like it moved so many others. The main moral-historical issue brought up in this novel is that humanity's hubris, our thirst for power, our propensity for war and destruction, and our inherent selfishness and evil make us repeat our mistakes because we refuse to learn from history. This is far from a unique point; it is centuries old. This was not an obscure or esoteric line of thought in 1959. If an author is going to base an entire novel around that point, he needs a lot more to make it interesting. The book is very light on plot and has no characters who are around long enough to become invested in (though I really was rooting for Brother Francis and admired Thon Taddeo), so what else does A Canticle for Leibowitz offer? It presents some questions to consider about how humanity reacts to awful situations, how science, religion, and power clash to shape our society, and how good can come from unlikely sources.

This last point is interesting and important, and I appreciated it a lot. My favorite part of the novel was the depiction of the Catholic Church as the preserver and protector of knowledge, literacy, science, and scholarship, roles it fulfilled in the Middle Ages as well. I'm not Catholic, but I found this aspect interesting and realistic. It simultaneously was unexpected (to me) and made perfect sense. Two other ways in which good things are accomplished by pretty unlikely people are the (Jewish) scientist Leibowitz becoming a martyr in the eyes of the future Catholic Church and helping save some of the knowledge he and his ilk helped destroy, and Brother Francis fortuitously discovering the fallout shelter and the interesting (though seemingly useless) memorabilia in it. His trip to New Rome is also mildly heroic, at least for him.

I think my main sources of disappointment in this novel were that it hardly holds together, or at least holds my interest, as a single story, and very little that happens in the first two parts comes back to have any significance later. For instance, what do we get for suffering with Brother Francis through his trials and tribulations? Without giving anything major away, I can say that very little outside of his abbey is affected.

What impact do any of the Memorabilia have? We aren't told what any of the Memorabilia actually are (besides one circuit blueprint) or how they could help anyone, such as Thon Taddeo, but even if they do have an impact on the world's knowledge, the author skips right past that part in order to jump ahead a few centuries again.

The tenuous alliance between scholarship and the state, embodied by Thon Taddeo and King Hannegan, is a ripe area for exploration in a novel like this, but as soon as it could get interesting and philosophical, the book jumps ahead six centuries to the last section. In that section, we find that humanity has progressed very far again. How did any of the characters or events in the first two sections affect that progression? What came of Thon Taddeo's studies, what did he share with his governmental benefactors, how did they twist this science to their own dark ends? Who knows? -- the book just skips ahead to our second nuclear age and leaves us to assume that it all worked out somehow, but that militaries have nuclear power again and so are as dangerous and reckless as ever. This development only seems loosely, indirectly related to Thon Taddeo, Brother Francis, or the other monks at the abbey.

The societies described in the first and second sections of the book are interesting stages in mankind's future history, but we don't see much of anything about how they evolve into the societies described in the second and third sections, respectively. We see almost nothing outside of the abbey, though maybe the glimpses we are given suffice to tell us that the world is basically the same as it was at the corresponding stage the first time humanity got there, and I appreciate that this is one of the points that Miller was trying to make: we have a hard time breaking from our cycle of rising and falling.

The hermit/vagrant/Wandering Jew character fascinated me when I first realized who he was, but his role in this story amounts to almost nothing. Every bit of influence he has on anyone or anything occurs in his encounter with Francis, at the very beginning of the story. And it's almost certain that that fallout shelter would have been discovered by some monk sooner or later, with or without him and Francis. Why is it important that Francis is the one who discovers it? It isn't.

When the Catholic Church and the Albertian Order of Leibowitz implement the Peregrinatur plan, how did anything that happened before that enable them to pull it off? How did Francis or any other specific character make this plan possible through the things they did in this novel? Wouldn't the Catholic Church and the Order of Leibowitz have existed just the same and implemented the Peregrinatur plan just the same with or without Brother Francis? Thon Taddeo? A merely beatified Leibowitz instead of a canonized Leibowitz?

So the thing with Mrs. Grales and Rachel was supposed to have some significance to humanity... Why couldn't they -- or God -- have come along just a little earlier, if they're so divine and important? If that's not how God works, then why does God work in the way that He does? This book doesn't even broach that topic, or if it does, it doesn't do so in a memorable way. Literally thousands if not tens of thousands of books have addressed that question, and this one does nothing to distinguish itself on that topic.

I also expected the martyr Leibowitz -- his life, his writings, something -- to come back to have some effect or significance on someone or something other than the abbey that wanted him canonized. I realize that it's important that some martyr, named Leibowitz or otherwise, sacrificed himself in the name of learning and knowledge and inspired generations of bookleggers to preserve the scraps of knowledge that they could. Without his martyrdom, maybe the bookleggers wouldn't have been so inspired and the dark age would have lasted much longer. But I just wanted Leibowitz to come back into the story after the first section in some important, revelatory way.

You might say, "That's not what type of story this is." Then what type of story is it? I mean, as a work of fiction, not theology or philosophy. If a work of fiction is going to explore the old, unoriginal idea that humanity is too flawed to learn from its mistakes, and the old, unoriginal idea that humanity's technological advancement might well outpace its moral advancement, then it needs to implement that idea in a more interesting, clever, engrossing, or exciting way, in the form of a rich plot and deep characters, or else it will fall short of greatness in my mind, as A Canticle for Leibowitz did.

This book was obviously born during the cold war. For those of you who are too young to remember, the cold war was a period of time where jackasses in washington and jackasses in moscow allegedly had their fingers poised over a big red button intent on sending us, express delivery, to our respective makers. It sounds silly now, but many of us went to sleep wondering if there would be a planet when we woke up, and this inspired in some of us some profound insights -- people like Walter Miller, Jr. especially.

Very few books written in the cold war context seem like anything more than dark, absurd fairy tales or space operas today, but Canticle stands out as perhaps one of the greatest novels ever written -- undoutbedly one of hte greatest pieces of science fiction. Science fiction here is stagework, the story is a human story, following the lives of members of an abbey in the desert of the American west that happens to be one of the world's most important repositories of human knowledge.

The book lines up adversaries and lets them play along a timeline that stretches for generations and raises questions about how much we actually learn from those that came before us. It's worth pointing out that the full richness and detail doesn't really register until your 3rd reading of the book.

You will not regret purchasing this book -- you will, however, regret not having purchased it sooner.

Since many reviewers -some far more capable than I- have already fleshed out many of the nuances of this work, let me present some simple pro's and con's, and you can do the "moral algebra," as Benjamin Franklin called it:

First, potential weaknesses:

~This novel is light on character development. Those of you who need complex and well developed characters might want to move on. Miller lingers on a few central characters for several chapters and then jumps forward another 600 years into the future twice, introducing a new cast of characters each time. The only recurring character is a mysterious and eccentric Jewish hermit, who appears in each of the three time periods of this book. One character I did find memorable was the "Poet," who was rather funny and well developed.

~Miller throws around A LOT of Latin phrases in this book. This might be tedious and annoying to some. It was a bit tedious to me at times, but I really like Latin, so it was bonus to me.

~Some people have had an almost allergic reaction to the "religiosity" of this novel. True, the novel is heavily effused with the theology and culture of monastic Catholicism, but Miller is NOT trying to win converts.

~Miller's words for some devices are just silly, i.e. "thingumbobs, doohickii." I suppose Miller could have used these silly descriptors as a way of expressing the ignorance of the monks.

~I can't put my finger on it, but for some reason the storyline can drag on a bit and become boring. This may be due to the absence of truly developed characters. It may also be the locale, which is usually at a monastery. The locale in of itself may not be boring, but the heavy reliance on this scene probably led to the feeling of monotony.

Possible strengths:

~On the other hand, monotony can be the hallmark of monastic life, and so as boring as it might be, the repetitious and monotonous accounts of life at the abbey do convey as sense of what it would be like to live in such a place.

~Miller examines issues/concepts that I found to be quite intriguing: Euthanasia, debate over the preservation or transmission of knowledge, how knowledge changes, evolves, is forgotten, and in some cases, distorted over the course of history, how legends and saints are born, religious concerns over what is "sacred" and "secular" knowledge, debate over the compatibility or incompatibility between science and religion, and humanity's tendency to create a cyclical pattern in history. All of these issues are examined through the prism of Catholicism and in some, though not all cases, they are examined through a prism of secularism. You might be disappointed with Miller's conclusion on euthanasia.

~This book is essentially about "big" ideas and how they fare over long passages of time. In this sense, this piece of fiction might be considered "epic." For me, this was one of the main reasons this book received four stars. There are thousands of science fiction novels, but only a fraction of these devote their energies to the contemplation of historical and philosophical questions, and even fewer provide such a unique setting in time and space.

~The ending, though sad and somewhat odd (I never fully grasped what Miller was trying to say through Rachel, perhaps how the inhuman can be more human than us?), offers a faint glimmer of hope, for what is an otherwise dim view of humanity. Depending on your presuppositions the conclusion will be cynically delicious or dismal.

Conclusion: You might be bored at times, but if you are interested in a sci-fi narrative that explores the issues I outlined above, I think it might be worth your time to push through the dry patches of this text.

Comparing the United States to the Roman Empire seems to be a fashionable thing to do lately. And the argument is certainly not without merit. As the only superpower left its natural to make judgments based on the worlds great empires and to ask if we are making the same mistakes that caused their downfalls. The real question, of course, is whether we can learn from history in order to avoid those same mistakes.

Which is just another way to say that I recently read A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller, Jr. Published in 1960, the book may be best described as a work of "Catholic science fiction." It follows the travails of a monastery in a post-apocalyptic world where, following a massive nuclear war, humanity turns against intellectuals and learning in a great "Simplification." Books are burned, universities torn down and the general populace intentionally becomes illiterate in the hopes that another "Flame Deluge" may be averted. The monks of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz (ironically, and unintentionally, abbreviated to AOL) have been charged with protecting what writings they are able to smuggle into their great collection (the "Memorabilia") in the hope that humanity might one day be ready to accept them again.

The book is divided into three sections, each separated by 600 years. The first deals with a young postulant's discovery of relics of Blessed Leibowitz, whose cause for canonization has been opened. The second chronicles the arrival at the monastery of Thon Taddeo, the age's greatest secular thinker, and the world's re-discovery of the treasures hidden there. In the last part humanity is once again threatened by the re-development of nuclear weapons and the Church must decide how best to preserve the world's knowledge and ensure the survival of future generations.

One of Miller's main themes is the cyclical nature of history: in forgetting its own past, the world inadvertently makes its second annihilation possible. Miller makes a fairly explicit comparison between ignorance and violence on the one hand and knowledge and peace on the other. The tribal factions of the outside world are constantly at odds, fighting over territory, food and other resources. They are unable to work together and, as a result, can build nothing of lasting value.

Yet there is still hope in the form of community. By maintaining their connection to the past -- by remembering who they are and passing on that knowledge to future generations -- the monks are able to keep their charge for over 1200 years while, all around them, empires rise, reign and fall. It is the thankless dedication of generations of monks that allows humanity to pull itself from a second Dark Age.

The book also highlights the perennial struggle between science's pursuit of fact, the state's pursuit of power and faith's search for truth. This is especially evident in the second part, during which Thon Thaddeo is at odds with the Order over access to the Memorabilia (he wants to relocate the archive to make them more readily accessible to other scientists) and in the third part in which the state sanctions euthanasia camps for radiation victims. How the monks deal with these threats to their mission says a great deal about how and why the Church pursues knowledge (as opposed to science and the state).

Although it met with mixed reaction upon its release, A Canticle for Leibowitz went on to win a Hugo Award and is now considered a modern classic in science fiction. I highly recommend it to any fan of the genre or anyone interested in the mission of the Church, even in the most trying of times.

This book was one of several that taught me what science fiction had the potential to be when placed in the correct hands. There are numerous messages in this book, but the most important to me was how history can repeat itself - so, in the end, what's it all worth if we don't learn? This is one of the few books in my collection which I've re-read numerous times. I stumbled upon it by pure luck about 10 years ago - I was helping my mom dispose of old texts at the school in which she works. Back in the corner of the bookroom was a stack of boxes from what I assume was an english class. Inside was a trove of sci-fi: Canticle, the Perelandra Series, Left Hand of Darkness, etc. After reading them, I was surprised that a high school class possibly studied these. If only schools today put this much thought into their required reading.

...but i might as well.
i first read "canticle for liebowitz" some 30 years back when i was a high school student. (thanx for the recommendation, mrs solomon). since then, evry few years i have come back to it and with each re-reading find it a richer experience. miller's splendid storytelling weaves three related and distinct tales, each separated by six centuries, yet each linked by the commonality of the search for truth.
i suppose the first section, laying out the tale of brother francis gerard of utah, is the most celebrated in that as in all trilogies, the first section is the one that most easily stands alone; but the two later sections are equally wonderful in portraying the battle among blind faith, informed faith, technological wisdom, and naivete -- all finally adding up to something akin to truth.
and now to read the sequel, which has been sitting on my bookshelf for the past several months.
if this WAS miller's only book, his is once again proof of the value of quality over quantity.

This book stands out from its genre by its originality, by its positive portrayal of Catholic Church and by the unyieldingly pessimistic view of human nature. I probably liked it most for the humor and tongue in cheek Part I, could not really relate to apocalyptic Parts II and III where i felt the author becoming more stiff and moralizing.

Despite the strained analogies that pervade the book, the knowledge-loving preservationist Church portrayed in the book is nothing like its medieval predecessor which actively persecuted new metaphysical or scientific developments, burning a few unfortunates in the process. Another part that surprised me was the almost complete absence of women - which, for Miller, do not seem to exist except as breeders of men. Any church that does not accept women into 'priesthood' is not going to make it in the XXIst century.

Still, the book was enjoyable for its uniqueness, weirdness and perhaps most of all, the unmistakable scent of the American Southwest. Which I love.

This review originally published in <a href="http://www.lookingforagoodbook.com">Looking For a Good Book</a>. Rated 2.0 of 5

I first read this book back in 1977 when an English teacher of mine, knowing that I enjoyed sci-fi, put a copy of this book on my desk and suggested that if I really liked science fiction then I would love this book. It was an award winner, after all. A month or two later and I brought the book back and I could see in his face he wanted to know how much I loved it, and I smiled and said it was good, but the truth was, I didn't understand a single bit of it or why anyone would like it.

But because I liked that teacher, this book has stuck with me, and I decided to give it another try.

I definitely understood the book much, MUCH better than I did when I was sixteen ... found humor that I never would have picked up on at the time ... but I still found the book to be dull and mostly very uninteresting.

I don't think I realized, even with this reading, that the book isn't about any specific character or characters but rather about an idea. And because it's about an idea, it traverses the lives of a number of people. As I would gain an interest and be curious about specifics or characters and their actions, it would move on to another story.

In classic 1960's tradition, this book is about ideology. It is a commentary on the role and tradition of religion in society and it capitalizes on the fears (of the times, mostly) of nuclear holocaust.

The role of religion seems to be to give people something to cling to, something to hold on to, especially when everything seems bleakest. Yet somehow, in this book, religion is the keeper of science and technology in a perverted sense that they don't quite understand what it is they are holding dear. This doesn't make sense to me.

I've given this book two chances ... more than most books will get, and it still fails to interest or enlighten or entertain.

Looking for a good book? Not everything that's a 'classic' or an award winner is worth reading.

This book is a classic as in timeless. There a haunting quality to the story that makes it unique. There are obviously other great science fiction books, but in my opinion there is none like this. You cannot realize how unique this book is until you start reading it.

This book is a true classic. It presents a plot that we've all heard before: What if Nuclear Warfare actually occurred? It seems like a boring idea, but Walter M. Miller, Jr. makes this book extremely intriguing. The ignorance of the characters and their society, is so REAL, that I actually found myself believing this story. The story specifically revolves around a single monastary that is attempting to preserve the boundless knowledge of society's predecessors, but the tribal groups strongly oppose this, being taught that intelligence leads to nothing but destruction. Although I am not Catholic and know nothing of the Catholic faith, I did not have any trouble undertanding this book, which is good. I recommend this riveting and eye-opening novel to anyone wanting to read GREAT science fiction.

This is a spooky book set in the post-nuclear holocaust American Southwest was first published in 1959. The holocaust survivors lose nearly all the structure of modern civilization yet retain a bizarre sense of religion, wherein anything from our era becomes sacrosanct. The first half of the book deals with a bumbling desert monk Leibowitz who stumbles upon an old fall-out shelter which is, of course, a holy-of-holies to his confused contemporaries. The second half of the story jumps ahead to a time when civilization and science have been re-established and guess what!? they are at war with nuclear weapons again.
Very well-crafted, read carefully or you'll miss the nuances. I re-read it every decade or so. Any Y2K end of the world enthusiasts would probably enjoy this book a little too much.

Nuclear war...Dark ages...Rebirth of learning...and once again, a technological world that is about to destroy itself in nuclear war. All seen through the eyes of an enduring, yet changing religious order which manages to help to hold things together, somehow. There is mysterious symbolism in, for example, the buzzards. There is a curious old man who keeps reappearing at intervals of thousands of years. Who is he? There are times when we can't find a simple Right Side to a controversy that shakes all society (ie, is it good or bad to uncover ancient knowledge, [that is, 20th century knowlege] when the parties in power are evil? Should euthanasia be routinely available to persons dying of radiation poisoning?). Nothing is constant; human beings keep making the same mistakes! And yet, there is a gleam of hope at the end.

I doubt this is THE first post-apocalyptic novel, but it's up there. I bet it was a great read in 1959. Lot's of new ideas, philosophically. The book is divided into three separate stories: (a) post apocalypse, (b) rebuilding society, and (c) pre-apocalypse #2.

After the first story, I was ready to declare this book the Lord of the Rings of the post-apocalypse genre. I really enjoyed it. The best of the three books, it described a world, where man new nothing of technology, even when staring it in the face.

The second story sucked. I thought it was a waste. It talks of war between nations, but you never get to know the warring nations. There are no emotional ties to the new characters and countries to help you understand who is who. They might as well be called team a, team b, and team c. Those cold descriptions would mean more and help me better identify who the hell he was talking about.

Another side point. I thought the use of latin throughout the novel was way overdone. I speak French fairly well, so I muddled through it fairly easily, but for those who don't it might prove frustrating. However, don't let it bother you, because what was said in latin was unimportant. So, really this is just a critique for any of you who might write in the future. Just leave stuff like that out of the book. We don't care if you have command of some ancient language. We're not impressed.

Finally, story three is the crux of the message which is basically this: "Mankind is retarded" and "Mankind is repetitive" We are stupid and we will always repeat the same mistakes over and over again. I liked the message and generally agree with the philosophical overtones in the book.

If I had read this in one of my literature classes in school, I would give this book an "A". It would have been one of the more interesting novels that we studies. AND, it would have lent itself well to some very interesting classroom discussions. But, I didn't read it for school, I read it for fun. And, therefore, I just give it a "C" or something along those lines.

If you're looking for post-apocalyptic books, I much preferred "The Road". If you want "old" sci-fi, try Asimov first.

Cheers.

Miller's A Canticle For Leibowitz is broken down into three separate but mildly interrelated stories. The first story takes place some centuries after the nuclear annihilation of our civilization, the second story some centuries after the first, and the third some centuries after that. All three of the stories are connected via a common thread...The Abbey of the Order of Leibowitz...whose task it is to collect and store the remaining knowledge of a more advanced civilization (ours') and preserve it for the day when humanity will be able to use it again.

Miller's story is an interesting, if dated one. Written in the 1950's Miller's view of the world clearly isn't the modern one. But there are certainly similarities. Miller's story reflects possible nuclear annihilation of both the US and the Soviet Union. Today, the threat of terrorism, is at a minimum, hovering on the back-burners of all our minds. Throughout the entire book there is the constant theme of cyclicality. That everything in the human world (including our spirituality) goes through cycles. From just the smallest tradition (in terms of the overall story) of the yearly Lentin fast, to the underlying mantra of the book that, like Santayana said, if we don't learn from our past mistakes we are doomed to repeat them.

This story is heavy on the symbolism. In this way, A Canticle For Leibowitz would make a great reading assignment for high school or college English classes. Unfortunately, this reader is only intelligent enough to pick up only the most blatant of metaphor and not intelligent enough to catch the more subtle.

The two major downsides of this book are that it can be awfully slow and drag at times, making it difficult to get through. Also, there is quite a bit of Latin liberally dispersed throughout the story. Seeing that most of the book is set in and around an abbey, it makes sense that the Latin is in there...it just would have been nice if Miller had given us more translations of his Latin verses.

Overall, this book is worth reading if you're interested in the way religion effects our lives (and may in the future); are interested in a well-written (if dated) piece of post-apocalypse scifi; or are just plain interested in reading an intelligently drawn story.

I always think that Miller's "Canticle for Leibowitz" should be required reading for students. This is a masterpiece that reflects in a brillant way on many aspects of our human nature.
The writing is artful and efficient, the story flows naturally and well paced, and the characters are simply unforgettable... full of tenderness, fear, courage, failures...yes...so human. I will hardly forget Brother Francis of Utah, Dom Paulo de Pecos, Dom Jetrah Zerchi, Lazarus...
In this intellectual and moral novel, every page glows with important topics for all humanity. Read it, and you will be touched, and hopefully moved. I am convinced that if the men governing our world read books like this, things will be much better.
In sum, "Canticle for Leibowitz" is a Universal Masterpiece.
(The Latin on the novel has seemingly been a problem for some readers: Well, no problem, there are at least 2 excellent study guides available in the www with all the translations).

A fascinating book, A Canticle for Leibowitz is both a rich treasure of fine writing and a difficult assignment: in many ways, as a conventional novel, and even as a science fiction one, it fails on many levels.

But isn't that the case for many great works of literature (and almost all good science fiction): the real stuff eschews formula, defies convention, evades compartmentalisation - it succeeds despite itself. And so, Walter Miller's great novel is uneven, ignores conventions and defies genres.

It starts as a low, ticklish farce: in a post-apocalyptic wilderness a credulous novice monk stumbles upon some papers, including an old shopping list, in the rubble of a bombed out building. Being credulous, he proceeds to venerate them as the sacred relics of the long dead, and martyred, founder of his order. This martyr, we less-credulous readers quickly deduce, was an apparently irreligious Jewish scientist (his name, Isaac Leibowitz, being the dead giveaway) of the late Twentieth Century, alive just prior to the "Flame Deluge" (yet another genre, by the way, that this novel fits rather uncomfortably within is "post apocalyptic fiction") and dead not long after it.

Six hundred years on, we learn that Leibowitz is in the process of being beatified by the order to which that hapless novice belonged (and the novice is now himself venerated) as a Catholic saint!

Thus, low farce gives way to arch and sophisticated irony - of all people it is the monks who keep alive the spark of secular 20th century technology, though only through their uncomprehending worship of the "memorabilia" they've collected.

Irony then in turn elides into a thoughtful and articulate meditation on religion, science, the tension and interdependence between them and ultimately their mutual inability, jointly or severally, to vouchsafe human frailty. Through the three parts of Miller's book the eternal wheel spins: the post-deluge dark age segues into a re-enlightenment, and in the last part the world careers inevitably back into oblivion.

That Miller achieves all this - heavy stuff, after all - with so light a touch is quite an achievement. Nevertheless, there is an unevenness of style: The airily comic disposition of the first act is sharply curtailed in the second and third which, in the main are more solemnly written.

In some ways the book has not aged well: most obviously in its (for 1959, quite understandable) fixation with the human race's inevitable nuclear self-determination (wittily and piously rendered by the monks as *diluvium ignis* - literally, the deluge of fire). Nowadays - how fickle we are! - nuclear cataclysm seems a quaint fear.

On the other hand, the maturity with which Miller confronts the argument between the rational and the spiritual is sorely lacking these days (as, this very week, even dear old Stephen Hawking wades ill-advisedly into the Science vs. God debate, demonstrating no more eptitude than has any other recent scientists who've strayed from their stock material.)

A Canticle for Leibowitz' tripartite structure, threaded together only by the ghost of Isaac Leibowitz and the apparition of the Wandering Jew, makes for a challenge, as none of the other characters exist beyond any one of the three acts. Seeing as the first black mark on the horizon - and the first black mark on the first page - was the Jew, I was disappointed to see him go missing in action as the book reached its inevitable conclusion. Instead of that bookend, we were left in the hands of an under-described and un-anticipated character to round the epic out.

Indeed, Miller seems to have distracted himself at the death with a side-bar debate on euthanasia and suffering which didn't really figure, or connect much with, the rest of the narrative. Clearly, though, it was something the Roman Catholic Miller himself wrestled with mightily; he did eventually committed suicide many years later.

For all that there were, in the middle stanza, some beautiful set pieces, and throughout the book is beautifully written too, which mean that for all its stylistic and structural oddities, A Canticle For Leibowitz thoroughly earns its contemporary classic status.

Olly Buxton

Originally written in the late 1950s, Walter M. Miller Jr.'s most famous work is still an enjoyable read in my mind. The author skillfully wove together a character driven story of the interplays between faith, technology, and pride. "A Canticle for Liebowitz" combines darkness and ironic humor in a way which takes advantage of both without overplaying either. Likewise the novel's treatment of faith and science is generally very well set up by Miller.

The plot is divided into three main parts:

I. Set several centuries after a twentieth century nuclear war, a Catholic monk in training discovers potentially important documents in an abandoned fallout shelter in the deserts of Utah. Part I is essentially the story of the preservation of the past that successfully manages to merge dark ages/medieval imagery with the genre of post-apocalyptic science fiction.

II. Set roughly six centuries or so later, Part II focuses on a time period rather reminisent of the Age of Reason in Europe (the weapons technology appears roughly at 1600s-1700s level). The ruthless monarch of Texarkana has become a major power on a scene divided between a number of other states (eg. the Empire of Denver), nomadic plains peoples almost certainly meant to resemble the Plains tribes of the American West, and the Papacy in New Rome. One of the main conflicts in Part II is not political however, it is the growing clash between religion and secular science including over how to interpret the generation of Liebowitz (a twentieth century scientist). There is also some conflict between fundamentalist minded Catholics and more scientific Catholics within the abbey.

III. Set roughly six centuries after Part II, Part III tells the story of the possibly final generation of humans on earth. Atomic weapons have once again been invented and humanity has advanced in technology to the point where colonies are being started in other solar systems. On earth, the Atlantic Confederacy and its Asiatic nemesis are moving to the brink of a war that threatens once again to destroy human civilization and perhaps even more completely (at least on Earth) than the last one. Part III deals with very serious issues ranging from euthanasia to nuclear war to the definition of being human. Faith and society clash as the clock ticks down towards the endgame which seems so inevitable. I personally wander whether Miller had read "On the Beach" as the topic of euthanasia after a nuclear assault comes up in this novel as well (Miller seems to take a differeing view from Shute).

Overall, "A Canticle for Liebowitz" combines excellent penmanship with interesting storylines. While parts may be slightly dated considering when it was written, the overall work holds up quite nicely. I highly recommend it.

Do you know many science-fiction books that quote Latin? Where the heroes are monks and abbots? Where the protagonists argue over illuminated manuscripts? A Canticle for Leibowitz has an appeal well beyond science-fiction fans.

Too much of it shouldn't be given away, but the story takes place after a nuclear war and concerns the fight to preserve what is left of human literacy and knowledge. Of course, this is about the need for spirituality and wisdom to balance progress in scientific pyrotechnics. But A Canticle for Leibowitz is first and foremost an utterly convincing political fable, interwoven with a host of private adventures and tribulations. And while nuclear holocaust may sound less likely today than in the 1950s, what is astonishing is that this book hasn't aged a bit, that it has none of the technological and contextual faux pas that makes so much of science fiction dated.

Walter Miller wrote with authority, conviction and humour. His dialogue between churchmen is jaw-dropping in its veracity; I couldn't believe afterwards that he was never a priest or a novice. The novel's politics are as credible as they are subtle. Miller creates a reality in which you will find yourself completely immersed without wanting to leave it, however harsh it may be. My only quibble, in fact a major disappointment is that, incredibly, Walter Miller never wrote anything else.

Wow. I just finished reading Miller's "Canticle for Leibowitz", and the first thing that comes to mind is that it is as relevent today as it was when it was first written in 1955 and '56. Don't be put off by the beginning, which at first may seem somewhat obscure. Nor should you allow the religious themes to be a distraction--this book clearly wasn't written as a diatribe for one belief system or against another. Miller uses religious and cultural allegories with which he is familiar. It would be difficult however, not to see the greater parallel with consideration for humanity's future in this well written book. Keep in mind that this was written during the height of the cold war, when it was normal to practice weekly or monthly duck-&-cover and fallout shelter evacuation drills at work, at school, in public in the United States (and elsewhere, I'd guess).

Imagine an Earth not only post-nuclear apocalypse, but about 600 years down the road, after a complete cultural meltdown. No books, no schools, no motor-cars, not a single luxury (sorry). A Catholic monastary becomes a major source of preserved knowledge, taking its name from a former scientist of the nuclear age who repented his part in the destruction of Earth and encouraged the preservation of remaining knowledge with the hope that humanity could do better. Maybe it's religion's own penence for past eras of book burning and opression, but these dedicated monks are in it to preserve knowledge regardless of whether it agrees with their beliefs or not, dedicating their existence to the preservation of written knowledge the way bootleggers dedicated their lives to the production and transport of alcohol in the U.S. when it was prohibited. Hence the term Booklegger (I love it!).

Just when you come to know a generation of monks, time moves on. Don't be disappointed, the next generation (monks and all!) is as fascinating as that which preceeded it. It wasn't difficult to recognize human elements of behavior, or to appreciate his diversity among characters. The development of character and plot are both excellent. There are 3 major time periods, each highlighting a different period in this new humanity's development. Some things are familiar, some not surprising, and a few are...unusual.

One may take from this book any number of thoughts. The positives and negatives of religion, philosophy, art, politics and humanity in general are all present here. Like other memorable works of fiction, "Canticle" offers, to a degree, what the reader is willing to consider based upon that reader's knowledge. I believe I found the story all the more profound with the recently re-awakened concerns about nuclear power (and weapons) in our world. I came away from this book with a deep appreciation for what we do have in our world today, and a strong and sincere hope that we are wise enough to hold on to it and make it a better and safer place for our children. Read Walter M. Miller Jr's book and see what you think. And thanks, Dad, for recommending the book!

I rediscovered this classic recently during an uneventful weekend to learn that I loved Miller's novel more now than ever. I have read quite a few science fiction classics in my time, but this one has been etched in my soul since my high school years.

Separated into three acts, A Canticle For Leibowitz is an exploration into the evils of civilization and knowledge spawned after major religious movements; in this case, the discovery of a shopping list by a long deceased scientist after worldwide nuclear devestation. The result of this 3-part movement is the overlying "history repeats itself" theme and the universal idea that man's drive for perfection only leads to inevitable self-destruction.

A Canticle For Leibowitz is in itself perfection for science fiction, leading the audience with profundity and an intense philosophical exploration into humanity that is as truthful in a fantasy world as it is in reality. The world Walter M. Miller, Jr. has created feels more like "truth," and though the message was ultimately concieved out of the heights of cold war politics, it still holds strong today.

Push "Mad Max" and  "Water World" out of your thoughts. This book deals with humanity's struggle to recover after global nuclear war. An order of Catholic monks are devoted to preserving as much of the scientific and technical writings (others as well) of the pre-war civilization. This means protecting it from angry mobs, marauding tribes and warring nation-states as well as the rigors of time. Though for long centuries no one understands the concepts contained in the writings (which they refer to as "Memorabilia," they faithfully preserve, copy and even illuminate the works.

This book is in the genre of science fiction, but there is a strong (not off-putting, in my opinion) religious perspective. It's a meditation on human nature and history. Pessimistic almost to the point of humor, "Canticle" is a compelling, thought-provoking read.

I finished Walter Miller's A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ shorty after reading Cormac McCarthy's THE ROAD and it proves just how far-ranging the bleak genre known as "dystopia" can be. In fact, unlike McCarthy's stark and simple narrative, the complicated CANTICLE can be as mirthful as it is bleak, as Miller wisely remembers the humanity in humankind even while indicting said humanity for its insistence on not learning history's lessons. Thus, while news of impending (yet again) nuclear holocaust hangs over the characters, we're still treated to dialogue that is rich in gallows humor (a quaint term, considering how "far" mankind has come from the one-at-a-time inefficiencies of a noose).

Divided into three linked novellas, CANTICLE provides an opening background story of the bumbling but beloved monk, Brother Francis, and his discovery of the underground bomb shelter that contains the remains and the writings of the eponymous Leibowitz. "Civilization" (which will forever be in quotes once you read this book!) has been set back by nuclear destruction long ago when Leibowitz lived, and the records and blueprints excavated from the shelter hint at "progress" (another suspect word!) that mankind can make once more, if only he can rethink what was once already thought up and perhaps treat the danger that is knowledge with greater care.

Which brings us to the second novella -- an interesting battle of wits in a politically-charged world (long after the death of Section One's Brother Francis) that pits the current abbott of the Leibowetz Abbey against a learned man who is hot on the trail of the ancient paper's darker secrets. Readers will be intrigued by Abbott Paulo's attempts to both protect and share St. Leibowitz's legacy when a scholar from a rising and murderous politician comes to visit. The pas de deux, often unspoken and more often still requiring inference to appreciate, is Miller at his best.

Finally, in the shortest and perhaps least satisfying section, another abbott must do battle with sectarian doctors and politicians who challenge his faith and his abbey's history in the name of "humanity." Doctor Cors, for instance, advocates mercy killings of terminally-ill victims of radioactive poisoning (the book has come full circle since Leibowitz's day), but Abbott Zerchi opposes this because euthanasia is not God's will.

The book ends with this religious question as its chief focus, which is my only quibble as I would have preferred something closer to the bone -- namely, the theme of man's insatiable need to destroy and maim himself in the name of power. In short, I expected and would have felt a greater sense of completeness from a denouement centering on the question of innate evil, which lurks over the book to the point that Miller's dark humor becomes a lifesaver for the reader. Instead, Miller serves up innate innocence, just when you least expect it. Disturbing and a bit off-putting, the ending is nevertheless provocative and worthy of examination.

Overall, I was impressed with CANTICLE's ambition, scope, and depth. It deserves its 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel (I wonder if JFK read it before the Cuban Missile Crisis?) and even though the writing and the profuse Latin might give younger readers pause, mature readers who appreciate dystopian issues, history, and the philosophical dance of good and evil will find solace even in the dark brightness that is nuclear doom. A thinker's book, then, and highly recommended.

A Canticle for Leibowitz is not a novel. Rather, it is 3 linked novellas concerning the Order of Saint Leibowitz. Each of these novellas have different focuses and at first glance, would seem to have little to do with the other novellas. However, when you get down to thinking about it, they are actually pieces of a united work.
The first novella, Fiat Homo, is squarely about the Abbey of Saint Leibowitz and begins with the discovery of the Sacred Shopping List. It is the story of how the brothers seek to have Leibowitz officially recognized as a saint.
The second novella, Fiat Lux, is an espionage thriller dealing with the diabolical plans of the Emperor of Texarkana for continental domination. The third novella, Fiat Voluntas Tua, deals with the Second Nuclear Age as the nations that arose from the ashes of the First Nuclear Age and the nuclear war that ended that age, grapple with both nuclear weapons and the knowledge that a previous civilization died from those weapons.
As you can see, the 3 novellas deal with diverse subjects, but it is the way that Miller weaves his stories that the 3 become one.
A Canticle For Leibowitz is a most intriguing and well executed book and should be required reading in classrooms today.

The monks of Medieval times spent much of their life copying manuscripts in philosophy and theology that further generations would read, thus maintaining lost knowledge after the decline of Western civilization following the fall of the Roman Empire. Through their efforts and Islamic scholars classical Greek thought was introduced back into Europe and facilitated the reawakening of Europe.

Now a nuclear holocaust has put humanity back into barbarism, and the monks are keeping blueprints of circuit designs and they have no idea what they mean, and a recipe of items that do not exist anymore. As time progresses humanity once again civilizes itself and the new scientists are interested in the data kept by the monks. It doesn't take long for one of the scientists to become at odds with the monks with his speculations.

This is a classic, tragic tale of how the hubris of knowledge without the humility to use for a moral end will always bring disaster. Walter Miller was a disturbed figure, and it shows reading this. It was probably his mental disturbance that lead him to know so well the foibles of human beings and how easy it is to bring about destruction though ego thinly rationalized as good intentions.

I had read "Canticle" ages ago as a teenager, but after reading "The Day After Tomorrow", a slam bang thriller that was fun apocalyptic fiction, I was tempted to re-read "Canticle" to compare it.

Was I ever surprised.

"Canticle" is the story, not of one man, but of humanity itself after nuclear war has utterly destroyed civilization. Mankind went through a frenzy of book burning after the nuclear holocaust, machines were destroyed, and only a few monks hidden in the desert were left to memorize old texts and save whatever fragments they could find.

By the time the book begins, one of these monks, Brother Francis, stumbles across an ancient nuclear shelter. "To find a bit of the past which had escaped both the bonfires and the looting scavengers was a rare stroke of luck" (p 30).

Miller works out humanity's destiny with brilliant logic and real insight into human behavior. So many of the apocalyptic books are fun, but never convincing because the author's never delve into what drives men.

Miller mixes his story with plenty of humor. For example, towards the end of the book, which is many centuries after Brother Francis, another monk in the desert glares at his new electronic Autoscribe and complains, "'Nothing could be that perverse without premeditation...It knows good and evil...and it chose the latter'" (p 241).

Miller's real question is whether or not humanity can avoid destroying itself again, once the nuclear genie is out of the bottle.

Expect wonderful writing, symbols, deep questions, and one wandering Jew.

This one is worth your time.

Centuries after the Flame Deluge, a monastery in what used to be the United States of America's desert southwest awaits canonization of its beatified patron, the Blessed Martyr Leibowitz. Brother Francis, a novice enduring the solitude of his required Lenten fast, encounters a mysterious traveler who first tempts him with bread and cheese and then reveals to him a long-buried fallout shelter. The shelter contains relics of the Blessed Martyr, including a shopping list for pastrami, kraut, and bagels. Will this be the evidence that results, at last, in New Rome's acknowledgment of the Blessed Leibowitz's sainthood?

That's the premise of FIAT HOMO, the first of three novellas in this book. In the second installment, more centuries have passed. The Abbey of St. Leibowitz and its memorabilia are still there, and still playing a crucial role as Humans slowly regain the technology lost in the Flame Deluge. In the third and last installment, the Abbey is once again central as another Deluge threatens to engulf the still only partly recuperated planet. In each novella, the Roman Catholic Church - pre-Vatican II, since Miller published this work in 1959 - provides the one source of moral certainty for what's left of Humankind. Resuming its task from medieval Europe, the Church's monks gather and preserve the fragmented written records of an earlier civilization brought down by a different sort of barbarians. They copy and recopy, painstakingly and by hand, information that they no longer comprehend, with faith that one day Humanity will reclaim its meaning. The two-edged sword of knowledge provides one of the book's central themes. Another is the demanding nature of faith, as personified by Roman Catholicism, and its on-going tension against the absolutes of science. Is the conflict between the two really that of irreconcilable belief systems, or something else that we Humans can't quite grasp? Meanwhile, the predators lurk and wait to clean up the debris (including that which used to be Human) after each disaster. Vultures that "lovingly feed" their young, marginally Human mutants called "Pope's children" because only the Church's influence guarantees their right to exist, sharks that can swim deep to escape the Deluge that comes in seemingly inevitable cycles...the predators, at least, are eternal.

It's no wonder this book is still in print, almost 50 years after its first publication. It asks timeless questions, and refuses to provide easy answers. Yet for all its apparent cynicism, the Human spirit's resilience lies at its heart; and in that resilience, and in Humankind's endless drive to learn and to discover, may lie...salvation? Or at least, hope for another chance.

'A Canticle for Leibowitz' is the story of a Catholic Monastary in the Utah desert after a Nuclear Holocaust. The story spans one thousand years and deals with the monks' attempts to preserve human knowledge against the barbarous dark age that had decended upon the Earth. This is one of those rare novels that combines biting satire with a wonderful story and rich characters. There are a few times when the story tends to get bogged down, but these lulls are more than made up for by genuine thrilling moments and a very satisfying ending. Religion, philosiphy, and humor illustrate this wonderful novel of mankind searching for collective redemption and wondering at just what cost salvation will come.

I titled this review "awe-inspiring," and I mean it. This book inspires awe at the universe. It takes the reader through a journey of perspectives, starting with the perspective of a young and confused monk in a post-apocalyptic setting, but growing broader and broader. Midway through the book, the attention shifts to geopolitical events, and it shifts again to a global perspective near the end. But in the book's grand finale, a religious epiphany forces our perspectives up and to the stars, where we wonder at the terrible power of a god. I was left breathless at the end.

I had to read this book in High School - and is one of the books I have returned to over and over again through the years. We read it again as my choice for book club and Miller's masterpiece definitely stands the test of time.

The third and final chapter, "Fiat Voluntua", has a long-winded polemic against suicide woven into the narration. After I finished the book, I became interested in what kind of person Miller was. When I read that he killed himself, I broke down and cried. I believe that whether or not a person kills himself is between him and his God, and is none of society's business. But that someone who could argue with such passion and conviction against suicide and yet would later fall to such depths of misery and despair that he would kill himself is one of the saddest and most awful things I think I've ever heard of...

Six centuries ago, the world was destroyed in the Atomic Flame Deluge, leaving humanity scattered and broken and the world infested by radiation and mutations. One of the few surviving points of continuity to the old world is religion, with the Christian Faith surviving in the form of isolated monasteries and a 'new Rome' that has arisen in the east of North America. When a monk discovers relics dating back to before the nuclear war, a chain of events is set in motion that will reverberate down the centuries.

A Canticle for Leibowitz is a central text of the classic science fiction canon, originally published in 1960 and winning the 1961 Hugo Award as well as a slew of other awards down the years. Unusually for an SF novel, especially one published at that time, it has won significant acclaim from mainstream literary circles, impressed with its grappling of themes such as religion versus science and its assessment of the cyclical nature of humanity's ability and willingness to destroy itself. Whilst there has never been a filmed adaptation, the book's structure and some of its ideas directly inspired an episode of Babylon 5 called The Deconstruction of Fallen Stars which also addressed some of the same themes.

Leibowitz shares a common premise with Asimov's Foundation sequence, with its band of educated men seeking to preserve the knowledge and wisdom of a prior age through the barbarian dark ages of ignorance and fear until civilisation arises again, although the book lacks an analogue to Asimov's psychohistory. The monks of Leibowitz also have themselves little idea of the worth of the knowledge they are protecting, with complex technical schematics stored alongside shopping lists and betting slips. Still, the information they are guarding eventually gives humanity enough clues to begin its rise to technological greatness once again.

Leibowitz is a 'fix-up' novel assembled out of three short stories, set 600, 1,200 and 1,800 years in the future respectively, with corresponding shifts in cast and the technological levels of humanity. Each of the three sections addresses different but related ideas, such as faith and belief in the first part, the seductive nature of technology and power in the second and the clash between religious morality and common morality in the last part. For a novel written in the late 1950s, this book touches on many topics that remain contentious today, such as euthanasia, abortion and the relationship of Church and State. Miller supports no sides, but uses his characters to make compelling arguments on both sides that provides much to think about. The book also has deliberately, even powerfully ambiguous moments (particularly revolving around a recurring character and events involving a mutated woman near the book's end) that introduce huge potential for debate and multiple layers of interpretation to the book.

Leibowitz's literary qualities are founded in excellent writing, strong characterisation (with only 120 pages or so for each part, Miller gives us several memorable and impressive characters per section) and an excellent sense of humour (often very black indeed). Unlike some of its contemporaries, Leibowitz has not aged or dated itself at all, and like Non-Stop, The Stars My Destination and Lord of Light remains a compelling, essential read from this era of SF.

A Canticle for Leibowitz (*****) a rich, funny, dramatic, dark and thought-provoking novel. It is available now in the USA. There is no current British edition (for the time being anyway) but the book is easily available on import or second-hand in the UK. Walter M. Miller sadly took his own life in 1996, but a successor volume, Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, was completed and published with the help of Terry Bisson.

I must admit, it was the cover-art to this book that 1st caught my attention. Not the reviews. Not the conext. That aside, I am glad to have picked it up. A tale of a possible outcome after a nuclear holicost, I must say that it is a most enjoyable read (even if the Latin was difficult to get by) and full of hearty laughs. As it was before, it shall be again comes into a whole new light after reading this book. The middle-ages rose and passed and in my opinion if civilization were to fall once again, it would be the shoulders of the monastaries to once again hold the pieces until people are ready.

A Canticle for Leibowitz is a 1959 science fiction novel by Walter M. Miller, Jr.; it won the 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel. In the centuries after a nuclear holocaust, a monastic order works to preserve the remnants of scientific knowledge as civilization rebuilds. The book is comprised of three parts, essentially novellas, which take place in the 26th, 32nd, and 38th centuries, respectively.

Miller's themes are prominent, and will be obvious to even the casual reader. Primarily, there is recurrence: Miller's novel spans so many hundreds of years because he is setting up a cyclical history for humanity, and the periods of his story reflect the focus and worldview of different historical eras. And there is the timeless issue of church versus state and faith versus reason: Miller's future generations explore the same theological and moral issues humanity has wrestled with all along.

Many books in the postapocalyptic genre, when confronted with the issue of religion, dismiss, punt, or avoid entirely. But Miller addresses religion thoughtfully, respectfully, and satisfyingly. He focuses specifically on Catholicism, but his issues and points are applicable to Christianity broadly.

Miller's story tends to unfold rather slowly, and the casual reader may wonder what the point is, exactly, of the book's first two sections in particular. Admittedly, they aren't always interesting on their own (particularly part two). But they are necessary to set up the book's finale, and they are a key part of the Miller's bigger picture.

A Canticle for Leibowitz's third section is superior, not only because it features the culmination of Miller's buildup, but because it has an excellent protagonist. In part one, "Fiat Homo," the bumbling Brother Francis is carried along by circumstances that develop the story with little force of his own. Part two, "Fiat Lux," neglects character focus and is instead a rather obvious struggle between the church and secular science. But in "Fiat Voluntas Tua," Abbot Zerchi is both a principal actor upon the story and a grounded, strong and well-rounded Christian figure, and he is eminently realistic. He is Miller's best character, and gives the book's conclusion some vital punch.

In the end, A Canticle for Leibowitz is an always thoughtful and occasionally poignant look at the history, struggles and prospects of humanity.

Americans seem to have a big problem reading European languages, but Liebowitz ('Leebowitz'), which I frequently read in essays about this book is a huge mistake, only surpassed by the guy who did it the other way around, and invented the "Weiner Schnitzel" meaning that Wine(=Wein in german) has something to do with it or, even worse, crying (Weinen=Whineing). Fact is that the Wiener Schnitzel was invented in Vienna, or Wien as they say in Austria. Mistakes like this can cost you dear when visiting an other country! You might end up eating a baked football you ordered.
"Liebowitz" fortunately has no special meaning, but I wonder about people who write a serious essay about a book without the decency to read and write the title correctly...
Enough said about cultural differences between actual living people, let's move on to the book. There are in my eyes three good books written which combine both religion and serious science fiction, and apart from "A Case of Conscience" by James Blish and "Deus Irae" by Philip K. Dick and Roger Zelazny this is the other one. Other writers may have tried to combine these subjects, but after reading some 4000 books I can assure you: no one came even close. One might even argue that the Dick/Zelazny was more or less a copy of this book, but I leave that to you, the reader.
Walter M. Miller recently wrote a sequel to this book as well, Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman

An excellent book, to be sure, and a distant future that leaves one somewhat discouraged and terrified, and an interesting glimpse into the workings of a church in isolation, if not exile. But nevertheless a disappointment. It was recommended to me very highly, and it just never got to that high point. Nothing really happened. There didn't seem to be any message, any purpose, any great design. But I do love this, from page 265: "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." I suppose that's enough of a comment on religion for any one novel to hope to accomplish.

This is a book with its own legend. Written near the height of the cold war, published two years after Sputnik, Miller's genre-bending classic of speculative fiction (a newer, more reverent term for science fiction and other imaginings of the future) is a well-written, carefully crafted warning of a future we may think we have now escaped.

If you were born after 1980, A Canticle for Leibowitz may lack for you some of the vivid, personal terror readers who knew life lived each day under the threat of global nuclear war will remember. Fear of terrorism, global warming and ecological disaster may have to some extent replaced the dread of being incinerated in a mushroom cloud, but as clear and present as those danger are, they menace with a future dystopia that will come upon us gradually (if they finally do), and we remain able to change & reverse those events & their consequences, even at their worst. Not so in those gray days of 'SALT' and detente. No warnings, no time to act, and nowhere to hide even for the richest few. All, and nothing; and in less than an hour.

I first read A Canticle for Leibowitz in the summer of 1982, on the recommendation of a high school classmate with whom I had attended the million-plus person June 12th Nuclear Freeze Rally in Central Park (still the largest gathering ever in NYC, 2nd largest ever on Earth). I have such vivid memories of that day, almost dead-center in a crowd of over a million, and though I don't find references to it elsewhere, I am certain that Orson Welles quoted from A Canticle for Leibowitz when he addressed the crowd. That was how the subject came up: I asked my friend if he knew the book, and he recommended it enthusiastically. He was right.

The book captures well the dread we all felt then, seven years (when I first read this in 1982) before the fall of the Berlin Wall and nine before the collapse of the Soviet Union. At the time, for myself and many others, the end was inevitable and nigh. Miller's prose had the blessed effect of offering a sort of consolation & hope, while being funny and very ironic. Reading 'Canticle' was a way of escaping the reality of 1982 while confronting it, sideways. Well-written as a piece of prose fiction, at the level of Arthur C. Clarke, Ursula LeGuin, & Ray Bradbury, with portions of poetic narrative beyond them, and wickedly funny, laugh out loud passages in every chapter, A Canticle for Leibowitz is still highly relevant as a piece of social commentary. The threat of world-wide instantaneous annihilation may be gone, but other threats and challenges remain.

Maybe foremost among these is the role of technology in our culture, as both the source of our troubles and, at least partially, the solution to them. Fossil fuels, pollution & waste, pharmaceuticals, genetics & biotechnology, the internet, wireless phones/data links, GMO food products, pandemic disease accelerated by air travel & resistance to antibiotics, these are our daily anxiety now. Religion in general is more at the center of our national attention than it was in the late 50's, especially the misrepresentation, misreading, & mis-translation (accidental or willful) of religious texts (be it the Koran or the Bible), and extreme, exclusive, mean-spirited doctrines east & west. A Canticle for Leibowitz's impact and import is not altered by which monster be the agent of our doom. A dystopic future where we are all shorn of our technological creature comforts, the population is decimated, history is lost, and daily life is a struggle even for the most fortunate, is not less likely than it was in 1959 or 1982. And we are not even really free of the nuclear threat. We do perhaps have some little bit more control over our fates, individual & collective, though it may not always seem so amid the wash of constant bombardment of scary news via satellite TV and 20 megabit internet. I find 'Canticle' to be somewhat an antidote for that, giving perspective and understanding of crisis, its aftermath, and what is lasting & valuable. Put another way, this is a book with a very high signal-to-noise ratio.

You might be forgiven for reading this review and thinking that this book is no fun. Granted, a grim subject. More well-meaning, stupid people in positions of power and influence. A uncertain outcome and no hero to save the day or sudden miraculous change of fortune. It is a serious read, but it is also fun, and VERY funny (and very often so), compelling, human, and finally re-affirming of what is good in humans and their civilization.

Strongly recommended, and I predict that whether your bent is scifi, literary, or casual as a reader, you will keep and remember this book for a long time.

This is exactly the type of novel that makes me love post-apocalyptic literature. The legend of destruction, the murky past, the joy of re-discovering what was lost - all good. And it ends with a stern warning to all of us: those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. This is one of the true classics of the genre.

A Canticle for Leibowitz was written in the shadow of the Cold War, and it's easy to be thankful that we managed not to destroy ourselves in a nuclear holocaust, but the deeper questions about the way we use knowledge and the dangers of science misapplied are important and vital. Miller puts together a riveting story about the cyclical nature of human history and the tension between faith and reason (or church and state if you prefer, although there's much more at stake than that). We are taken on a trek through the centuries as man recovers from a nuclear holocaust, the Church is left for centuries as the last guardians of human knowledge, and eventually civilization is rebuilt only to collapse again in a second nuclear war.

Throughout, we bear witness to the folly not of man's quest for knowledge, but of man's quest for knowledge without the moral compass necessary to guide that quest. For centuries, the abbey of the monks of St. Leibowitz (a scientist, and then martyr, who founded the order to protect and perpetuate science and knowledge through the post-apocalyptic dark age) is the last home to the books of the devastated civilization, and it becomes a metaphor for the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It's the knowledge contained in the books that dooms mankind to repeatedly destroy itself, and failure to eat of that fruit could save us all. But it's also more complicated than that. There is never any question that the preservation of the books is a noble calling, so it becomes even more imperative that man learn to use that knowledge wisely. Reason may provide what salvation we can hope to find in life, but it may also destroy us.

The only character to reappear throughout every age is the Wandering Jew, cursed to keep searching for the Second Coming. Interestingly enough, he never finds Jesus. We are left to wonder at the end if he will ever find peace, although the closing scene offers some hope that he will. There is an interesting scene in the beginning in which he is mistaken for Leibowitz, and another scene later in which he refers to Leibowitz as a former kinsman, and of course we are left to consider that Leibowitz - a Jew - has become one of the most important saints in a new Catholic rebirth.

The very last scene of this book is the one I find most complex. I think you could level a complain that Miller simply resorts to a (more or less) literal deus ex machina, but I also think (given the rest of this incredibly intricate book) that that would be a disservice to the author. The restoration of innocence comes from a deeply unlikely place, and the narrative arc for this character raises far more issues than it solves. At the risk of ruining one of the best puzzles Miller has to offer, though, I will say no more.

Except this: read this book. It is one of the finest works of the last half century, and it is one of the finest pieces of science fiction ever put to paper.

This novel is the story of an order of monks dedicated to preserving the knowledge of human civilization from before nuclear holocaust. Miller tells it in three parts, each separated by several centuries and showing the monks' role at each stage of civilization's rebirth. Miller succeeds in stimulating thought about what qualities of man drive him to destroy himself and then how he rebuilds. I also appreciated the fair portrayal of each side of the conflicts between religion and science in the novel.
I only wish I knew more Latin; untranslated phrases pepper the story.

The parallels of the events of this book and the events that transpired following the fall of the Roman Empire are obvious, but that doesn't make it stupid. For whatever reason, I've gotten into a "post-apocolypse" reading frenzy. Prior to this book I read "Damnition Alley" which was a fun read, but a light read. Like the forward here says, "A Canticle for Leibowitz" is definitley Literature, with a capital "L."

Some people might get frusterated with the bits of Latin that appear throughout the book, especially in the first section. However, you can get the idea from reading around the Latin. My one year of high school Latin certaintly didn't help me much as I read this book.

Aside from the Latin, and even less Hebrew, this book is a deceptivley easy read. Agian, don't let that fool you because there's a lot to pick up in this book. What's more, as I was reading the second part (with Mad Bear and the Thon) I couldn't help but wander if the path mankind takes in this book is not rather... accurate? I'd suggest that there's nothing fantastic about the human situation in the story... though I do think the Benjamin character didn't aid the realness in any way.

Undoubtably, I will read this book again.

I had never heard of Miller before (I guess he was too old for me), but when this book got into my hands, it held me for a very long time.
The story is so familiar to the modern generation, but was the first of its kind, father of the fathers. Sci-fi of the origin!
It all starts with a thing we all wait for, a nuclear war between the nations which innitiated and destroyed biggest part of the Earth. Few that were left had to look for refuge from the radiation... and so it goes.
What's interesting is the approach author took to write the book. Book itself consists of three parts: part 1- Fiat Homo (no, that's not an obsenity of Italian car), Latin for Let there be man, see Bible, 2- Fiat Lux- Let there be Light and 3-Fiat Voluntas Tua - Let there be will (or Thy Will Be Done). While CREATING the universe, God said the same, but in opposite order. So if pronounced backwards, it would equal to the same as DESTROYING the universe. That's basic idea of the book.
Starts with a man coming back to his minds after the great war.
Continues with man getting back all the inventions and creating artificial light.
Ends with....well guess.
A reader who likes to see details will also understand that author is mocking our current civilization by showing how silly it looks when a Religious civilization tries to understand what scientific civilization was doing (in our case we are trying to understand what religious guys did, e.g. Sumerians).
But if all that might seem not enough for a Sci-Fi fan, book is also field with a great humor, something that kept me laughing for days.
Conclusion: Excellent Sci-fi book! Must read for anyone, not just Science Fiction freaks. Especially recommended to the kind of people who think science does not explain everything.
Two Thumbs and a Toe Up!

There's no point in even trying to describe A Canticle for Leibowitz. It's pure Genius-with-a-capital-G. If you're literate and don't need all the whiz-bang crap that usually populates sci fi (I don't even think I would consider this sci fi, it's so... WAY beyond the norm); that is, if you can think independently, Read This Book. Don't worry about all the latin... he doesn't translate most of it but you can imply meaning from context.
So... I can't describe it, but here are some reasons why I consider Canticle pure Genius.
Canticle :
1. Offers an entirely classical and yet revolutionary reading of history.
2. Is a darn good story.
3. Is purely intellectual, working to excite thought and reason and possibility rather than visual senses or innovations.
4. Gives credit to Christianity for preserving literacy over the centuries, a fact that is usually overlooked.
5. Respects religion; most sci fi novels either disdain religious people, lampoon them, or write them off as annoying or dangerous quacks. This one treats them with the respect they deserve.
6. Is, perhaps, an incredible act of penance by the author (read the "about the author" when you finish).
7. Addresses all the serious questions in life: suicide, war, pacifism, what the role of religion in society is... the list is endless.
8. Is the epitome of intertextuality. It doesn't mention any specific works (though the Inferno is quoted), but it draws heavily (purposefully) from world and biblical history... not only so that it may enlighten us about the current text (the arrow usually goes that way), but rather to prompt us to view PREVIOUS texts in a totally different way.
9. Asks the question: Why do we mistrust our historical sources so much?
10. Hasn't dated itself a day since it was written in 1959. Not a day.
11. Contains thoughts so terrible and yet beautiful it made me cry.
So read it. Or abandon hope, ye who enter here.

A truly classic novel is one that reveals deeper layers every time it is read. Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz is one of the all-time classics of science fiction, and if it weren't such a Catholic book, would undoubtedly be rated as highly in literature as 1984 and Brave New World, though some reviewers rate it that highly anyway. Miller's book, a collection of three novelettes, is actually deeper than either of those distopian visions, possibly even surpassing C.S. Lewis's space trilogy in terms of character development, solid theology, realistic vision, and mystical insight.

Written as the cold war was heating up, Walter Miller chronicled a three-part history of one abbey on the edge of the Utah desert, starting from two centuries after a nuclear holocaust. The first part, Fiat Homo ("And He created Man"), occurs during the second Dark Ages, and involves the beatification of Isaac Leibowitz, a former weapons engineer who founded an order of monks to preserve the fragmentary knowledge that survived the nuclear war. During this time, life in the abbey reflects in loving detail the Medieval mindset that values eternity above all else. Fiat Lux ("Let there be Light") is set during the second Renaissance a few hundred years later, in which the world discovers science and international politics. Finally in Fiat Voluntas Tua ("Thy Will be Done"), events occurring in a second modern age impact the monks and nuns in ways similar to how the world affects us today.

The first layer of Canticle mesmerized me with its development of saints. This is especially well done in the first part -- Miller beautifully portrays his protagonists as unpretentious and earnest souls who were simply trying to do the best they could with the limited gifts that God gave them. Later generations often revered them, as the ordinary events in their lives mythical proportions. I really liked the ambiguity with which Miller surrounded most of the miracles he recounted -- just as in real life, miracles do not convert those who have refused to believe, while for those with faith, miracles are unnecessary for belief. Miller's portrayal of the unfolding of history is wonderful, and I never saw such a powerful anti-war retelling of WW III until I saw the playground scene in Terminator II.

A second layer of meaning can be found in the theological issues underlying the entire book. The conflict between science and religion provides much of the tension in the second Renaissance -- as it did in the (real) first one. But theological issues become most obvious in the last section, in which the Church battles the heresies of modernism and euthanasia -- as it does today. What is amazing is how accurately Miller portrayed the roots of the pro-euthaniasia groups, calling them the world's oldest and greatest heresies: that pain is the worst evil, and that society determines right and wrong. Miller's predictions about social issues are no different than those made by many popes in the Twentieth century, so perhaps his success in predicting them should not be surprising. Predictions aside, only C.S. Lewis and Peter Kreeft have been able to weave the practical consequences of theological issues into stories as well as Miller did.

The mystical third layer is usually impenetrable to the logical and engineering geeks (like me) that normally read many science fiction books. Obviously, Miller looks at suffering and death very differently than secular writers do -- as a Catholic, how could he do otherwise? But the last time I reread Canticle, what really floored me was his vision of the Immaculate Conception. Mysteries are unfathomable by nature, but sometimes it possible to catch a glimpse beyond the veil. At such times, I can understand why after seeing a vision of heaven, Thomas Aquinas put down his pen and never wrote again -- declaring that all he had ever written was straw. It is absolutely true. I owe Miller a deep debt of gratitude for the glimpse he gave me (though I haven't quite laid down my pen yet :-) ).

The only possible drawback of Canticle is that it was written before Vatican II, and Miller did not foresee the practical disappearance of Latin as the linga franca of the Church.[...]

Miller treated the Catholic Church with affection in Canticle, though not without criticism, alluding to Church politics and theological hair-splitting. His increasing disenchantment with the Church became obvious in his sequel, St. Leibowitz and the Horse Woman, which unfortunately does not even come close to his other work. Some of his short stories are as good as Canticle (especially "Gray Benediction"), so I was really hoping for a masterpiece. Unfortunately, his "sequel", set soon after the second section of Canticle, is a bitter story of political machination, wasted love, and confused theology. The protagonist is a monk who is not well suited for monastic life, so he ends up involved in the tumultuous events surrounding a succession of the Papacy. Meanwhile, he falls in love with a mysterious woman, adding further conflict and doubt to his already troubled faith. Many of the same themes appear as in Canticle -- especially the nature of Christian faith in a very human world full of conflict. However unlike Canticle, the sequel is more graphic in its portrayal of sexuality and violence, and refuses to answer any of the deep questions of faith posed to the characters. That bothered me the most, since he had done such a masterful job of doing so in Canticle. The character development in the sequel is probably better than most science fiction (with the exception of Donaldson's The Real Story), but I was *very* disappointed.

As book-reviewer Paul Ziring put it, "Perhaps an author only gets one such inspiration as Canticle per lifetime". That may be true, but like Aquinas' straw, such an inspiration sheds light for generations.

(This review originally published in Credo, January 11, 1999)

This is a long ranging story about post nuclear disaster world where the monks have retained the few scraps of pre-trepidation literature still left after the purge. Over the centuries that follow, the civilization begins to return and the order wrestles with the questions of the need to save knowledge for the future until the nuclear age again arrives. This is a thoughtful and well paced story. My problem with it is the lengthy lapses into Latin, a language I have no knowledge of or interest in. I felt left out and somewhat discriminated against by my protestant upbringing. Perhaps had I read the book and been able to skip over the lengthy Latin verses, I would have enjoyed the story more. I do feel that the Latin was not then translated to let me in on the content and that I must have missed many points and observations that one familiar with the language will enjoy.

For a book that is so broad in its scope, it is difficult to write a succinct review of "A Canticle for Leibowitz". Particularly when the personable demons of the author are weighed, the book seems more remarkable.

Set in a post-apocolyptic world, the chain of events is set into action with the accidental discovery of artifacts from the hand of St. Leibowitz. More than any character, the book is centered around these and other artifacts. With the "Simplification" that followed nuclear annihilation that took place around the 1960's, technology and knowledge has been rejected. This discovery creates a spark.

The chronology follows the monk of a Utah abbey for between six to seven hundred years. From the depths of the simplification, the monks spearhead a new enlightenment. The monks have kept many of the relics of the past including technological advances of the past. But with this new enlightenment, man falls into the same pattern to which it succumbed previously.

In the novel nothing is inherently evil, but becomes foul in the hands of man. As the author was exploring his faith from a Catholic point of view, the story explores religious and sociological issues and their justifications. Because the author has such a broad scope, it may be difficult to digest these concepts to their full benefit. Even so, this is a remarkable book.

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 preserved 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-acomplished. 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.

I read this in Fantasy and Science Fiction. St. Leibowitz (canonized 3174)is the future of the history of libraries.

* Assurbanipal (668-627 BC) at Nineveh;
* Eratosthenus (276-195 BC) at Alexandria;
* Marcus Terentius Varro (116-27 BC) of Rome;
* St. Jerome (342-420) patron saint of librarians;
* Charlemagne (742-814) at Aachen who established schools that included scriptoria;
* Thomas Jefferson (1747-1826) father of the Library of Congress;
* Anthony Panizzi (1797-1879) principal librarian, British Musem;
* Cardinal Francisco Ehrle (1845-1934) at the Vatican Library;
* José Toribio Medina (1852-1930) Spanish American bibliographer;
* Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskîa (1869-1939) founder of the Soviet library system;
* Ladies Library Associations of the State of Michigan (1876).
* Jennie Maas Flexner (1882-1944) readers' advisor;
* Vannevar Bush (1890-1974) "As We May Think";
* Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) director of Biblioteca Nacional of Argentina;
* Major Owens (1936-) librarian in Congress
* St. Leibowitz (canonized 3174).

I came to ACFL at college and have re-read it many times. The characterisation by Miller of a number of figures facing different but universal personal and religious problems strikes a chord in many friends who have also read this book. Miller's attention to detail is superb, even down to the careful amendments to the Litany of the Saints to reflect a post-holocaust list of terrors from which the sinner requests salvation. A book of hope about a subject of fear, I would recommend it to anyone.

If a man were only to write one novel in his lifetime, there are very few that could top this. This is a very disturbing, funny, and angry piece of writing. It takes place somewhere in the Utah high desert in the aftermath of a nuclear war. The abbey in the Utah desert preserves what is left of the "pre-deluge" knowledge of mankind and the technological secrets that led to the apocalypse of a Nuclear War. This is not only great science fiction, it is great modern literature. The storyline is easy to follow in itself but there are symbols and allegories lurking just underneath the surface of the prose and descriptive narratives that bring the reader back again to study this book. There is a lot of Latin and the tradition of the Catholic church as a refuge for knowledge is part of the book's central theme. What lies beneath is a morality play; the medieval mentality that technology and knowledge are some how dangerous secrets reemerges in the aftermath of the apocalypse. "Lucifer" will rise again-"lucifer" being technology-a kind of Frankenstein's monster.

The book moves through time and starts in the darkness of the post-apocalypse. A young initiate to the Utah Abbey is spending a hermitage in the desert and finds, through the help of a wandering pilgrim, an old fallout shelter. Inside the shelter he finds some notes that were written by a Jewish Engineer (the mythical founder of the Abbey) who was part of the military industrial complex. His shopping list from his wife "Pound pastrami, can of kraut, six bagels--bring home for Emma," becomes a kind of secret, cryptic document and his engineering scribbles become an ancient, secret tome. There is a kind of dark humor here that shouldn't escape the reader. Censorship and suppression of knowledge by the church is a central theme and it is very important to grasp some of the significance of this when reading this novel for the first time.

As the novel jumps through time, there is theme throughout of the circularity of man's fate in the world. Through his discoveries and technological gains, mankind creates the seeds for his own destruction. This book is a profound meditation on the dark ages and the idea that scientific knowledge can be dangerous is the central theme. It is best for the reader to familiarize his or herself with some Latin phrases and it is good to read this book with a dictionary nearby. Underneath all of the prose are hidden messages and underlying thematic currents that are masterfully conceptualized and presented.

This was the author's only novel during his life time and it is an expansion of some of his short stories that he published in the Sci-Fi Zines' of the 50's. This is definitely a period piece and hearkens back to the cold war and the threat of nuclear war which hovered over that generation. It strikes a chord for me in that when I was living through the end of the cold war, I was convinced that the end of western civilization was an inevitability. I started reading "The Road" and it led me back to this novel which I had read in my college days. This is a book that should be visited again and again. Within its pages lies a wealth of knowledge, incredible symbolism and allegory and it is an angry, profound piece of post-apocalyptic writing. It stands on its own with novels such as the Beach & the Road. I recommend it for all readers who are interested in this literary genre.

. . .with those who consider "A Canticle for Leibowitz" as the single greatest Science Fiction novel ever written.
Imagine a world, devastated by nuclear holocaust. Imagine such a world further devastated by a "Simplification" in which all traces of learning are eradicated. The only vestige of civilization to survive is the Church. In the desert, a group of monks spend their entire lives trying to save, reconstruct, and restore knowledge to the world -- but to what end?
Filled with humor, pathos, faith, and hope, this book transcends a categorical description.
Take and read. You will not regret it.
Very Highly Recommended.

I do not wish to add more substantial comments to the already long list of reviewers: this a classic, powerful, masterpiece of literature. It is about the interplay of political and religious power, and of science and ethics, posed in a very intense manner, particularly in the last chapter. I almost cried and some scenes haunted my sleep for some days, like the abbot's tomcat, refusing to die. I wish only to post a word of warning for readers whose first language is not english, like myself: it is not easy reading, both in terms of the vocabulary and the usage of the language. However, it is absolutely worth the effort as the novel is guaranteed to stir up your system of beliefs in the subject.

Having grown up watching 1950s sci fi I was familiar with many of the Doomsday tropes from such films as The World, The Flesh, & The Devil, & On The Beach. Most were fairly pessimistic. So, I was a bit surprised when I picked up & read Walter Miller's A Canticle For Leibowitz, in that it both used & subverted the genre & its tropes. The book is not really a novel, but 3 linked novellas that follow the Resurrection of Mankind after a 20th Century nuclear exchange, through the prism of a secretive order of Catholic priests, in the Utah desert, that prevent the total barbarism of what was once the United States of America. The 3 novellas are set about 600, 1200, & 1800 years in the future.
The 3 sections of A Canticle for Leibowitz give, at the same time, a cyclical view of history that's pessimistic, yet hopeful. Even the long suffered for knowledge of the past the Leibowitzians preserved cannot save humanity from near-annihilation, yet it is only near-annihilation. Humanity perdures. There is also a watcher- the only character that appears in all 3 tales- a combination of the desert wandering Jew & Lazarus- a deathless figure.

The book deals with many issues- large & small. For example, there is the recurring theme that most people work for purposes they have no grasp on. In part 1 Brother Francis wastes 15 years copying a Holy Liebowitzian artifact, only to have it stolen. In Part 2 Brother Kornhoer follows ancient blueprints & builds an electric light, unaware that he was doing so. Another theme is how history is shaped as much by its recorders as its participants. Just how much we think we know of the Mayas, Phoenicians, Chinese, Minoans, or even Neandertals, etc. may be our own imposition of biases, rather than fact.

Given that the book was written in 1959, during Cold War hysteria, yet is still relevant, is a good endorsement of its timeless quality. Yes, the idea that any organized religion- in this case Roman Catholicism- represents an answer, rather than a problem, is a bit of Miller's own näive-té &/or bias leaking through. After all, he portrays the Church as an unchanging vehicle for ignorance whether it be in the Dark Ages, our time, or the 3 future periods of mankind- a highly suspect proposition in the post-9/11 world. This is but a minor quibble, though, for the overriding point is it's a good tale- whose overall narrative takes precedent over any individual.

Although most post-Apocalyptic tales tend to be either to too gloomy or too optimistic, A Canticle For Leibowitz strikes a believable balance. Would that its subjects could do the same the book would be as superfluous as the devotion to the Blessed shopping list!

It's no Ready Player One (thank God).
If you like that sort of fiction you probably won't get books like this or the Windup Girl or Shadow & Claw or...
Let's be honest; People today want a simplistic story delivered on a silver platter with little to guess at or wonder about.
Many of the classics just aren't for these people. The writing is tricky, inventive and complicated. The stories are often allusions to something else entirely. You'll have to think some.
This is basically a compilation of three books. Though the stories all seem to be on the same rail, they occur in different times. The first begins many many years after the fall of man (nuclear war). The second book begins many years after the events of the first. The third book is again fast forwarded WAY ahead of the other two. each encompasses the same basic story (monks and the church and collected items from the past) but also a much more horrible similarity; mans fall. Humankinds inability to escape its own destructive nature. Each book seems to have its own version of a "deliverer" (Christ like figure). I thought it all pretty interesting. But I'm not a fan of Teady Player One...

Wow! That's all I can say. Many people say "Fiat Homo" is the best piece of the book--wrong. "Fiat Voluntas Tua" is the real reason to buy the book.
Fiat Homo takes place 600 years after the Flame Deluge, a mass-extinction-causing nuclear war. Note the lack of any advancements at all. Compare this to the period of time directly after the fall of Rome.
Fiat Lux takes place 1200 years after the nuclear war. Its a period of enlightenment, thus, "Let there be light." Compare this to the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance.
Fiat Voluntas Tua takes place about 2000-2500 years after the war. It is an advanced society, more advanced so than today. Compare this part to present day, keeping in mind small terrorist countries all have nuclear weaponry at present. The threat of nuclear war is stronger today than in the 1950's, 60's, 70's, or 80's.
Miller does a fabulous job. It's impossible to put the book down at some parts.
Enjoy!

"Canticle" is amazing--from its delicately layered symbolism to its overwhelming waves of sadness and, eventually, hope. This book, enjoyable enough during the first reading, is one that you will want to read over and over. Miller's carefully built metaphors seem to become deeper and more complex with each new reading. You will long to have someone else read it just so you can discuss all the issues that emerge from the novel. "Canticle" is not to be missed.

Although this book is highly rated by most, I found it slow to develop. The ironic ending didn't help, and left some unanswered question on who certain characters actually were. Not a total waste of time, but not what it was built up to be.

It's a decent book, a bit dated, a bit funny, a bit interesting, I read it in three days I think so it can go fairly quickly. It's not a book that drags on and on but as some have stated it does kind of putter around in circles while not saying much of anything. It's not hard to read through 100 pages though. Some books are just dreary to get through 10 pages for the lack of anything happening. There is a story here and Miller's writing is easily readable and things move along even if they're not terribly moving.

Time goes by, people die, that's life. That's a quick synopsis of the grandest thing this book says in about the same demeanor represented.

There is a lot of religious stuff going on. Someone that's religious may find a lot more here. I am not and I didn't but it wasn't a bad story. Just not amazing.

There are certain classic science fiction novels that everyone with any claim to being an sf fan absolutely must have read -- and this is one of them. Now fifty years old, it's still one of the most original and most literary post-holocaust novels every written. The setting is the Utah desert a couple of centuries after everything ended -- and we're never told how, but given the era in which Miller was writing, it's easy to imagine. For all that civilization has mostly failed, the Catholic Church has just kept on going, and Brother Francis Gerard is spending Lent as a hermit in search of a true vocation. He stumbles upon a fallout shelter (no one is sure any longer just what sort of beast a "fallout" is but it's probably unpleasant) and a sealed metal toolbox which turns out to include a grocery list and a couple of electronics blueprints signed by the Blessed Leibowitz -- the patron of Brother Francis's own monastery. His life become wrapped up in copying one of the blueprints on vellum as a gift for the Holy Father, but only tragedy follows. That's only the first part of the monastery's story, however, as the world tries to climb back up out of the abyss. Will it all come to an end again? Because this is a cautionary tale, written with gentle humor and fully realized characters. I read this book in high school when it was first published (one of my English teachers was a secret sf fan) and it had such an effect on me that when I decided to publish a fanzine a two decades later, my first choice as a title was THE POET'S GLASS EYE. If you haven't read this book, do so. Immediately. If you have, but it's been awhile, read it again.

This book has an admittedly clumsy title that makes for a difficult sell intially. When I have recommended this book to people, their first reaction is usually a puzzled look at hearing the title. However, this book is remarkable in every aspect. Miller paints a tale here that draws you in from the beginning and leaves you amazed through the end. There are elements of dark comedy, tragedy, theology and human nature here that will make you think and reflect. The book is a bit dated as it was written in the Cold War era. If you can make the mental journey with Miller back to that point in history, you will not be disappointed. It also helps to understand a bit about Miller's life--he was a Roman Catholic electrical engineer who served as a bomber pilot in WWII. This book won the Hugo Award in 1961 and belongs among the classics of the genre. If you love sci-fi that has substance and meaning, this is a book you will enjoy.

Good, enjoyable SF. Always interesting and often funny, though no in a laugh out loud way. But also a serious satire with a somber message. "Will we ever learn?" seems to be the question this book is asking and it seems the answer isn't very promising. But this book is not about the destruction of mankind; it is about mankinds tedency to destroy himself but not to give up--to rise up again even if it's only leads to more destruction.

It took me years to get through this book. Honest. And I'm a fast reader, going through at least a book a week. I first picked this up about ten years ago and couldn't get past the first ten pages. I've tried several more times over the past decade, never getting beyond page 20. I finally forced myself to sit and read it all the way through. Was it worth it? Yes... and no.

The concept is brilliant, and the concept is what makes A Canticle for Leibowitz deserving of being called a classic. The end of the world as we know it has come, and people are forced to survive as best they can. Most people chose to survive by throwing away everything that seemed related to causing the end - from modern day conveniences, such as electricity, to the basics of civilization, such as books. From this new beginning, post-apocolypse, the reader is taken on a journey spaning thousands of years. It is truly an awe inspiring journey, and leaves the reader both sad and hopeful for humanity.

BUT - and this is a big but - the reader isn't given a single character to relate to during this journey. Or a single character to like. With no one to root for, other than a Wandering Jew character seen occassionally, the reader is left without any real desire to see how the book ends. And worse, the reader doesn't really care.

I do agree that this is a must read for any hardcore sci fi buff, and for anyone that enjoys end of the world books. But be prepared to struggle through it and to feel somewhat underwhelmed by the end.

This novel contains the best and most comprehensible portrayal of the workings of the medeaval mind I have ever seen. Brother Francis and his abbot demonstrate the typical and highest levels of that mind; something totally forgotten since the age of skepticism. For this reason alone this is a great book. Miller apparently only had one book in him; but what a book it was! This is one of only a half dozen books in my life that I have ever re-read.

Miller reminds me of Bizet, the composer of the great opera "Carmen". Both Bizet and Miller are essentially one-work men, but what a work each has created! Just as "Carmen" is recommended as an opera for those who otherwise hate opera (poor souls), so do I recommend "A Canticle for Leibowitz" for those who otherwise hate science fiction (like me). It is a stunning book. I've read it several times, and our book club went crazy for it.

This book is excellent. Just a bit weird. A Canticle for Leibowitz is intended to show that Humanity may be able to rise from its mistakes (a nuclear war), but repeat the exact same mistake. In other words, Humanity goes boom. Twice. Before the beginning of the book (Fiat Homo), and in the end (Fiat Voluntas Tua).
One other reason that made me find this book was the fact that it teaches you about the process involved in canonizing someone.

I can't add much to what previous reviewers have already stated. A Canticle for Leibowitz deserves to be mentioned along with the greats - Foundation, Hyperion, Ender, Dune and Stranger In A Strange Land. What many authors were able to accomplish across multiple volumes, Miller accomplishes in one intricate novel. And while its `science fiction,' Miller's story is based on emotions, faith, belief...things that are of value not only in the world he creates but in ours as well.

I first read this book 45 years ago. I bought a new copy and read it again. There is a fine line between Sci-Fi and Literary Fiction. I am no literary expert, but this Sci-Fi classic story really is literary fiction. This is a well written story of a post-apocalyptic and dystopian future world.

It starts out in a post-apocalyptic nuclear winter future "middle ages" in a monastery that is preserving science instead of religion and continues until the world is rebuilt. But no - we always find a way to destroy ourselves again. I liked the technique the author used by applying "cycles" to the telling of the story. This book really makes you reflect on the stupidity of mankind. Reading it again as an adult, you appreciate it more what the author is trying to say. How we destroy our societies - rebuild and - destroy it again.

It is still in the top 100 of all time science fiction listings. I recommend this book for a person who likes literary fiction, but never really read a science fiction book before.

Science fiction writers often steer clear of religion in their works, partly because of the mistaken belief that science and faith are incompatible, and this is a shame, since the relationship between faith and science can be a strong and interesting one. "A Canticle for Liebowitz" brings us a post-apocalyptic world where the remnants of science become intertwined with faith in a most fascinating way. Liebowitz, a figure who in this world has become the focal point of myth, was once an engineer, and represents the world we all know: technological, worldly. But for those who have survived Miller's apocalypse, new meanings are needed to explain their world, and its relationship with the old.

What is most interesting about "A Canticle for Liebowitz" is the fact that the monks who have gathered and maintained Liebowitz's relics ask the same questions that those who seek answers through faith always have, and as a result their journey is more familiar to us than we might expect at first. Miller succeeds on many levels with this book: rather than making action the focal point of the story, as science fiction novels commonly do, he focuses on broader themes. The novel has multiple protagonists, which again is unusual in the genre.

The themes of this story are woven together well. They include the relationship between technology, which tends to be inventive, and religious dogma, which is skeptical of such innovation, the relationship between politics and religion, with each attempting to use the other (often with negative results), and the very nature of human history; are we condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past? Miller's novel wrestles with these, and makes us wrestle with them too. This book is worth reading and then re-reading.

I first read A Canticle for Leibowitz in 1974. It is post-post-Nuke, perhaps the greatest post-catastrophy book ever written.

I just read the Wikipedia article on "Canticle" and was very surprised by it's reputation.

Miller's writing style is very spare - the reader is free to create as much personal imagery as desired. His ironic humor is bone-dry and very pointed, making it all the mroe amusing. "Canticle" can be read rapidly and superficially, but deserves some additional think-work from the reader.

I recommend with top marks.

"A Canticle for Leibowitz" chronicles the rebuilding of "civilization" after nuclear holocaust. It has three distinct sections, each separated by hundreds of years, centering around life at a desert monastary named in honor of a very unusual "saint". Since each section tells its own story, and could be read separately, I'm going to rate each one separately.
PART ONE: FIAT HOMO (5 stars) Tipped off by a mysterious old man (could it be Saint Leibowitz himself?), a nervous novice monk discovers an underground chamber that contains some highly significant relics, for which he suffers abuse from a fearful and sadistic abbot. Eventually, he is sent on a dangerous journey to New Rome, under constant threat from primitive nomads. The ending of this section is rather chilling and ironic, much like a Flannery O'Connor short story.
PART TWO: FIAT LUX (3 stars) This is the only section among the three that really is not able to stand alone as a self-contained story with a definitive ending. I suppose this could be considered the "Empire Strikes Back" of the "trilogy". The basis of this part is the mistrust that exists between religion and science, when a scholar visits the monastary to study the ancient Leibowitz documents and finds, to his astonishment, one of the monks has invented (or re-invented) the electric light. The old man reappears (remember, this is hundreds of years after the first story) as a rather significant player in this section, but, ultimately, this story is merely transitional.
PART THREE: FIAT VOLUNTUAS TUA (5 stars) I wanted to give this part 6 or 7 stars, but that would be cheating. This last section is absolutely brilliant. Many hundreds of years later, the inevitable happens, proving that mankind apparently never learns from its mistakes. The very wise abbot (it is interesting how each abbot in these stories is wiser than the last) sees the handwriting on the wall and commissions a group of monastics, accompanied by the relics of Saint Leibowitz, to escape by rocket ship to a distant planet to guarantee the perpetuity of the order and, indeed, of the faith itself. Meanwhile, the abbot and a medical doctor grapple over the appropriateness of euthanasia for suffering victims of the fallout. (Any groups or classes that might be discussing the subject of mercy killing would benefit greatly by reading this section since it lays out the opposing arguments very clearly and forcefully). Although the ultimate disaster takes place, hope is still found in the most unlikely person: a mutant, two-headed woman. And so we begin again.
This book takes a very positive, optimistic view of religion, while it is pessimistic about mankind in general. The stories included here work on many levels, and the book as a whole makes for an enlightening reading experience.

This book is still incredible and incredibly prophetic 50 years after it was written. Monks try to preserve what is left of a culture after a nuclear war. The three sections of the novel each follow a different era in the history of the monastery. But in style and content-a science fiction story about a group of people trying to preserve knowledge after the fall of civilization told over several generations- is very much comparable to the Foundation series(also excellent). The main difference between these two stories is that the former is very much imbued with a Catholic worldview while the other has a more secular scientific perspective. Miller spend much of his own novel considering that worldview. One of the themes seems to be this:technological progress and moral progress are not synonymous. The same science that gave us all our modern wonders also gave us the capability to destroy it all in a nuclear war. Of course, the same could be said of the church. Perhaps that is Miller's one fault in the book. The church almost seems too perfect in this book. While Catholics believe Christ is perfect, that doesn't mean the church itself is always perfect(thought it is always guided by Christ to perfect itself). The same religion that gave us monks who preserved and revived learning also gave us the inquisition. In science, religion or any field, humans can make mistakes.

Need I say more? I could, but I can't because I'm speechless after finishing it, after finally "getting it" -- what the author had been saying throughout the story and how skillfully he did that. This novel is a work of art on too many levels to discuss here. It's stunning, intelligent, original, unexpected, mystical, even humorous at times. It's been called a masterpiece because that's exactly what it is. Ironically, the last Act of this tragic three-act story (consisting of three stories/novelettes that were put together into one novel)is not in the book. It takes place years later, when after decades of being a reclusive and suffering from PTSD (from WWII, during which he bombed a monastery in Italy, an event that traumatized him to the point of inspiring him to write this amazing story), Miller commits suicide. This one goes in my personal list of best fiction novels of all time.

The story presented in this novel of alternate worlds is about renaissance after an Atomic Flame Deluge on earth. It describes the future dark ages, which is also presented as a warning. The author of this novel conveys the warning by modifying and designing the story in such a way to interest the reader and convey the warning. He conveys the warning effectively by changing our inner attitudes towards the technology. We are being informed every time in the story that mankind has self-destructive tendencies. This warning is explained in an indirect way, (meaning that the author doesn't clearly say it as a warning, he delivers us the warning by the use of this story).
Wry, descriptive, engaging and vastly disturbing, Miller's prose hurls the reader into a parallel universe: Earth as it might have been if we had destroyed ourselves with nuclear weapons. The story follows the lives of the Monks of the Leibowitz Abbey from the discovery in an abandoned bomb shelter of the actual relics of Saint Leibowitz, the blueprint and the sacred shopping list, to the struggles of the Monks against the violent warlords who rule the world around them and the dispossessed Papal presence in New Rome.
The warning is explained to an extent which make the reader think specifically of the things, which are happening in the novel and recognize the similarities with the world that we ourselves live in. The writer achieves this by modifying and designing characters, themes, emotions and using certain language techniques. Writer has also included dark humor, anger and struggle between good and evil in order to convey the warning.

Reading these reviews, you will find all kinds of disagreement - and that is exactly what you expect in great literature. Different events can be interpreted in different ways because the author allows us to find meaning for ourselves. And that quest for meaning is the theme of this book.

The author, Walter Miller, never wrote another full-length book. For that matter, this book is really 3 novellas strung together. I wouldn't really call this book science fiction any more than I would describe Plato's 'Republic' or More's 'Utopia' as science fiction. There are no aliens or the like; only a novel set in the future.

The 3 novellas concern 3 periods of times in the 2000 or so years following a nuclear holocaust in the 1960's (which would have been 10 years after the time the book was written). In one sense this book compares to several other post-nuclear holocaust books written in the same time-period - Frank's 'Alas, Babylon' and Shute's 'On the Beach'. These latter two works, though excellent reading, really are just novels set in such a period. They really don't have any depth or philosophical questioning other than blowing up the world would be bad. About the level of a medical school interviewer who once asked me what I thought of Nuclear War - trying to get at my politics to see if he would let me in. I, of course, responded, "Well, I'm for it, naturally" - and it was all downhill from there. Anyway, the point of this book is not necessarily that nuclear holocaust would be bad. Unfortunately, to the simple-minded, this seems to be the theme of the book.

In my opinion, the theme is the long battle regarding knowledge and its applications - a novel length exposition of the question "Was gaining the Knowledge of Good and Evil a good thing, or a bad thing?"

The unifying theme of the 3 novellas is that all are set in a future monastery named after a survivor of the holocaust named Leibowitz trying to preserve remnants of past knowledge for a brighter future. The book is never clear on who or what exactly Saint Leibowitz was. Clues are given such as finding his workbox with a grocery list and electronic repair equipment. Was he a scientist or an appliance repairman? You're never really sure since the author, wisely, never tells us. The only recurring character (other than the dead Leibowitz) is a wandering Jew who turns out to be that Lazarus who was raised from the dead and told to wait until Christ came again in some non-biblical legends. This character calls Leibowitz one of his people, though the basis for this is never made clear (could it just be based on the name?). This would be ironic because a Catholic monastery is based on this St. Leibowitz. At any rate, this Leibowitz seems to have tried to save lost knowledge at a time when the remaining people on earth were intent on destroying all such knowledge and anyone who was an intellectual or scientist was killed. From these vague origins, a monastery in the deserts of the Southwest, somewhere near Utah, becomes established based on trying to carry out Leibowitz's mission.

One of Miller's plot devices is being vague. Like mumbled dialogue or poor lighting in a movie, this leaves the reader with a sense of confusion, unease and wonderment that adds to the depth of the exposition. There is no neat wrapping-up of events and the author never explicitly states what he is trying to tell us. Another device is the Catholic hierarchy and teachings in the book. This is an important part of the book, but in spite of what anti-relgious reviewers rant about, this does not detract from the book but adds to it. There is also a lot of un-translated Latin. If you attended catechism (Catholic lay education), you would recognize much, but even so, you will still need a Latin dictionary or Google unless your Latin is better than mine. Still another device is the humor, much of which is quite dark. There is a surprising amount of humor in this book about a post-holocaust world.

The first novella is set 600 years in the future - in a kind of Dark Age where mutants roam the earth and there are no modern inventions. The monks of the monastery struggle to compile knowledge and store it - they really don't know much at all. For example, the main character in this part of the book, Brother Francis, spends his life illuminating a copy of a mundane wiring diagram, not realizing that this particular relic really has no utility. This book brings to mind the Irish monasteries of the Middle ages that copied and saved knowledge from the Romans and Greeks even though no new studies were done. This would place Miller ahead of his time since this is a fairly new theme.

The second novella is set in a renaissance where the world has begun to rebuild and a scholar from a new power-center comes to the Abbey and reviews the records kept from the last millenium. The theme of this section concerns government and secular knowledge and power versus individualism and spirituality.

The last novella portrays another advanced civilization - so advanced they even have space exploration, though this is never of major importance other than a place for refugees to flee to. Again, Miller was ahead of his time because all they really had were a few satellites at the time Miller wrote this book. I personally found this last section the most haunting. A major part of this book is spent on euthanasia and suicide with the head of the Abbey trying to teach one person at a time that life is too valuable to waste or end prematurely even if one is suffering.

As a physician I see suffering 20 to 40 times a day. It always seems to surprise many of my patients, but all of us suffer and all of us will die. (Except for me, of course.) There is a modern-day malaise that exists in so many of my patients that wasn't there only a few years ago. And the only people who really avoid it are the spiritual - not necessarily the religious - but the spiritual. So many people with suffering that is really minor when compared to the suffering of those who lived in the past with death, disease and pestilence being the rule rather than the exception like today. A minor arthritis brings despair, oxycontin addiction, and a wish for socialism where all the patient's neighbors should be forced to fund every possible medical desire of the patient. These patients seem so alone, even as they lash out and make everyone around them, even their loved ones, miserable. And they frequently become suicidal. And for these reasons, I found the last part of this book haunting as the poor Priest struggles desperately to prevent people from using a government-sponsored euthanasia/suicide center.

We all suffer and we all die. Some suffer and die early and some late. My patients who have lost loved ones seem to suffer more than those dying of cancer. This theodicy, the vindication of God and the reason for suffering and pain, is at the root of this last novella. The author does not give an answer to this most basic question, but only lots of food for thought.

Overall 5 stars because of the quality of the theme, the humorous almost whimsical happenings in the midst of such tragic occurrences, and the imagination shown by this author. The only negatives would be too much un-translated Latin, an expectation of understanding the Catholic hierarchy, and occasional slow parts. Vincet Veritas, MEB

Well, amazing. So many novels in this general genre completely discount the power, much less the existence, of faith and ritual in human culture, or else they deride it. This novel shows the monastic community at its core as a genuine and human place, most of its inhabitants at least trying to achieve meaning and goodness in a world suffering the aftermath of disaster. There are shadows here of the Christian monks protecting European culture in the early Middle Ages ... the struggle with the meaning of suffering, the skepticism of easy "miracles," and the odd play of faith and distrust in technology in the context of a tenacious Judeo-Christian culture, are examples of some of the issues that enrich this story. Enjoy!!!

I had heard of this book a long time ago and knew somthing about the plot. I went into the book with high expectations, as I had always heard this book was a classic. For the most part I was not disappointed.

The book centers around a monastary established following an all-out nuclear war. Not only did the bombs destroy the physical accomplishments of civilization but the survivors reacted to the holocaust with an utter hate towards science and the written word. Leibowitz and others like him saved some of the books from destruction but at a heavy personal cost. The Church came to be the collector and preserver of the old knowledge, just as they had done following the end of the Roman Empire

The book looks at three points in history: the Second Dark Ages, the dawn of new renaissance (which ironically will also see considerable warfare) and mankind's return to space and the danger of another nuclear war. A little slow at times it is still an excellent work and I recommend it.

I first read this book 45 years ago. I bought a new copy and read it again. There is a fine line between Sci-Fi and Literary Fiction. I am no literary expert, but this Sci-Fi classic story really is literary fiction. This is a well written story of a post-apocalyptic and dystopian future world.

It starts out in a post-apocalyptic nuclear winter future "middle ages" in a monastery that is preserving science instead of religion and continues until the world is rebuilt. But no - we always find a way to destroy ourselves again. I liked the technique the author used by applying "cycles" to the telling of the story. This book really makes you reflect on the stupidity of mankind. Reading it again as an adult, you appreciate it more what the author is trying to say. How we destroy our societies - rebuild and - destroy it again.

It is still in the top 100 of all time science fiction listings. I recommend this book for a person who likes literary fiction, but never really read a science fiction book before.

Science fiction writers often steer clear of religion in their works, partly because of the mistaken belief that science and faith are incompatible, and this is a shame, since the relationship between faith and science can be a strong and interesting one. "A Canticle for Liebowitz" brings us a post-apocalyptic world where the remnants of science become intertwined with faith in a most fascinating way. Liebowitz, a figure who in this world has become the focal point of myth, was once an engineer, and represents the world we all know: technological, worldly. But for those who have survived Miller's apocalypse, new meanings are needed to explain their world, and its relationship with the old.

What is most interesting about "A Canticle for Liebowitz" is the fact that the monks who have gathered and maintained Liebowitz's relics ask the same questions that those who seek answers through faith always have, and as a result their journey is more familiar to us than we might expect at first. Miller succeeds on many levels with this book: rather than making action the focal point of the story, as science fiction novels commonly do, he focuses on broader themes. The novel has multiple protagonists, which again is unusual in the genre.

The themes of this story are woven together well. They include the relationship between technology, which tends to be inventive, and religious dogma, which is skeptical of such innovation, the relationship between politics and religion, with each attempting to use the other (often with negative results), and the very nature of human history; are we condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past? Miller's novel wrestles with these, and makes us wrestle with them too. This book is worth reading and then re-reading.

I first read A Canticle for Leibowitz in 1974. It is post-post-Nuke, perhaps the greatest post-catastrophy book ever written.

I just read the Wikipedia article on "Canticle" and was very surprised by it's reputation.

Miller's writing style is very spare - the reader is free to create as much personal imagery as desired. His ironic humor is bone-dry and very pointed, making it all the mroe amusing. "Canticle" can be read rapidly and superficially, but deserves some additional think-work from the reader.

I recommend with top marks.

"A Canticle for Leibowitz" chronicles the rebuilding of "civilization" after nuclear holocaust. It has three distinct sections, each separated by hundreds of years, centering around life at a desert monastary named in honor of a very unusual "saint". Since each section tells its own story, and could be read separately, I'm going to rate each one separately.
PART ONE: FIAT HOMO (5 stars) Tipped off by a mysterious old man (could it be Saint Leibowitz himself?), a nervous novice monk discovers an underground chamber that contains some highly significant relics, for which he suffers abuse from a fearful and sadistic abbot. Eventually, he is sent on a dangerous journey to New Rome, under constant threat from primitive nomads. The ending of this section is rather chilling and ironic, much like a Flannery O'Connor short story.
PART TWO: FIAT LUX (3 stars) This is the only section among the three that really is not able to stand alone as a self-contained story with a definitive ending. I suppose this could be considered the "Empire Strikes Back" of the "trilogy". The basis of this part is the mistrust that exists between religion and science, when a scholar visits the monastary to study the ancient Leibowitz documents and finds, to his astonishment, one of the monks has invented (or re-invented) the electric light. The old man reappears (remember, this is hundreds of years after the first story) as a rather significant player in this section, but, ultimately, this story is merely transitional.
PART THREE: FIAT VOLUNTUAS TUA (5 stars) I wanted to give this part 6 or 7 stars, but that would be cheating. This last section is absolutely brilliant. Many hundreds of years later, the inevitable happens, proving that mankind apparently never learns from its mistakes. The very wise abbot (it is interesting how each abbot in these stories is wiser than the last) sees the handwriting on the wall and commissions a group of monastics, accompanied by the relics of Saint Leibowitz, to escape by rocket ship to a distant planet to guarantee the perpetuity of the order and, indeed, of the faith itself. Meanwhile, the abbot and a medical doctor grapple over the appropriateness of euthanasia for suffering victims of the fallout. (Any groups or classes that might be discussing the subject of mercy killing would benefit greatly by reading this section since it lays out the opposing arguments very clearly and forcefully). Although the ultimate disaster takes place, hope is still found in the most unlikely person: a mutant, two-headed woman. And so we begin again.
This book takes a very positive, optimistic view of religion, while it is pessimistic about mankind in general. The stories included here work on many levels, and the book as a whole makes for an enlightening reading experience.

This book is still incredible and incredibly prophetic 50 years after it was written. Monks try to preserve what is left of a culture after a nuclear war. The three sections of the novel each follow a different era in the history of the monastery. But in style and content-a science fiction story about a group of people trying to preserve knowledge after the fall of civilization told over several generations- is very much comparable to the Foundation series(also excellent). The main difference between these two stories is that the former is very much imbued with a Catholic worldview while the other has a more secular scientific perspective. Miller spend much of his own novel considering that worldview. One of the themes seems to be this:technological progress and moral progress are not synonymous. The same science that gave us all our modern wonders also gave us the capability to destroy it all in a nuclear war. Of course, the same could be said of the church. Perhaps that is Miller's one fault in the book. The church almost seems too perfect in this book. While Catholics believe Christ is perfect, that doesn't mean the church itself is always perfect(thought it is always guided by Christ to perfect itself). The same religion that gave us monks who preserved and revived learning also gave us the inquisition. In science, religion or any field, humans can make mistakes.

Need I say more? I could, but I can't because I'm speechless after finishing it, after finally "getting it" -- what the author had been saying throughout the story and how skillfully he did that. This novel is a work of art on too many levels to discuss here. It's stunning, intelligent, original, unexpected, mystical, even humorous at times. It's been called a masterpiece because that's exactly what it is. Ironically, the last Act of this tragic three-act story (consisting of three stories/novelettes that were put together into one novel)is not in the book. It takes place years later, when after decades of being a reclusive and suffering from PTSD (from WWII, during which he bombed a monastery in Italy, an event that traumatized him to the point of inspiring him to write this amazing story), Miller commits suicide. This one goes in my personal list of best fiction novels of all time.

The story presented in this novel of alternate worlds is about renaissance after an Atomic Flame Deluge on earth. It describes the future dark ages, which is also presented as a warning. The author of this novel conveys the warning by modifying and designing the story in such a way to interest the reader and convey the warning. He conveys the warning effectively by changing our inner attitudes towards the technology. We are being informed every time in the story that mankind has self-destructive tendencies. This warning is explained in an indirect way, (meaning that the author doesn't clearly say it as a warning, he delivers us the warning by the use of this story).
Wry, descriptive, engaging and vastly disturbing, Miller's prose hurls the reader into a parallel universe: Earth as it might have been if we had destroyed ourselves with nuclear weapons. The story follows the lives of the Monks of the Leibowitz Abbey from the discovery in an abandoned bomb shelter of the actual relics of Saint Leibowitz, the blueprint and the sacred shopping list, to the struggles of the Monks against the violent warlords who rule the world around them and the dispossessed Papal presence in New Rome.
The warning is explained to an extent which make the reader think specifically of the things, which are happening in the novel and recognize the similarities with the world that we ourselves live in. The writer achieves this by modifying and designing characters, themes, emotions and using certain language techniques. Writer has also included dark humor, anger and struggle between good and evil in order to convey the warning.

Reading these reviews, you will find all kinds of disagreement - and that is exactly what you expect in great literature. Different events can be interpreted in different ways because the author allows us to find meaning for ourselves. And that quest for meaning is the theme of this book.

The author, Walter Miller, never wrote another full-length book. For that matter, this book is really 3 novellas strung together. I wouldn't really call this book science fiction any more than I would describe Plato's 'Republic' or More's 'Utopia' as science fiction. There are no aliens or the like; only a novel set in the future.

The 3 novellas concern 3 periods of times in the 2000 or so years following a nuclear holocaust in the 1960's (which would have been 10 years after the time the book was written). In one sense this book compares to several other post-nuclear holocaust books written in the same time-period - Frank's 'Alas, Babylon' and Shute's 'On the Beach'. These latter two works, though excellent reading, really are just novels set in such a period. They really don't have any depth or philosophical questioning other than blowing up the world would be bad. About the level of a medical school interviewer who once asked me what I thought of Nuclear War - trying to get at my politics to see if he would let me in. I, of course, responded, "Well, I'm for it, naturally" - and it was all downhill from there. Anyway, the point of this book is not necessarily that nuclear holocaust would be bad. Unfortunately, to the simple-minded, this seems to be the theme of the book.

In my opinion, the theme is the long battle regarding knowledge and its applications - a novel length exposition of the question "Was gaining the Knowledge of Good and Evil a good thing, or a bad thing?"

The unifying theme of the 3 novellas is that all are set in a future monastery named after a survivor of the holocaust named Leibowitz trying to preserve remnants of past knowledge for a brighter future. The book is never clear on who or what exactly Saint Leibowitz was. Clues are given such as finding his workbox with a grocery list and electronic repair equipment. Was he a scientist or an appliance repairman? You're never really sure since the author, wisely, never tells us. The only recurring character (other than the dead Leibowitz) is a wandering Jew who turns out to be that Lazarus who was raised from the dead and told to wait until Christ came again in some non-biblical legends. This character calls Leibowitz one of his people, though the basis for this is never made clear (could it just be based on the name?). This would be ironic because a Catholic monastery is based on this St. Leibowitz. At any rate, this Leibowitz seems to have tried to save lost knowledge at a time when the remaining people on earth were intent on destroying all such knowledge and anyone who was an intellectual or scientist was killed. From these vague origins, a monastery in the deserts of the Southwest, somewhere near Utah, becomes established based on trying to carry out Leibowitz's mission.

One of Miller's plot devices is being vague. Like mumbled dialogue or poor lighting in a movie, this leaves the reader with a sense of confusion, unease and wonderment that adds to the depth of the exposition. There is no neat wrapping-up of events and the author never explicitly states what he is trying to tell us. Another device is the Catholic hierarchy and teachings in the book. This is an important part of the book, but in spite of what anti-relgious reviewers rant about, this does not detract from the book but adds to it. There is also a lot of un-translated Latin. If you attended catechism (Catholic lay education), you would recognize much, but even so, you will still need a Latin dictionary or Google unless your Latin is better than mine. Still another device is the humor, much of which is quite dark. There is a surprising amount of humor in this book about a post-holocaust world.

The first novella is set 600 years in the future - in a kind of Dark Age where mutants roam the earth and there are no modern inventions. The monks of the monastery struggle to compile knowledge and store it - they really don't know much at all. For example, the main character in this part of the book, Brother Francis, spends his life illuminating a copy of a mundane wiring diagram, not realizing that this particular relic really has no utility. This book brings to mind the Irish monasteries of the Middle ages that copied and saved knowledge from the Romans and Greeks even though no new studies were done. This would place Miller ahead of his time since this is a fairly new theme.

The second novella is set in a renaissance where the world has begun to rebuild and a scholar from a new power-center comes to the Abbey and reviews the records kept from the last millenium. The theme of this section concerns government and secular knowledge and power versus individualism and spirituality.

The last novella portrays another advanced civilization - so advanced they even have space exploration, though this is never of major importance other than a place for refugees to flee to. Again, Miller was ahead of his time because all they really had were a few satellites at the time Miller wrote this book. I personally found this last section the most haunting. A major part of this book is spent on euthanasia and suicide with the head of the Abbey trying to teach one person at a time that life is too valuable to waste or end prematurely even if one is suffering.

As a physician I see suffering 20 to 40 times a day. It always seems to surprise many of my patients, but all of us suffer and all of us will die. (Except for me, of course.) There is a modern-day malaise that exists in so many of my patients that wasn't there only a few years ago. And the only people who really avoid it are the spiritual - not necessarily the religious - but the spiritual. So many people with suffering that is really minor when compared to the suffering of those who lived in the past with death, disease and pestilence being the rule rather than the exception like today. A minor arthritis brings despair, oxycontin addiction, and a wish for socialism where all the patient's neighbors should be forced to fund every possible medical desire of the patient. These patients seem so alone, even as they lash out and make everyone around them, even their loved ones, miserable. And they frequently become suicidal. And for these reasons, I found the last part of this book haunting as the poor Priest struggles desperately to prevent people from using a government-sponsored euthanasia/suicide center.

We all suffer and we all die. Some suffer and die early and some late. My patients who have lost loved ones seem to suffer more than those dying of cancer. This theodicy, the vindication of God and the reason for suffering and pain, is at the root of this last novella. The author does not give an answer to this most basic question, but only lots of food for thought.

Overall 5 stars because of the quality of the theme, the humorous almost whimsical happenings in the midst of such tragic occurrences, and the imagination shown by this author. The only negatives would be too much un-translated Latin, an expectation of understanding the Catholic hierarchy, and occasional slow parts. Vincet Veritas, MEB

Well, amazing. So many novels in this general genre completely discount the power, much less the existence, of faith and ritual in human culture, or else they deride it. This novel shows the monastic community at its core as a genuine and human place, most of its inhabitants at least trying to achieve meaning and goodness in a world suffering the aftermath of disaster. There are shadows here of the Christian monks protecting European culture in the early Middle Ages ... the struggle with the meaning of suffering, the skepticism of easy "miracles," and the odd play of faith and distrust in technology in the context of a tenacious Judeo-Christian culture, are examples of some of the issues that enrich this story. Enjoy!!!

I had heard of this book a long time ago and knew somthing about the plot. I went into the book with high expectations, as I had always heard this book was a classic. For the most part I was not disappointed.

The book centers around a monastary established following an all-out nuclear war. Not only did the bombs destroy the physical accomplishments of civilization but the survivors reacted to the holocaust with an utter hate towards science and the written word. Leibowitz and others like him saved some of the books from destruction but at a heavy personal cost. The Church came to be the collector and preserver of the old knowledge, just as they had done following the end of the Roman Empire

The book looks at three points in history: the Second Dark Ages, the dawn of new renaissance (which ironically will also see considerable warfare) and mankind's return to space and the danger of another nuclear war. A little slow at times it is still an excellent work and I recommend it.

A Canticle for Leibowitz is one the few science fiction novels elevated to the status of high literature by the literati, even as they relegate the rest to us hoi polloi. Miller's first (and almost only) novel rightly belongs on the shelf next to George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. Like 1984 and Brave New World, Canticle is a negative utopia, but unlike either of them, this novel does not exist to point out the dangers of any one extreme, but to weave together an ironic tale of a society which slowly meanders from one extreme to another so as to illustrate how one state of affairs ultimately leads to its opposite.

Miller served in the Italian theatre during World War II, participating in the infamous shelling of Montecassino, a monastery built by St. Bennedict in the 4th century. The shelling devestated the ancient structure, which had also been repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt in previous centuries.

This book is Miller's penance.

The cyclical nature of Montecassino's rise and fall was not lost on Mr. Miller, nor was the fact that the monastery was built upon the ruins of a Roman citadel that also had fallen. Over the millenia, Montecassino saw glory and decline several times, much like the history of the western world.

The book is divided into three sections that mirror western civiliation's own cyclical rise and fall. The first section, entitled Fiat Lux, is a post apocalyptic world that bears a striking resemblence to the middle ages. Here, we are introduced to the order of Liebowitz, a monastic community devoted to its founder. The monks take a long view concerning their namesake's canonization, as well as everything else in their lives. To emphasize this point, we meet Francis, a monk whose life reflects the values inherent in his time. Our visit with Francis is doomed to end, however, because the narrative shifts six hundred years into a Renaissance, and again to a scientific age. The shifts in surroundings are less jarring than the abrupt change in values exhibited by the world at large. One constant, however, is the attitude displayed at the order of the Blessed (and finally Saint) Leibowitz.

The anger with with Miller writes this book is famously recognized. What is less clear is exactly what Miller rages against. What appears to be a critique of ignorance might be a disguised defense of it, and a condemnation of dangers of knowledge. Perhaps, on the other hand, the real danger is only the use of knowledge. The one conclusion this reader can make is that Miller doesn't warn us any one element of progress, but of the process itself.

To describe the narrative further would be to give away too much. Suffice it to say that several of the voices in this novel may be Miller's, or may be your own. In fact, the lesson this novel teaches is too ambiguous not to depend on your interpretation. That is perhaps, what makes it great.

I won't explain what I mean by 'tragic irony', as it would reveal the latter part of the novel. Perhaps I can say that it's ironic given the author's death.

I read 'CFL' when I was 21, and was blown away. I read it age 45 and was similarly blown.

If anything, it reminds me of Russell Hoban's 'Riddley Walker' (early 80's). Both are brilliantly inventive post-apocalyptic novels. Hoban is more secular; Miller is more religious, but ultimately neither gets in the way of a phenomenal story.

I enjoy the conceit that, in a distant future, dark-age religion is the bastion of enlightenment. A conflicted POV, and I'm sure Walter was conflicted, too.

I'm sorry; I've been cryptic. If you enjoy magnificent, epic science fiction, and have not read this, you're like a classical music fan who hasn't heard Beethoven's Violin Concerto.

It's a tortured, visionary epic.

This is a great all-around tale. Fans of more story-driven sci-fi will enjoy as much as people who simply enjoy a great story. One of only 2 sci-fi books that I own (see also 'The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich' by P. K. Dick). A grim warning of what could become of the world after a nuclear holocaust-type event wipes out everything..leaving only brief and hard-to-descipher bits of written language from 'the past' (our present)..in this case..a grocery list from a Jewish family..including bagels! Funny and brutal, this is a oft-forgotten or overlooked classic.

When I saw this book referenced on Mary Doria Russell's website - AND saw that she had written a new introduction to it - I had to buy this book. "The Sparrow" and "Children of God" are two of my favorite books.

I agree with her that this post-apocalyptic novel has some eerie similarities to today's horrible "Learning, knowledge, science and facts are evil and we should just spend money and listen to George Bush" culture. One of the most telling quotes is this: "To minimize suffering and maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they become the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law - a perversion. Inevitably then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites - maximum suffering and minimum security."

But I think I missed many of the ground breaking aspects of the book. (Either that or I just read it in the wrong decade - which is often the case.)

I certainly sympathize with the monks and their despair at Man's seemingly unrelenting determination to destroy itself...along with Man's complete inability to learn from the past. I sympathize with them and certainly agree with them...but I don't FEEL what they are feeling. There was a certain...distance to this book that kept it from having the impact that I expected.

So I give this book a four star rating...yet will most likely not seek out the sequel.

What a great book! As a person who favors technology and space related fiction, I had serious reservations about reading a book concerning, what I thought to be, a rather dry, heavy topic--nuclear holocoust. From the standpoint of someone who never lived through the Red Scare or Cuban Missle Crisis I've never been particularly interested in books that explored the fears and social ramifications from that era. However, based on the reviews, I decided to give it a try. I was thouroughly impressed. Miller writes in a readable style and the plot was driving enough to keep me interested. But what impressed me the most was the way that Miller divulges the thematic issues in the book. It is as if they are subtly layered. They develop rather than force-fed down the reader's throat. The breadth and depthness of the issues explored in this book should give any reader plenty of material to chew on. I highly recommend this book and hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

This book is on every serious list of best science fiction novels ever written. After reading this book I can assure you that its status is well deserved. Readers looking for aliens with giant laser beams fighting an intergalactic war for the ULTIMO device should not read this book. However, readers who understand that true classics leave the reader contemplating the true nature of man will enjoy this very much.

Some people seem to have a problem with the amount of "religion" in this novel. I personally did not think this book was preachy at all. However, the ULTIMO beam crowd may not be able to handle it.

A shame that Walter Miller wrote so few novels, because his writing and characterizations are superb. But perhaps that's the way it should be - at the expense of quantity, the author produced only the finest quality.
This is the second time through Canticle for me, and certainly nowhere near the last. There are enough themes, issues, and ideas in here to hold my interest for years to come. This time around I found the description of the Simplification and the Simpletons to be particularly poignant, especially in the light of the recent election. Miller presents us with a populous fed up with intellectualism, education, science, and generally anything that smacks of intelligence on any level. Their anger stems from fear, the basic fear of that which they do not understand and do not want to understand. Flip forty years forward, and some half of the American population rejected a presidential candidate who was intelligent and well-educated; they not only resented his intelligence but also distrusted the man. They chose instead a man who is very amiable, very non-threatening, and shows no open display of intellect. Somewhat frightening to me, at least, that our society already and still harbors an intense distrust of the intellect.
Next time I read this book there will be a new lesson to find. I hope you find the book equally enlightening.

Very good book. Spanning 18 centuries of human future-history after an apocalyptic event, the scope is immense. Running throughout the narratives are some very deep philosophical musings on what it means to have self-awareness. To see the possibility of divinity and yet not be able to rise above petty everyday squabbles that can lead to ultimate tragedy. And yet, despite those tragedies and doubts, there is always hope that someday, as a species, we may find a way to grow up. That is what I took away from this otherwise mostly bleak, sometimes humorous set of stories.

Recommended, (with the caveat that, since 18 centuries pass during the telling of the story, don't expect to get too attached to any of the characters).

I dislike post-apocalypse stories--possibly unreasonably so--because of past experience. For every Alas Babylon, there were real dogs like The Postman or The Day After. This is the main reason why I had never read Walter M. Miller's classic novel A Canticle for Leibowitz. Since it kept appearing on my Alexandria Digital Literature recommendation list, and several people had expressed amazement that I had never read it, I decided to overcome my bias, and at least give it a try. It started out bad--the main character avoiding a possible mutant in a desolate Utah setting that included a fallout shelter (and the word fallout had new meaning, describing a "scary" monster of the past). Yawn. But I persisted, and it got better.
Split into three equal sections, each covering a different main character and time period. The first section, "Fiat Homo," is the least interesting, or maybe, the most irritating, describing the young initiate Francis and the results of his Lenten fast; nuclear devastation has driven science underground, preserved by a strange order of Catholic monks. This live-close-to-nature aftermath scenario is the type so over used to be annoying, yet Miller's version, which I initially disliked, actually has something that all the imitators lacked depth. The priesthood role of preservation, initially a silly concept, is quite fleshed out by Miller until it achieves believability. Compare this with, say, Waterworld, where the groups of people and technology have no rational logic. . .
The middle section, "Fiat Lux," occurs a few centuries later, when human society is being rebuilt, as well as new scientists trying to re-work the old knowledge. The interplay here is between the monks who wish to preserve the old information until the time is right, and the new scientists, who insist that the time is now. The opening of this section, describing one of the nomad groups of the plains, reads too much like Robert Adams' interminable Horseclans novels, but Miller can be forgiven that, by not only being first, but also for having the good sense to stop after one chapter.
It is the last section, "Fiat Voluntas Tua," that really sets this novel apart from the crowd, and, in my opinion, confirms its classic status. Set in the far future, when all of society has been rebuilt, including the nuclear technology that caused the first cataclysm, the Abbot of the preserving order finds that humans did not learn from the past, and that preparations must be made for another period of darkness. As in the other sections, Miller is able to make this future scenario entirely believable.
If A Canticle for Liebowitz had been confined to just one of these sections, I would have hated it. But the three sections are basically inter-connected novellas that do manage to create the semblance of a single novel at the end. Miller did nothing to change my aversion for post-apocalyptic works, but I did gain appreciation for his take on it.

Back in the mid-sixties Time magazine had an article which discussed the "legitimization" of science fiction in American Literature as taught in University throughout the United States. singled out were Arthur C Clarkes "Childhood's End", Issac Asimov's "Foundation Trilogy", and the classic novels from H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. Particular attention was paid to "A Canticle for Leibowitz" as "a work of literary genius". The article described the book as "rare" (1967) and thriving in "hand me down" volumes. It did, in truth, take me some time to find a copy of the book and I must say this is the best work of "science" fiction, indeed any fiction, I have ever read. I have purchased and reread the book a half dozen times over the last thirty years and all those copies are in that hand-me-down mill somewhere now.

I'm not going to get into whether this is or is not Science Fiction. Some people think it is, some think it isn't. For the record (and whatever it's worth), I think it is. Ultimately, debates about what genre the book belongs to are kind of pointless. What matters is that this is truly great literature. It's engaging, disturbing, ironic, thought-provoking, touching, and beautifully written. What more does a novel need to be?

But it helps if you remember your altar boy Latin. Other than that, the story is engaging and well told. There is a prayer in the Anglican baptismal service which says "WHEN I fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord." See how that fits with the story line.

Miller was one of the rare writters of SF to write one great masterpiece that is so good, that they rank his work among the Pantheon of great SF writters.
This is the grand daddy of the Nuclear Holocaust novel. The ideas here have been gone over in several other SF novels, and in several movies and television shows. It is a sad statement that this has not been turned into one of those movies.
Walter Miller is also one of those writers who felt he had to take his own life in the end.

Easily one of the top sci-fi stories written. This is a classic. It fills in so many gaps that are present in mainstream science fiction novels. There is indeed room for faith amongst the development of a possible future for the world. The connection between past, present, and future along with the circular nature of our fate works so well in this novel. I will never forget even the minor plot character such as Lazarus.

The threat of total nuclear annihilation is not as omnipresent as it was when this book was written but the themes and story are still worth reading even today. Most sci-fi of this period deals with nuclear war so it is an overused trope of the genre but it is used in a novel way. The rebirth of the monastic system as a venue to protect the knowledge of the destroyed civilization is a great concept. This book is not technically a true novel but more like a trilogy of novellas showing the rebirth of civilization from the view of the abbey of St. Leibowitz and the struggle between science, religion, and politics. This struggle is the part that is most pertinent to today's readers. It provides no easy answers but provides interesting questions.

This is definetly my favorite book of all time ... frightening in the likeness it has to the modern world, and barely hopeful in that times will change, this is a warning book. One to be taken in and examined, not because it might appear farfetched, but *because* it might happen.
Definitely a must read!

I would have to rate this book as one of my favorites. If you're looking for a chilling story that will stay with you, then this is a good book. It is remarkably easy to read, yet unlike most modern "literature", the story has depth.
"Liebowitz" is divided into three separate parts, with the first and the last being able to stand alone, yet when put together compliment each other. The second part, on the other hand, needs the other two chapters.
I first read this book for my Sophmore English class in High School. I just recently read it again. In the years that I matured, the meaning of the story changed greatly.
I would recomend this book to anyone, young or old, who wants to read a wonderful piece of literature, or just wants a good story.

In books, the themes of a story are often sketched by their genre. Normally, authors are cautious in using themes that fall outside of familiarity, and this is too bad. Genius rides on originality; and A Canticle for Leibowitz is original, ignoring genre altogether and being much the better for it. Although, on the surface, an engaging story about monks in a desert preserving literature in a post-apocalyptic world, there are deep undercurrents running in this book that smack of theological struggle, true virtue and an excellent examination of the definition of humanity.

The originality extends to important little things, like the pace of the story. None of the chapters is particularly short, but neither are they laborious or could be said to be long. Everything seems to fit just right. Excellence in a human invention is always marked by effective simplicity, and Miller's book is effectively simple.

Lastly, Miller seems to have an amazing sense of timing when it comes to expanding the scale of his story. He can swoop the reader effortlessly from the struggles of an ornery hermit in the desert to the passing of centuries, and manages to keep the reader comfortable with everything going on.

On the whole, I never got bored, I wanted to know what was coming next, and when the story was over, I had that satisfied feeling of an appetite for genius satiated.

Saving clause:
This review perhaps emphasizes feelings more than the actual events in the book. If you want a plain description of the plot there are other reviews at hand which does that job perfectly well.

For me the most important part in any reading of a work of fiction is the feeling of presence. When I read I want to feel that I really are at the place which is described and feel the same way the protagonist does. When he sweats, I want to sweat. When he rejoices, I want to rejoice, and so on. That aspect works perfectly well in the first and third part, and that is well enough.

On the surface the book describes the falling and rise of a civilization and all of its knowledge through the destiny of a church and its monks. You get to know different key persons from inside in three different periods. It is hard to succeed in creating "heroes" with whom you can identify using such a composition method, but Miller succeeds perfectly well here.

The real protagonist, though, is the discussion which takes place between the author, the reader and the actual protagonist persons in the book when you read. In a way the narrative can be described as a union of things which we humans create, feel or do all the time: misunderstandings, hope, hard work, creating myths and living in accordance with them, striving for excellence, bizarre humor, moral discussions, and so on.

The author succeeds in creating an atmosphere where you as a reader get the feeling that you are welcome to participate in an alternative world and take part of its rise and fall and the labors and joy of its persons. Said that, I've also mentioned the second most important part for me when reading a work of fiction: That the author clearly want to give you something positive instead of just remove something from you. (Your time and money for example.)

This is not just good sfi-fi, this is good literature! The author creates a believable world, which you want to be a part of, and he gives you many good lessons about life from the best of his heart!

A morte perpetua, Domine, libera nos.
A sweeping tale of Man's struggle with Lucifer as he seeks to regain an Eden lost to the Flame Deluge. The stories of Brother Francis, Dom Paulo, and Father Jeth Zerchi, monks of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz, span the eighteen century road back.

I read "A Canticle for Leibowitz" as a 12-year old and recently re-read it at age 30+. It speaks to me even more fully than before. What a great book - the author examines the deep questions about What is Human, Are We Doomed to Repeat History, Can Man Overcome His Base Nature, etc. Then there is the historical parallel of the monasteries keeping the flame of learning alive during the New Dark Ages. (Interesting: apparently the author was present in WWII during the bombing of Monte Cassino Abbey, that center of learning - one wonders how much that affected this novel.) Buy this book and read it. You will not be disappointed. I read it 20 years ago and remembered it (and remembered it well!) all that time.

All the great sci-fi books require the reader to think. Ender's Game, 2001, Rendezvous with Rama, Stranger in a Strange Land. If you've read and enjoyed any of those, you owe yourself a read of A Canticle for Leibowitz which fits that mold. At times the pace is slow (comparable to 2001 in the respect), and it's definitely the darkest of this cluster of greats (save the ending of Ender's Game).

This may not be for everyone. But for me, I rate it in the top 5 all time.

Walter Miller's "A Canticle For Lebowitiz" is such a brilliant subversive story, it is for me almost the penulatimate example of what literature is supposed to be. Not romanatic seduction, not escapist fantasy, but a story that somehow gets past your conscious mind with an idea so powerful that after reading for a while and following the story for a while a larger inescapable idea about human universals looms into view. This story and the ideas in it are really great. I don't want to go into the story here, I'll just say that if you are real human being this book should be a delightful experience to read. I had to read it for school the first time, and it was such an effort until all of a sudden I got how great it was ... why they call classics classic. 5/5

PS. It's sad for me to imagine that someone would actively dislike this book so much as to give it a 1/5. I have to wonder what could be going through such a person's mind, if anything.

I was a raised a Catholic. When they turned the altar around and removed some of the mystery, placed the doxology into the vernacular and made hymns into sappy folk songs I left. Mr. Miller indicated the majesty, dignity and humanity that is the essence of this religion through his narration of mankind's efforts to better itself. His book has not returned me to the church, but he has made defending it a reflexive action. This is not science fiction but an application of high principle to a frowsty, grizzling species that would try to be better than it is. This book should be read by anyone who wants to consider the "greater picture."

YOu want an "end of the world" novel that actually involves you? Look no further, fellow reader: here it is.
This book takes place in 3 parts, all of which are very involving and dynamic. Miller's approach of how mythology comes about, just how quickly things fall apart, and how faith can play such a key role in keeping the old knowledge alive. The characters are believeable and wonderful to get to know. This is a rare book where the events that unfold become a part of your life, where the people within its pages become your friends. My only regret was that the book ended WAY too soon.

And one we need to read over and over again, or at least make sure our leaders read it! It is a beautiful text, full of lovely prose juxtaposed with indescribable ugilness (the hermit, the mutants). As someone raised Catholic, I could relate to the religiosity of this book and the reverence that true believers have; the gorgeous aspects of the Catholic religion (myths, saints, martyrs, and monks) are neatly tied up in this package, a safe haven away from the didactic preaching we Catholics have to endure from a hierarchy more interested in our sex lives than our souls. It has a lot to say about not only religion, but also about science and technology and how we must balance the scales of science to reach Utopia, not Armageddon. Are we headed toward our mushrooming deaths or are we ready to embrace science in its glory? Well, let Miller tell you his tale...

This is some of the best post-apocalyptic science fiction I have read. The three sections of the book offer snapshots of life in a Roman Catholic monastery approximately 600, 1,200 and 1,800 years after nuclear holocaust which resulted in environmental devastation and anti-intellectual riots that virtually destroyed civilization. The brotherhood's attempts to preserve and rediscover lost history and science is a dark, occasionally humorous, mostly depressing look at religion, science, and the depravity of mankind.

I bought this book off a pavement shop. It was tattered. Still I acquired it as I have read praises about this work. I was not disappointed. Searing piece of fiction.Every nation's leaders should read this novel and bury nuclear madness forever.

Amazing post apocalyptic story. Probably the best I've ever read! The book takes place hundreds of years in the future after a nuclear holocaust. Although this book was written in the 50's, it is still great today! An excellent classic that I'd highly recommend!

The writer uses subtle influence techniques. An example is the time the book enters doubts into readers mind on the ability of monks to accurately record written history by manually copying texts by hand. The writer assumes the reader accepts that the Bible, being copied over the centuries by monks, is subject to copying errors, and such errors would occur also with any monks of the future. However, recent archeologolist discoveries have proven this modern assumption of the monk's 'copying skills' false. More subtle implications continue with references to mercy killing being deemed evil by the church, in opposition to 'modern societal values'. Also, the writer, through characters' dialogue or sub-plots, has an assumption that science and Christian religion are opposites. This is simply not the case in the real world. And interestingly, is not implied in the book as often as some other book reviewers claim it is. I did notice the writer seemed to drive home a point to recognizes that 'man-made' morals (humanism) are evil, or lead to evil.

After reading the many insightful reviews I just wanted to add my two cents and make a point that others seem to have glossed over. The great irony of this book is that the Church perpetuates humanity's destruction by preserving the scientific record. They then have the audacity to deny people the one relief that will save them from suffering. Miller portrays the individuals involved sympathetically but the book seems to be a clear attack on the the Church as an institution, with wider implications into abortion and other issues.

This novel is timeless! Whether we are examining the supposed eras of recovery from nuclear holocaust, the reformation of oppressive armed combatants, the redeployment of nuclear destruction or our present lives in modern society, the author has a single clear message; The Church hierarchy continues to play its fiddles while Rome is in flames around them. Novella #1 shows the monks saving totally useless 'holy writings' and spending centuries recopying documents that they are totally ignorant of. Novella #2 shows the Church, at all costs, aligning itself with the most powerful political and warring tribe that they can link themselves with. This is in spite of the lack of a common morality. And Novella #3 shows the naivety of them rocketing these 'holy writings' into outer space in order to 'save' the structure and basis for the Church proper for future other-worldly populations.

The author cleverly took three different future eras of mankind and examined them through the eyes of Church and its administration. He showed the useless continuation of church rituals that were based of Liebowitz mythology, displayed that the prayers of even the highest church official went unanswered, showed the utter fear that engrossed church officials had when their imminent death was faced and revealed the fractured church hierarchy that was built fully on power and control and lacked any public significance. The most telling actions of the Church, however, were revealed in not what they did, but in what they didn't do! All around them during these three eras was a society that seemed to be moving in a direction that would lead to the eventual re-destruction of the world. And what did the Church do in the interim? Did they make any attempt to educate or warn the public of where their actions may lead? Did they lead protests or sit-ins against the errant political systems? No! All they did was to constantly repeat their useless and mundane religious rituals and concern themselves with only their own organization and continued pious identity. They had little or no concern for the lay public with whom they were 'led' to serve. While some readers will complain of the mundaneness of the religious activities that appear throughout this novel, it is done in a purposeful manner. Boring, inane, and repetitive activity IS the function of the Church as they define themselves to be. The author clearly needs to show this.

This novel clearly shows the universality of these dynamics in today's conservative and fundamentalistic driven world. While society is making vain attempts to evolve from where we are, immovable mythological anchors are holding us back. Religious exclusivity, homophobia, the undermining of women's rights and the ignoration of the most helpless among us are the banners under which present religions (both East and West) are walking under.

I clearly advise any one who is interested in reading an author who created a universal dystopic novel many decades ago that remains fresh and appropriate to read this excellent presentation.

7 January 1991
"A Canticle for Leibowitz"

A SF type of book about the end of the world and afterwards. It has many deep impenetrable meanings in its facade of Catholism, manhood, feudal empires, et al. They read and talk Latin, but do not know English from before Armageddon.

A Canticle for Leibowitz is one of those you books you read because you heard it was a twentieth century classic and thought, "Maybe I should read that." I am not sure why it is a classic, but it was an interesting read. It is a collection of what amounts to three novellas set in the desert Southwest after a nuclear holocaust. The first story (set some 600 years in the future) introduces the reader to the Albertian Order of Leibowitz, a group of monks whose founder was murdered by a mob for protecting books, and are dedicated to the protection and preservation of knowledge. The order hopes the blessed Leibowitz will be canonized a saint, and a young novice called Francis may have found something that could turn the tide toward Leibowitz's recognition. The remaining two stories follow the Order through two millennia of the development of civilization again. To tell more of the plot would spoil the fun. This book is an examination of the preserving role the Catholic church played in history; only it is set in the future in periods similar to the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, and another period hauntingly familiar to the Cold War Era. Miller not only spins a compelling yarn, he wrestles with practical, historical, and theological questions we all wrestle with. There were slow parts, hence the 3 1/2 rather than 4 stars, but over all it was worth reading for its sheer ability to provoke questions in an entertaining fashion. Over-all, worth reading.

There is pretty much nothing new I can say that another reviewer has not already said, but I'll try. I normally do not gravitate toward Sci-Fi, but the underlying philosophical motifs in this book make it an amazing read. I think this is the only novel he wrote in his lifetime. Too bad, because this is a work of genius. If you are interested in the very dense philosophical version of Miller's central thesis, read Alasdair MacIntyre's book "After Virtue" (or, at least his 'disquieting suggestion'). Or, if you are trying to understand After Virtue, read A Canticle for Leibowitz. There. How was that for something different?

How often do you see the headline above? I'm guessing not often. Several years ago, the public radio station where I lived had a live actor version this book. I was so intrigued, and figuring that the stereotype of the book being better than the movie/tv show/etc would hold up, I went and hurriedly got a copy. So slowly paced is the action, so uninteresting are the characters that this is another book I just couldn't bring myself to finish.

This novel comes in three parts; different time periods but with the same conclusion. This SF novel deals with mankind and how we insist on "evolving" (intellectually, economically, technologically) only to lead ourselves to destruction time and time again. It is an excellent piece of literature that deals with nuclear destruction and why the "meek" inherit the Earth. Are we destined to fall as a species...? Read and find out.

I thought the book raised some good points. One, that humans are sinful creatures. Miller points out that man sees his mistakes from history but tends to repeat them. Towards the end of the book, man starts another nuclear war despite knowledge of the effects of the first one. Another interesting point was to see how the Catholic Church preserved itself throughout the hundreds of years that the book takes place. The church even sent clergy to space. I would recommend the book if you like SF. It is unique in that it involves the church in the future.

I would echo everything on of the reviewers said about the use of the Jewish hermit as an observer of humanity, except for one thing - I came away thinking of the hermit as the Lazarus (risen from the grave) and not the repeat of the anti-Semitic slander.

Miller weaves a tale which is as meaningful today as it was during the height of the Cold War. The Catholism and Latin segments are critical, not as a struggle of the authors own demons, but as a scaffold by which to measure the changes over 1800 years (and by implication, 3800 years). In other words, this is the only constant other than Mankind repeating the same errors.

A brilliant read.

This is a book that everyone over the age of 18 should read. Is humankind doomed to destroy itself? Rather than try to eliminate the weapons (or other things) that can destroy our species, should we spend our resources trying to populate other solar systems? Or would human colonies also eventually destroy themselves?

Despite the seriousness of the subject of this book, it is at times very humorous.

You'll need to either brush up on your Latin or print one of the translations that are available on the Web.

Any person that has a "library" worthy of the name must have this book.

For me, it was Science Fiction being used to bolster and promote Christianity, and not just Christianity, the inter connectedness of all faiths. Much as C S Lewis usen his 'Narnia' books to promote Christianity to the young through Fantasy or Orson Scott Card's reinforcing moraliy with his SciFi also aimed at the mid-teen to mid-octogenarian.
Read it, you won't be sorry.

(this books target audience is mature Science Fiction fans)

A difficult book to say the least, A Canticle fir Liebowitz is, as several reviewers have stated, deservedly a classic. Taking the reader through three eras in a post-apocalyptic society, it is as thought-provoking as they get.

For a "ligher" (as much as you can use "lighter" inthe context of thermonuclear war) I would recommend Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank (also available from the store).

This is classic Cold War SF and powerfully reflects the angst and political overtones of the era in which it was written. Reading it now is as much a history lesson as a flight through fantasy. If you'd like a comparison to something more recent just consider it a precursor to Joe Haldeman's Forever War. I enjoyed it immensely.

A very good post-apocalyptic novel. A story that is clearly a cautionary tale about nuclear war. The book postulates about whether or not humanity can manage to avoid such cataclysms and the destructions of major civilisations, while also looking at the story of some local monks who work hard to try and preserve and recover knowledge to improve the situation.

In Chapter 4, Miller talks about Brother Francis' recognition of "an intermediate twilight zone" which included "whatever he could see but could not understand." Considering that the book was published in 1959, but excerpts were published as early as 1955, is it possible that Serling got the title for his television series from Miller? If you would like to respond, please e-mail.

I loved this book. I just finished it and I am trying to think of books that are better than this, and I can't think of many. I won't go into details, there are over 235 reviews to discuss this. I can only say that I thoroughly enjoyed it. Loved all short stories.

Andre

I'm not sure why I didn't really like this. It had an interesting premise (Fall, rise, fall of human civilization) but it failed to grip me. It was somewhat difficult to read and relied too heavily on religious doctrine.

This book goes around in a circle, but somehow it manages to cover all the big issues of life in the process - religion, politics, end-of-life issues, war, and faith.

I have recommended this book to my entire family, and I recommend it to you as well.

I love the character development of this book - all of the characters are believable, and each has his own unique viewpoint on things. Miller just sits back and lets them all duke it out in the book.

The central message is still just as relevant today as in the 60s - unless humans can accept that there are lines we shouldn't cross, we will pay the consequences.

Read this book as soon as you can get a copy. But not mine - I'm re-reading it right now.

This book is well worth reading. Set in the future, after a nuclear holocaust on Earth, the ideas presented are compelling, and there is a slightly dark humor throughout all of the events. The development of religion and technology in the novel is interesting. I would highly recommend this book.

I first read this book in college for a class, and I loved every page of it. This is a great book for any thinking person who likes to ponder the human condition. I could also see how this novel has influenced other Science Fiction books and shows. When you watch "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars" [Episode 22;Season 4 of Babylon 5], you can connections between this episode and the novel A Canticle for Leibowitz

I bought the Canticle for Leibowitz in 1960 (it was copyrighted in 1959). I have reread and reenjoyed this book over the decades always comparing the story to the changes in the Church (slow)and in computers (very fast). While modern computers rarely commit errors like double syllable writing (doudoubleble sylsylabablele), a frustated user can feel with the Abbot's wish to sell offending equipment to an atheist.

...and churchmen still like their long titles and honorifics.

I read this book many years ago, and I was blown away then and now by the scope of the book and the thought that informs it. Now, 30+ years later, I re-read the book every several years or so. I always enjoy the book, each time in a somewhat different way. Each time I read it, I see something I don't think I saw before. Even so, it's always interesting!

I intentionally wait several years between each reading to keep it fresh. I do this with a very few other much-treasured books. Also music. Each time, I hear or read differently. Never radically different, but just.... different somehow. I have listened to a phrase of music countless times and heard the same thing. And then, out of nowhere, and at random, I'll hear it or read it and I'll hear or know something I never did before. Interestingly, these musical revelations almost never happen when I'm taking the trouble to listen closely. Instead, they come out randomly and unexpectedly out of the blue. I don't know how many times this has happened over 25+ years. I have no control over it, and I don't try to control it. I'm satisfied that it happens, period.

"Canticle" is like that. It speaks to us on many levels, all familiar to us. The magic of the novel comes from the well-known essentials, combined in a very loving and caring narrative. The essential message of the story is that we all are doomed to repeat the horrors of the past simply because we are human with all the gifts and evils that describe humanity. Nuclear war, and human pride and hubris is the defining evil even while those traits describe us all.

From beginning to end, the acerbic voice of our humanity speaks in the form of The Wandering Jew. TWJ and all he implies is a familiar figure to older readers. Learn more at [...]

Read and think about this book. If you dare.

BUT, it isn't a dark novel of despair at the end.

FEU

Read this a few months ago and it still brings a smile to my face. It starts with a monk living in a hole doing abstenance, he is met by a strange old hermit and during the course of things discovers a cache of ancient artifacts including a shopping list bearing the name of the religious orders founder. Anyway, it goes from there and is hugely enjoyable. A very interesting view of an Order founded on keeping knowledge alive vs those who view such knowledge as dangerous heresy.
Enjoy!
Mike

Maybe I just need to stop reading classic '60s sci-fi. I really didn't like this book. Because just saying that does not help you, I will tell you why, but it will require some very mild spoilers. Here goes:

************** START MILD SPOILERS ***********************************
There were a few instances where the author describes in detail the functioning, with great interest for the character who is seeing it for the first time, of a device that is common place now. It is difficult to listen to for instance how a can opener works (not a real example). The author will spend paragraphs on this describing the gears, handles how they are arranged, how the blade fits over the lip of something called a can and wound with the left hand to cause a cutting motion, etc., etc. Yeah, I know how a can opener works. It's not compelling writing.
***************END MILD SPOILERS *************************************
There is a lot of religion in the book, revering both God and Liebowitz, the last known living scientist. I did not care for this. Also the author added a lot of Latin, which gets no translation. Hope you had it in school. Mostly this isn't a big deal since it's not important to the plot, but I still prefer to understand all that I read. I didn't have Latin in school.

He does present an interesting and possibly prophetic view of humanity and future events, but there were many instances where I thought I would just turn off the audio book.

I downloaded this book from the library for free. There was no harsh language in the book, but I doubt it would be enjoyable for young adults. It wasn't for me and I'm not young anymore.

I am still wondering what is considered so good about this book. I feel fairly well versed in SF and this one ranks as low as the last few books in the Dune series. There were interesting flashes in the book. The idea of technology being held by the church was fairly interesting, but never panned out for me. Thon Taddeo's visit had my interest, but lost it because nothing that interesting transpired. One thing I will concede, the literary level was high for SF (no, I am not just saying that because the book contains Latin). I hope that you are enjoying, enjoyed or will enjoy it more than I did.

So wordy. I'm a big reader, and no stranger to big words, but this story is soooo full of words and very little actual plot.

BUT! It certainly can create a good discussion about morals and choices for a college or high school course- or for book club. Though I will not read it again.

This is an amazing book. It's well written and poignant, telling the story of the danger of nuclear war. The book is prophetic and suspenseful, while also humorous in some parts. The author knows a great deal about the Catholic church and human nature. The last part, although powerful, is a bit preachy, but it's still a wonderful read. Highly recommended.

Well it won Hugo so what else should I say?

It is a awesome book which in way reflects the state of some sciences today such as

Archeology

Anthropology

Physics

I should say the church too but i have seen the church specially catholic talking about UFOs and hence i think they are following the maxim "If you cant bit them join them" see you cant burn people on today... so if some one says "Hey i saw a UFO" the priest just winks an eye..

and so and so..

We are currently experiencing a DARK AGE though many think this is an age of Elightment... couldnt be more wrong...

I'm not sure why I didn't really like this. It had an interesting premise (Fall, rise, fall of human civilization) but it failed to grip me. It was somewhat difficult to read and relied too heavily on religious doctrine.

This book goes around in a circle, but somehow it manages to cover all the big issues of life in the process - religion, politics, end-of-life issues, war, and faith.

I have recommended this book to my entire family, and I recommend it to you as well.

I love the character development of this book - all of the characters are believable, and each has his own unique viewpoint on things. Miller just sits back and lets them all duke it out in the book.

The central message is still just as relevant today as in the 60s - unless humans can accept that there are lines we shouldn't cross, we will pay the consequences.

Read this book as soon as you can get a copy. But not mine - I'm re-reading it right now.

This book is well worth reading. Set in the future, after a nuclear holocaust on Earth, the ideas presented are compelling, and there is a slightly dark humor throughout all of the events. The development of religion and technology in the novel is interesting. I would highly recommend this book.

I first read this book in college for a class, and I loved every page of it. This is a great book for any thinking person who likes to ponder the human condition. I could also see how this novel has influenced other Science Fiction books and shows. When you watch "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars" [Episode 22;Season 4 of Babylon 5], you can connections between this episode and the novel A Canticle for Leibowitz

I bought the Canticle for Leibowitz in 1960 (it was copyrighted in 1959). I have reread and reenjoyed this book over the decades always comparing the story to the changes in the Church (slow)and in computers (very fast). While modern computers rarely commit errors like double syllable writing (doudoubleble sylsylabablele), a frustated user can feel with the Abbot's wish to sell offending equipment to an atheist.

...and churchmen still like their long titles and honorifics.

Read this a few months ago and it still brings a smile to my face. It starts with a monk living in a hole doing abstenance, he is met by a strange old hermit and during the course of things discovers a cache of ancient artifacts including a shopping list bearing the name of the religious orders founder. Anyway, it goes from there and is hugely enjoyable. A very interesting view of an Order founded on keeping knowledge alive vs those who view such knowledge as dangerous heresy.
Enjoy!
Mike

Maybe I just need to stop reading classic '60s sci-fi. I really didn't like this book. Because just saying that does not help you, I will tell you why, but it will require some very mild spoilers. Here goes:

************** START MILD SPOILERS ***********************************
There were a few instances where the author describes in detail the functioning, with great interest for the character who is seeing it for the first time, of a device that is common place now. It is difficult to listen to for instance how a can opener works (not a real example). The author will spend paragraphs on this describing the gears, handles how they are arranged, how the blade fits over the lip of something called a can and wound with the left hand to cause a cutting motion, etc., etc. Yeah, I know how a can opener works. It's not compelling writing.
***************END MILD SPOILERS *************************************
There is a lot of religion in the book, revering both God and Liebowitz, the last known living scientist. I did not care for this. Also the author added a lot of Latin, which gets no translation. Hope you had it in school. Mostly this isn't a big deal since it's not important to the plot, but I still prefer to understand all that I read. I didn't have Latin in school.

He does present an interesting and possibly prophetic view of humanity and future events, but there were many instances where I thought I would just turn off the audio book.

I downloaded this book from the library for free. There was no harsh language in the book, but I doubt it would be enjoyable for young adults. It wasn't for me and I'm not young anymore.

I am still wondering what is considered so good about this book. I feel fairly well versed in SF and this one ranks as low as the last few books in the Dune series. There were interesting flashes in the book. The idea of technology being held by the church was fairly interesting, but never panned out for me. Thon Taddeo's visit had my interest, but lost it because nothing that interesting transpired. One thing I will concede, the literary level was high for SF (no, I am not just saying that because the book contains Latin). I hope that you are enjoying, enjoyed or will enjoy it more than I did.

So wordy. I'm a big reader, and no stranger to big words, but this story is soooo full of words and very little actual plot.

BUT! It certainly can create a good discussion about morals and choices for a college or high school course- or for book club. Though I will not read it again.

This is an amazing book. It's well written and poignant, telling the story of the danger of nuclear war. The book is prophetic and suspenseful, while also humorous in some parts. The author knows a great deal about the Catholic church and human nature. The last part, although powerful, is a bit preachy, but it's still a wonderful read. Highly recommended.

Well it won Hugo so what else should I say?

It is a awesome book which in way reflects the state of some sciences today such as

Archeology

Anthropology

Physics

I should say the church too but i have seen the church specially catholic talking about UFOs and hence i think they are following the maxim "If you cant bit them join them" see you cant burn people on today... so if some one says "Hey i saw a UFO" the priest just winks an eye..

and so and so..

We are currently experiencing a DARK AGE though many think this is an age of Elightment... couldnt be more wrong...

This book describes our future after a nuclear war which destroyed civilization and the lost of technology that is slowy recovered throughout the centuries. We see the world through the eyes of a abbey. This is good book with an intresting storyline. However this book is boring at times and repeats itsself.

Many years ago, I picked up a dog-eared copy of this book in a local second-hand store. Since then, I've read it every couple of years, and it remains one of the true classics of this genre. For anyone who hasn't read this book: Stop what you are doing and RUN to the nearest bookstore.

This novel from the 1950's is a deserved classic among the sci-fi intelligentsia. Maybe its laborious title has kept it from being noticed by the popular masses, but this book is a hidden gem for those looking to broaden their horizons. This is probably one of the earliest stories to speculate on a post-nuclear apocalypse, and here Walter Miller created one of the most imaginative and far-reaching examples of that motif. Later nuclear winter stories would get predictable and formulaic, but not this originator. In this masterpiece of storytelling, three ages of human development pass by over the course of 1800 years, but in the end we see that those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. While it's a bit dated in places, this brilliant and disturbing novel will keep you thinking for a long time after you're done reading it.
In addition to its unique take on historical processes, this book is essentially about the pros and cons of organized religion. In Part 1, humanity is stuck in the middle of several centuries of dark ages after a nuclear war, and once again the Catholic Church (or what's left of it) holds sway over a fearful and unenlightened society. Among the few records of the pre-war world that have survived are some inconsequential notes and blueprints by a minor scientist called Leibowitz. The church has made Leibowitz a saint, and here Miller appears to be commenting on the reverence of organized religion toward matters of doubtful authenticity and importance. Is religious belief built upon weak foundations? In Part 2 humanity is entering a new renaissance of knowledge, with religion being unable to adjust to the new enlightenment. In Part 3, humanity has reached a new technical age, but society is again oppressed by nuclear paranoia and mutually assured destruction. Humanity is about to destroy itself once again in this 1800-year cycle. Miller then takes us on an examination of the strength and relevance of faith in the face of such suffering and destruction. However, for the entire 1800 years and more, the disciples of Leibowitz have kept faith and hope alive. So is organized religion the curse or savior of humanity? Walter Miller contemplates these issues with great lucidity in this lost classic. [~doomsdayer520~]

This is a book that has a decent premise hidden somewhere under the layers of yawn-inducing detail. For the amount of pages this book contains, almost nothing happens. This isn't necessarily a fault, since plot is not necessary as long as the ideas and detail are still intriguing. But alas, this book falls short in all of these except for a spattering of comical details. I kept reading because I thought that, it being the classic it is considered to be, it HAD to get better. Sadly it didn't, and I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone.

Walter Miller's only major novel is not simply a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel but also a multi-layered meditation on the conflict between knowledge and morality. Six hundred years after a nuclear holocaust, an abbey of Catholic monks survives during a new Dark Ages and preserves the little that remains of the world's scientific knowledge. The monks also seek evidence concerning the existence of Leibowitz, their alleged founder (who, the reader soon realizes, is a Jewish scientist who appears to have been part of the nuclear industrial complex of the 1960s). The second part fast-forwards another six hundred years, to the onset of a new Renaissance; a final section again skips yet another six hundred years, to the dawn of a second Space Age--complete, once again, with nuclear weapons.

The only character who appears in all three sections is the Wandering Jew--borrowed from the anti-Semitic legend of a man who mocked Jesus on the way to the crucifixion and who was condemned to a vagrant life on earth until Judgment Day. Miller resurrects this European slander and sanitizes him as a curmudgeonly hermit, a voice of reason in a desert wilderness, an observer to humankind's repeated stupidities, a friend to the monks and abbots, the biblical Lazarus, the ghost of Leibowitz (perhaps)--and even the voice of Miller himself.

Throughout "Canticle," Miller's search for religious faith clashes with his respect for scientific rationalism. For Miller, Lucifer is not a fallen angel but technological discovery unencumbered by a moral compass; "Lucifer is fallen" becomes the code phrase the future Church uses to indicate the imminent threat of a second nuclear holocaust. The ability of humankind to abuse learning for evil purposes, to continually expel itself from the Garden of Eden, perplexes and haunts the author: "The closer men came to perfecting for themselves a paradise, the more impatient they seemed to become with it, and with themselves as well."

Some readers might be turned off by the book's religious undercurrent, but that would be to mistake fiction for a sermon. The work is certainly infused with the author's Catholicism, but its philosophy is far too ambiguous to be read like a homily. This is no "Battlefield Earth." Instead, it is Miller's highly personal act of atonement; he acknowledged later in life that his fictional monastery was first subconsciously, then purposefully modeled on the ancient Benedictine Monastery at Monte Cassino, which, as a World War II pilot, he bombed to smithereens. (An historical aside: most of the major Greco-Roman scientific and mathematical texts were preserved for posterity by Arabic scholars--not by medieval Catholic monks. But this is fiction, and it's not clear whether Miller is trying to replicate Church history as it was or as he felt it should have been.)

In many ways, Miller's Catholicism is as conflicted in the book as it was in his own life. He changed religious beliefs several times; in the 1980s, he immersed himself in Buddhist texts. Throughout "Canticle," you can see Miller wrestling with his spiritual beliefs and with his own demons, and in the final chapters, Miller includes an extended debate over whether suicide and euthanasia (and, tangentially, abortion) are ever viable options, even to avoid the worst forms of pain and certain death. Although he seems to side with Catholic views on these issues, Miller himself committed suicide in 1996.

Rather than distracting the reader with religious and philosophical musings, however, "A Canticle for Leibowitz" is enriched by them. It's not only a compelling, well-written story, it's an allegorical tale that might encourage readers to struggle with their own beliefs and demons.

This book belongs on anyone's list of top 10 science fiction novels. In three episodes, divided by centuries, it tells a post-nuclear apocalypse story of the resulting dark age and slow recovery of civilization in North America. The story is anchored by the presence of both the Wandering Jew and of St. Leibowitz, a pre-apocalypse TV repairman (and his wife/girl friend(?) Em), elevated to stainhood by miraculous interventions. A must read - but ignore the sequel - St. Leibowitz and the Wolf Woman - it is a very poor piece of work.

The author does have writing skills, make no mistake about that. He's intelligent and knows how to make sentences. Yet his metaphorical expressions are rather fanciful and miss the mark. "A skyherd of cumulus clouds," a fist "exploding" on a desk, a "crawling" desert, and so on, and we also had people "grunting, hissing, chuckling, croaking, and howling" words of dialogue instead of simply saying them. I could've accepted these flights of fancy with minimal annoyance, but the infernal and ever-present Latin expressions and the expositions of scientific principles had me wondering what the devil any of this had to do with advancing the story. Why did the author presume that the readers of this book would have a working knowledge of a dead language? And why the pseudo-scientific jargon in intervals? Did he just throw all of this stuff in to show the reader that "hey, I know something you probably don't"? Who the heck cares about monastic melodramas and the ritual routines of life in the cloister? You couldn't escape them in this book. I think the whole work, all three sections of it, could have been encompassed in a short story of 50 pages or less.

But what was really missing, for this reader, was the face of Eve, to speak in bible-babble like the characters in this misdirected work. She's over one-half of the human race, and yet the only female presence in this book was the sadly deformed Mrs. Grales and the Lady Reporter, both of whom made short appearances in the last section. And oh, yeah, a brief tragic episode with a scarred young woman and her daughter, dying from radiation exposure. Otherwise, nothing but men, and all speaking and thinking in churchly Latin gibberish far too often. (Was the author a defrocked priest, an ousted seminarian or a monk who left the refuge of the monastery?) Why write a SF book centered in the monastic lifestyle?

I read it because it was supposed to be some kind of SF classic, according to a few people. My conclusion was that it was a monumental waste of time for the author to write a book that delivered only a few fruitless hours for the reader. Did we really have to plow through so many pages cluttered with ecclesiastic drivel just to get the point that humans will continue to repeat the same calamitous mistakes? (That is, I presume, the theme or point of this whole effort.) Give me a break. Perhaps the reason they still sinned so greatly was because they had never outgrown the mindset that got them courting disaster in the first place, and somehow medieval monasticism doesn't strike this reader as a path to liberation for the human race.

As I recall, the copy I read included a hearty endorsement by the Christian Science Monitor. No wonder, as this terribly skewed book portrays the Catholic church as a preserver and creator of all worthwhile human knowledge and ingenuity through the "dark ages" of past and future. There is some small historical basis on which this post-apocalyptic tale of the church is written, though again history is viewed through jesus-colored-glasses.
If you're a hardcore feminist, you'll enjoy the fact that the *first* female character appears over 200 pages into the paperback. She's shrieking in horror at something, and we never see her again after she runs from the room.
The first female character we actually get to know is a woman who kills herself and her child, despite the best efforts of the head monk to convince her not to sin.
Though Jesus returns as a woman. And then that horrible Jew who turned Jesus away millenia ago finally gets to die.
On a positive note, it's a well written book, and it stands up to analytical literary standards. It's just very biased. So I give it two stars instead of one.
This novel WAS a groundbreaking one in some respects, and so it has been referenced frequently and subtly (Babylon5 & Terry Pratchett to name a couple). Read this book if you want to understand the development of sci-fi better.
Or if you're Roman Catholic, or just a bible nut.

I am still wondering what is considered so good about this book. I feel fairly well versed in SF and this one ranks as low as the last few books in the Dune series. There were interesting flashes in the book; the idea of technology being held by the church was fairly interesting, but never panned out for me. Thon Taddeo's visit had my interest, but lost it because nothing that interesting transpired. One thing I will concede, the literary level was high for SF (no, I am not just saying that because the book contains Latin). I hope that you enjoyed, are enjoying, or will enjoy it more than I did.

i have been reading sci fi for about 35 years . i think my first read was star beast by heinlein. as the years have passed i have found that i tend to be drawn to the "classics" in sci-fi, at least stuff written prior to the 80's with thAt in mind i thought i would read canticle, heard much about it , just never picked it up. it was a struggle to stay interested in the storyline. i guess i was expecting something more entertaining, there are several good meaty ideas brought up during the read but i felt the book could have either been done with about half as many pages as it is or else add something more to the story line. in a nutshell, boringly long stretches of blah blah ba blah blah. i'm glad i read it but i had to work hard to suck the juice out of this book. it most definately was not a "page turner" i kept falling asleep trying to get thru it

This was possibly the most boring book that I have ever heard. I still don't know what was the point of the book. I listened to 13 hours of it and I am still trying to figure out what the book was about. I did read the reviews that you should stick with it, and I did and what I found is that this book was terrible. I wanted to enjoy it so much but I just didn't get it. For example, I was hoping to find out what happened to Francis, and then that's when I figured out that he was dead long ago. I like the whole thing of end-of-the-world books but this was a bit off for me.

While I don't regret picking up the book, I just didn't find it the page turner that some do. It seemed disjointed to me and when I finished the book I felt unfilled. While I can appreciate Miller's struggle with reconciling science and religion, the final product didn't deliver as I had hoped.

Thanks to the previous reviews and the collective high rating, I gave this book 4 opportunities to give me a reason to stay. The 4th came 2/3 of the way through. Normally, I would not have stayed that long but felt like I just wasn't getting it and did so want to. However, no memorable characters, a wandering plot and a pretty nothing premise forced me to not just shelve the book, but to actually throw it in the trash. It was certainly no invitation to try out sequel that took 40 years to put out. Pretty much the stupidest read that I can remember, and I have tried to choke down a many of one.

TIME magazine, February 22nd, 1960 said Miller's dedication is "a scratch where it itches", and intellectually speaking, so is his book. Also claimed to be "a dull, ashy writer". Doctor George Kumler Anderson, in his "THE LEGEND OF THE WANDERING JEW": too formless to be satisfying.

Repetition of religious rubbish over and over. They have a few nuclear wars and are still talking about how great their god is? I finally made it to the end again, since I read it in school as a teen and I thought it stunk back then too.

Its just hard. There is definitely nothing that is gripping me. Ok I did get past chapter 1 but nit far. I think I had gotten 50 or so pages in before announcing the futility. The concept sounds great but there is difficulty getting through the pages and pages of stagnancy.