Book Review + Podcast: A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.

Hardcover, SFBC Edition, 311 pages

Published March 1978 by J. B. Lippincott (first published October 1959)

Hugo Award for Best Novel (1961),

Locus Award for All-Time Best Novel (1975)

No matter how you slice it this novel is one of the towering achievements of Science Fiction in the 20th century. It is no wonder that it wonder it won the Hugo award in 1961, or even that it got a Locus award for being an all-timer in 1975. What is amazing is that this was the one and only novel by Walter Miller JR and perhaps the only more amazing thing is it feels just as vital and not dated at all 60 years later.

That is not an easy trick to do. I went into the book totally cold, knowing only that the book was a classic of post Apocalyptic fiction. The book is divided into three sections that I think were published as three novellas that stood alone. I could see how those could work but I think it would have really taken away from the power of the overall story. The structure and the storytelling are great but if you are looking for action this is not the book.

Early in the book, the description of the end of the world is nothing short of lyrical. The world-building is done in single paragraphs that in the hands of a less talented writer would have come off as info-dumps. Not here not, in this case, check out these paragraphs...

“Within weeks-some said days-it was ended, after the first unleashing of the hellfire. Cities had become puddles of glass, surrounded by vast acreages of broken stone. While nations had vanished from the earth, lands littered with bodies, both men and cattle, and all manner of beasts, together with birds of the air and all things that flew, all things that swam in the rivers, crept in the grass, or burrowed in holes; having sickened and perished, they covered the land, and yet the demons of the fallout covered the countryside, the bodies for a time would not decay, except in contact with fertile earth. The great clouds of wrath engulfed the forests and fields, withering trees and causing crops to die. There were great deserts where life once was. , and in those places of the earth where men still lived, all were sickened by the poisoned air, so that, while some escaped death none were left untouched; and many died even in the lands the weapons had not struck, because of the poisoned air.”

Miller in this one paragraph paints a horrible picture of this post-war world. This is a risk that our civilization takes when it creates global destroying weapons or refuses to accept the science of the coming climate crisis. This novel succeeds in showing us the horror in a rich and emotional way without having any characters that we become attached to. Conventional narrative wisdom would tell you that is impossible but ACL pulls it off.

A new dark age that erases civilization may seem impossible but that is the story magic that Science Fiction provides. Here Miller shows us how the dark age happened.

“So it was that, after the Deluge,the Fallout, The plagues, the madness, the confusion of tongues, the rage there began the bloodletting of the Simplification, when the remnants of mankind had torn other remnants limb from limb, killing rulers, scientists, leaders, technicians, teachers, and whatever leaders of the maddened mobs said deserved death for having made the earth what it had become.”

This is important. We have to understand why the human survivors were so scared to let the people behind the horror they survived live. I can personally understand this. As the people behind the climate crisis today are people who run companies and hold office. They have addresses and it is not hard for me to believe that the affected by climate change in the future to feel the same way. To strike out at the generations before them that allowed the suffering to happen. Right or wrong the survivors didn’t want this to happen again.

One thing that makes this novel one of a kind is that it has no main character or POV. The story is propelled by very tight and stylish prose that is lyrical at times. The action is in the ideas and scope and it never gets boring. The story is simple but the scope is epic, hell it deserves to be EPIC in bold letters. I was about to talk about the message but the book is not monolithic in the message you should be left with. There are a dozen themes and messages ranging from being very catholic to the dangers of humanity using technology to detach from society. What is amazing is at no point does this feel heavy-handed.

ACL is the story of civilization, not a single person, if it seems like this, would hard to pull off narrative-wise Miller shows no sign of struggle. The story takes place over centuries and the title character has already been dead all those years. One of the themes of the book is the power and legacy of this long-dead scientist whose papers and writings are the only detailed artifacts of the knowledge of our culture. This theme is powerfully detailed in the second act which is devoted to the monk's life and how they bring the survivors of out the dark ages.

“Now, after six centuries of darkness, the monks still preserved this Memorabilia, studied it, copied and recopied it, and patiently waited. At the beginning, In the time of Leibowitz, it had been hoped- even anticipated as probable – that the fourth or fifth generation would want their heritage back.”

It is in the third act that we see civilization reborn and out of the dark ages that lasted centuries after the war. It is one of the neatest things that this novel wisely sees society taking more than a thousand generations to get back to a point where humans are going back to space and again they have developed nuclear weapons.

“Listen are we helpless? Are we doomed to do it again and again and Again? Have we no choice but to play the Phoenix, in an unending sequence of rise and fall? Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, Rome, the empires of Charlemagne and the Turk. Ground to dust and plowed with salt. Spain, France, Britain, America –burned into the oblivion of the centuries. And again and again and again and again.”

Wow, just wow. I expected a book this honored and remembered to be great. It is not hyperbole to say this is one of the greatest science fiction novels ever written. It is the second-best of the 60’s Hugo winners have read so far. The only one better so far was Stand on Zanzibar.

Check out the Dickheads podcast episode we recorded on this book with Author Brian Evenson and Librarian Ian Dunccanson: