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Walter M. Miller, Jr.

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A Canticle for Leibowitz (Bantam Spectra Book) Paperback – September 2, 1997

by Walter M. Miller Jr. (Author)

4.4 3,756 ratings

See all formats and editions

Hugo AwardWinner, 1961

In celebration of the publication of the sequel Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman comes this special edition of the classic A Canticle for Leibowitz, a novel that transcends genre to stand as one of the most significant literary works of our time.

In the Utah desert, Brother Francis of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz has made a miraculous discovery: the relics of the martyr Isaac Leibowitz himself, including the blessed blueprint and the sacred shopping list. They may provide a bright ray of hope in a terrifying age of darkness, a time of ignorance and genetic monsters that are the unholy aftermath of the Flame Deluge. But as the spellbinding mystery at the core of this extraordinary novel unfolds, it is the search itsel—for meaning, for truth, for love—that offers hope to a humanity teetering on the edge of an abyss.

A timeless and still timely masterpiece, A Canticle for Leibowitz is a classic that ranks with Brave New World and 1984.

Print length

368 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Spectra
Publication date

September 2, 1997
Dimensions

5.2 x 1.1 x 8.1 inches
ISBN-10

0553379267
ISBN-13

978-0553379266
See all details

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Walter M. Miller's acclaimed SF classic A Canticle for Leibowitz opens with the accidental excavation of a holy artifact: a creased, brittle memo scrawled by the hand of the blessed Saint Leibowitz, that reads: "Pound pastrami, can kraut, six bagels--bring home for Emma." To the Brothers of Saint Leibowitz, this sacred shopping list penned by an obscure, 20th-century engineer is a symbol of hope from the distant past, from before the Simplification, the fiery atomic holocaust that plunged the earth into darkness and ignorance. As 1984 cautioned against Stalinism, so 1959's A Canticle for Leibowitz warns of the threat and implications of nuclear annihilation. Following a cloister of monks in their Utah abbey over some six or seven hundred years, the funny but bleak Canticle tackles the sociological and religious implications of the cyclical rise and fall of civilization, questioning whether humanity can hope for more than repeating its own history. Divided into three sections--Fiat Homo (Let There Be Man), Fiat Lux (Let There Be Light), and Fiat Voluntas Tua (Thy Will Be Done)--Canticle is steeped in Catholicism and Latin, exploring the fascinating, seemingly capricious process of how and why a person is canonized. --Paul Hughes

Review

“Extraordinary ... chillingly effective.”— Time

“Angry, eloquent ... a terrific story.”— The New York Times

“An extraordinary novel ... Prodigiously imaginative, richly comic, terrifyingly grim, profound both intellectually and morally, and, above all ... simply such a memorable story as to stay with the reader for years.”— Chicago Tribune

“An exciting and imaginative story ... Unconditionally recommended.”— Library Journal

From the Publisher

"Extraordinary...chillingly effective."
--Time

"Angry, eloquent...a terrific story."
--The New York Times

"An extraordinary novel...Prodigiously imaginative, richly comic, terrifyingly grim, profound both intellectually and morally, and, above all...simply such a memorable story as to stay with the reader for years."
--Chicago Tribune

"An exciting and imaginative story...Unconditionally recommended."
--Library Journal

From the Inside Flap

In celebration of the publication of the sequel Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman comes this special edition of the classic A Canticle for Leibowitz, a novel that transcends genre to stand as one of the most significant literary works of our time.

In the Utah desert, Brother Francis of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz has made a miraculous discovery: the relics of the martyr Isaac Leibowitz himself, including the blessed blueprint and the sacred shopping list. They may provide a bright ray of hope in a terrifying age of darkness, a time of ignorance and genetic monsters that are the unholy aftermath of the Flame Deluge. But as the spellbinding mystery at the core of this extraordinary novel unfolds, it is the search itself--for meaning, for truth, for love--that offers hope to a humanity teetering on the edge of an abyss.

A timeless and still timely masterpiece, A Canticle for Leibowitz is a classic that ranks with Brave New World and 1984.

From the Back Cover

“Extraordinary ... chillingly effective.”
— Time

“Angry, eloquent ... a terrific story.”
— The New York Times

“An extraordinary novel ... Prodigiously imaginative, richly comic, terrifyingly grim, profound both intellectually and morally, and, above all ... simply such a memorable story as to stay with the reader for years.”
— Chicago Tribune

“An exciting and imaginative story ... Unconditionally recommended.”
— Library Journal

About the Author

Walter M. Miller, Jr. grew up in the American South and enlisted in the Army Air Corps a month after Pearl Harbor. He spent most of World War II as a radio operator and tail gunner, participating in more than fifty-five combat sorties, among them the controversial destruction of the Benedictine abbey at Monte Cassino, the oldest monastery in the Western world. Fifteen years later he wrote A Canticle for Leibowitz. The sequel, Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, followed after nearly forty years.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The box was shaped like a satchel and was obviously a carrying case of some kind.  It might have served any number of purposes, but it had been rather badly battered by flying stones.  Gingerly he worked it loose from the rubble and carried it closer to the fire.  The lock seemed to be broken, but the lid had rusted shut.  The box rattled when he shook it.  It was not an obvious place to look for books or papers, but--obviously too--it was designed to be opened and closed, and might contain a scrap or two of information for the Memorabilia.  Nevertheless, remembering the fate of Brother Boedullus and others, he sprinkled it with holy water before attempting to pry it open, and he handled the ancient relic as reverently as was possible while battering at its rusty hinges with a stone.

At last he broke the hinges, and the lid fell free. Small metal tidbits bounced from trays, spilled among the rocks, some of them falling irretrievably into crevices. But, in the bottom of the box in the space beneath the trays, he beheld--papers!  After a quick prayer of thanksgiving, he regathered as many of the scattered tidbits as he could, and, after loosely replacing the lid, began climbing the hill of debris toward the stairwell and the thin patch of sky, with the box hugged tightly under one arm.

The sun was blinding after the darkness of the shelter. He scarcely bothered to notice that it was sinking dangerously low in the west, but began at once to search for a flat slab on which the contents of the box could be spread for examination without risk of losing anything in the sand.

Minutes later, seated on a cracked foundation slab, he began removing the tidbits of metal and glass that filled the trays.  Most of them were small tubular things with a wire whisker at each end of each tube.  These, he had seen before.  The abbey's small museum had a few of them, of various size, shape and color.  Once he had seen a shaman of the hill-pagan people wearing a string of them as a ceremonial necklace.  The hill people thought of them as "parts of the body of the god"--of the fabled Machina analytica, hailed as the wisest of their gods.  By swallowing one of them, a shaman could acquire "Infallibility," they said.  He certainly acquired Indisputability that way, among his own people--unless he swallowed one of the poison kind.  The similar tidbits in the museum were connected together too--not in the form of a necklace, but as a complex and rather disorderly maze in the bottom of a small metal box, exhibited as: "Radio Chassis: Application Uncertain."

Inside the lid of the carrying case, a note had been glued; the glue had powdered, the ink had faded, and the paper was so darkened by rusty stains that even good handwriting would have been hard enough to read, but this was written in a hasty scrawl.  He studied it intermittently while emptying the trays.  It seemed to be English, of a sort, but half an hour passed before he deciphered most of the message:

CARL--

Must grab plane for [undecipherable] in twenty minutes.  For God's sake, keep Em there till we know if we're at war.  Please! try to get her on the alternate list for the shelter.  Can't get her a seat on my plane.  Don't tell her why I sent her over with this box of junk, but try to keep her there till we know [undecipherable] at  worst, one of the alternates not show.
                                                                                              I.E.L.

P.S.  I put the seal on the lock and put TOP SECRET on the lid just to keep Em from looking inside.  First tool box I happened to grab.  Shove it in my locker or something.

The note seemed hasty gibberish to Brother Francis, who was at the moment too excited to concentrate on any single item more than the rest.  After a final sneer at the notewriter's hasty scrawl, he began the task of removing the tray-racks to get at the papers in the bottom of the box.  The trays were mounted on a swinging linkage which was obviously meant to swing the trays out of the box in stair-step array, but the pins were rusted fast, and Francis found it necessary to pry them out with a short steel tool from one of the tray compartments.

When Brother Francis had removed the last tray, he touched the papers reverently: only a handful of folded documents here, and yet a treasure; for they had escaped the angry flames of the Simplification, wherein even sacred writings had curled, blackened, and withered into smoke while ignorant mobs howled and hailed it a triumph.  He handled the papers as one might handle holy things, shielding them from the wind with his habit, for all were brittle and cracked from age.  There was a sheaf of rough sketches and diagrams.  There were hand-scribbled notes, two large folded papers, and a small book entitled Memo.

First he examined the jotted notes.  They were scrawled by the same hand that had written the note glued to the lid, and the penmanship was no less abominable.  Pound pastrami, said one note, can kraut, six bagels--bring home for Emma.  Another reminded: Remember--pick up Form 1040, Uncle Revenue.  Another was only a column of figures with a circled total from which a second amount was subtracted and finally a percentage taken, followed by the word damn!  Brother Francis checked the figures; he could find no fault with the abominable penman's arithmetic, at least, although he could deduce nothing about what the quantities might represent.

Memo, he handled with special reverence, because its title was suggestive of "Memorabilia." Before opening it, he crossed himself and murmured the Blessing of Texts.  But the small book proved a disappointment.  He had expected printed matter, but found only a handwritten list of names, places, numbers and dates.  The dates ranged through the latter part of the fifth decade, and earlier part of the sixth decade, twentieth century.  Again it was affirmed!--the contents of the shelter came from the twilight period of the Age of Enlightenment.  An important discovery indeed.

Of the larger folded papers, one was tightly rolled as well, and it began to fall apart when he tried to unroll it; he could make out the words RACING FORM, but nothing more.  After returning it to the box for later restorative work, he turned to the second folded document; its creases were so brittle that he dared inspect only a little of it, by parting the folds slightly and peering between them.

A diagram, it seemed, but--a diagram of white lines on dark paper!

Again he felt the thrill of discovery.  It was clearly a blueprint!--and there was not a single original blueprint left at the abbey, but only inked facsimiles of several such prints.  The originals had faded long ago from overexposure to light.  Never before had Francis seen an original, although he had seen enough handpainted reproductions to recognize it as a blueprint, which, while stained and faded, remained legible after so many centuries because of the total darkness and low humidity in the shelter.  He turned the document over--and felt brief fury.  What idiot had desecrated the priceless paper?  Someone had sketched absentminded geometrical figures and childish cartoon faces all over the back.  What thoughtless vandal--

The anger passed after a moment's reflection.  At the time of the deed, blueprints had probably been as common as weeds, and the owner of the box the probable culprit.  He shielded the print from the sun with his own shadow while trying to unfold it further.  In the lower right-hand corner was a printed rectangle containing, in simple block letters, various titles, dates, "patent numbers," reference numbers, and names.  His eye traveled down the list until it encountered: "CIRCUIT DESIGN BY: Leibowitz, I.E."

He closed his eyes tightly and shook his head until it seemed to rattle.  Then he looked again.  There it was, quite plainly:

CIRCUIT DESIGN BY: Leibowitz, I.E.

The name was written in a clear feminine hand, not in the hasty scrawl of the other notes.  He looked again at the initialed signature of the note in the lid of the box: I.E.L.--and again at "CIRCUIT DESIGN BY. . ." And the same initials appeared elsewhere throughout the notes.

There had been argument, all highly conjectural, about whether the beatified founder of the Order, if finally canonized, should be addressed as Saint Isaac or as Saint Edward.  Some even favored Saint Leibowitz as the proper address, since the Beatus had, until the present, been referred to by his surname.

"Beate Leibowitz, ora pro me!" whispered Brother Francis.  His hands were trembling so violently that they threatened to ruin the brittle documents.

He had uncovered relics of the Saint.

Excerpted from A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.  Copyright (c) 1959 by Walter M. Miller, Jr.  Excerpted ...

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Spectra (September 2, 1997)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0553379267
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0553379266
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.2 x 1.1 x 8.1 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,702,140 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #24,045 in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.4 3,756 ratings

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Customers find the story interesting, unique, and amazing. They describe the book as well worth reading, remarkable, and good enough to hold their attention. Readers also mention that the questions the book raises are intriguing and deeply theological. They find the characters compelling and human. However, some find the pacing slow and tiring to read. Opinions are mixed on the writing quality, with some finding it beautiful and well presented, while others say it's wordy and excessively obtuse.

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150 customers mention "Story quality"122 positive28 negative

Customers find the story interesting and thought-provoking. They say it has a unique premise and complex world-building. Readers also mention that the story carries them along. In addition, they describe it as a highly regarded work of post-apocalyptic fiction.

"...The third Canticle, though, brings the novel to a powerful close. In 3781, the now technologically advanced society prepares for another nuclear war...." Read more

"...Poignant, haunting, and uncommonly accurate in depiction, A Canticle for Leibowitz functions as a sort of Hubble Space Telescope turned towards the..." Read more

"...Jr. for my English course because, I was told, it’s a timeless science fiction novel that explores the idea of a dystopia in a unique, powerful way...." Read more

"...It is a deep read, but not one to struggle through. The story carries you along. I highly recommend it." Read more

140 customers mention "Readability"126 positive14 negative

Customers find the book interesting, remarkable, and engaging. They say it holds their attention and is one of the deepest books they have read in years. Readers also mention the book is enjoyable, albeit ponderous and depressing.

"...To my surprise, it became one of the most thought-provoking books our group has discussed...." Read more

"...arc welder light of technology is mesmerizing, nuanced, and yes, brilliant, hearkening back to the role of the Church as protector and promoter of..." Read more

"...in the three parts of the novel, making it an engaging read filled with unpredictable, shocking turns...." Read more

"...There is much moral philosophy. It is a deep read, but not one to struggle through. The story carries you along. I highly recommend it." Read more

83 customers mention "Thought provoking"77 positive6 negative

Customers find the book thought-provoking, with deep theology and intriguing questions. They say it's fascinating and some parts are unnervingly prophetic. Readers also mention the moral philosophy and complex world-building.

"...The first, Fiat Homo (“Let There Be Man”), was especially fascinating to me...." Read more

"...My high expectations were largely met: the society of the novel is fascinating, the ideas are original, and the novel’s implications are frightening...." Read more

"...This is not your ordinary science fiction story. There is much moral philosophy. It is a deep read, but not one to struggle through...." Read more

"...means everything; a bit of sociological sci fi, post-apocalyptic, apocalyptic, steampunk, alternate history, space opera, lost worlds, and a talking..." Read more

43 customers mention "Humor"30 positive13 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the humor of the book. Some find it serious, entertaining, and engaging, while others say it's slow-paced and boring.

"...of just how good sci-fi CAN be, when brilliant wordsmithing, sophisticated humor, and an excellent tale are couched in richly layered philosophy and..." Read more

"...Miller develops his characters through actions.There is a quiet humor here, a belief in the ability of humanity to preserve something worth..." Read more

"...that is insignificant to the story and the novel’s purpose - it made the book boring and difficult to read at times...." Read more

"...Although understated, a strong sarcasm permeates the narrative...." Read more

22 customers mention "Character development"19 positive3 negative

Customers find the characters compelling and human. They also say the book is a fine study into the nature of man.

"...Hannegan,Thon Taddeo, and Dom Paulo are believable, dynamic characters that exemplify the conflict between the church, which is derived from the..." Read more

"...Miller does a wonderful job of creating this world with believable characters...." Read more

"...Those characters are mostly sympathetic, with conflicts coming from differing agendas and opinions rather than just good vs evil...." Read more

"...Miller includes many interesting characters—monks, scientists, doctors, thieves, etc...." Read more

13 customers mention "Scariness level"13 positive0 negative

Customers find the book terrifying, haunting, and chilling. They say it has harrowing moments and philosophical discussions.

"...Poignant, haunting, and uncommonly accurate in depiction, A Canticle for Leibowitz functions as a sort of Hubble Space Telescope turned towards the..." Read more

"...novel is fascinating, the ideas are original, and the novel’s implications are frightening...." Read more

"...There are battles, harrowing moments, philosophical discussions, and space flights...." Read more

"...And then it will be repeated all over again. The book is downright scary in that respect...." Read more

85 customers mention "Writing quality"56 positive29 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the writing quality of the book. Some mention it's superbly written, beautiful, and well-presented. However, others say it's not an easy read, some words are not readable, and the book is very wordy.

"...the faithful, a reminder of just how good sci-fi CAN be, when brilliant wordsmithing, sophisticated humor, and an excellent tale are couched in..." Read more

"...The vivid descriptions of the setting and the convincing characters created by Miller make this portion of the novel an easy read, for the most..." Read more

"...at the same time, making the second section of the novel the most difficult to read...." Read more

"...Though long in text and literary scope, A Canticle for Leibowitz is easy to read in spite of all the Latin...." Read more

23 customers mention "Pacing"6 positive17 negative

Customers find the pacing of the book very slow. They say it requires patience to appreciate it fully. Readers also mention it's tiring to read and not a feel-good kind of read.

"...and unorthodox writing style is typical of Miller and can make for a difficult read...." Read more

"My husband found it to be a very slow going story. The best part was in probably the last 15 pages. Definitely wasn't what he expected." Read more

"It's a slow-paced read, with memorable characters and an interesting plot...." Read more

"...It is a slow read at times...." Read more

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Greg and Sara Masarik

A Canticle for Leibowitz offers a rare blend of science fiction, history, and theology

Reviewed in the United States on September 19, 2024

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I usually steer clear of apocalyptic novels because they tend to be depressing, strange, and godless. So when my Tuesday Night Classics Club chose the science fiction novel, A Canticle for Leibowitz, I was hesitant. However, since it is highlighted in Joseph Pearce’s Literature: What Every Catholic Should Know, I decided to give it a chance. To my surprise, it became one of the most thought-provoking books our group has discussed.

Set after a global nuclear war known as the “Flame Deluge,” the novel explores humanity’s struggle to rebuild civilization amidst the ruins. In the wake of the war, there is a violent backlash against knowledge and technology, culminating in the “Simplification,” where mobs of “Simpletons” destroy books and kill anyone with learning. Interestingly, a Jewish electrical engineer named Isaac Edward Leibowitz survives the chaos and joins a Cistercian monastery. He is convinced that he must dedicate his life to preserving human knowledge through the secretive “booklegging” of hidden texts. Eventually, he founds the Albertian Order of Leibowitz in the desert of the American Southwest, whose charism is rooted in the preservation of any remnants of scientific and cultural knowledge they can find.

The novel is divided into three sections or “canticles,” each set centuries apart. The first, Fiat Homo (“Let There Be Man”), was especially fascinating to me. Set in the 26th century, civilization has regressed to a medieval-like way of living. The story opens during Lent with Brother Francis, a religious novice, fasting and praying in the desert. While keeping vigil, Brother Francis stumbles upon a fallout shelter containing artifacts from the Venerable Leibowitz, igniting a series of events that reflect the tension in the Abbey between honoring Leibowitz and his values and the need to survive in a culture that wants nothing to do with the past or its knowledge.

The second canticle, Fiat Lux (“Let There Be Light”), was more difficult for me. Set in 3174, civilization has evolved to an Industrial Revolution-like state. The Abbey, at this point, is both a place of spiritual significance and a center of technological discovery, as the monks work to discover electricity. They have heard the myths that electricity existed before, but many do not believe it, because they cannot believe that man, having had such luxury, would waste it on war.

The third Canticle, though, brings the novel to a powerful close. In 3781, the now technologically advanced society prepares for another nuclear war. The Abbey is assembling a group of priests, sisters, and children to colonize the moon. The Abbot is convinced that history is about to repeat itself, so he sends the gospel, sacraments, relics of knowledge, and innocent children away (never to return) so that mankind can have another chance somewhere away from the nuclear holocaust that has begun.

As the Abbot feared, the bombs begin to drop and the Abbey is overrun with victims and refugees. While the Abbot works to send pilgrims away, he still has to tend to the flock that remained behind. This canticle has an incredible storyline exploring euthanasia as compassionate care. The Abbot and a doctor engage in a powerful debate about what is true care for those who are suffering.

In each section, the Gospel persists. And in each, Christians are faced with intense and interesting ethical dilemmas. The novel’s exploration of faith, human resilience, and the cyclical nature of history is profound. Although I found parts of the second canticle slow and frustrating, the novel as a whole was a rewarding experience. A Canticle for Leibowitz offers a rare blend of science fiction, history, and theology, and I can see why Joseph Pearce considers it essential reading.

10 people found this helpful

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Smith's Rock

One of Sci-Fi's Sacred Texts, and Deservedly So

Reviewed in the United States on September 10, 2009

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If science fiction fans had an organization equivalent to Gideons International, dedicated to disseminating the sacred texts of the genre along the traffic lanes of life, you would find a copy of A Canticle for Leibowitz lying next to the Gideons Bible every time you slid open the night stand in your motel/hotel room. It would be stamped AOL (Abbey of the Order of Leibowitz), and it would be a call to the faithful, a reminder of just how good sci-fi CAN be, when brilliant wordsmithing, sophisticated humor, and an excellent tale are couched in richly layered philosophy and theology.

The tale itself is bi-apocalyptic, in and of itself filling a very sparsely populated niche. Beginning with Francis, a young applicant to the Brotherhood of the Order of Leibowitz, fasting and praying in the post nuclear war ruins of what had 600 years earlier been the United States, and subsequently stumbling upon an intact fallout shelter, a story spanning many centuries unfurls. Technology reawakens, Lucifer in nuclear form begins once more to stalk the earth.

William Miller Jr. published his only novel (the sequel to Canticle was not written by Miller) in 1959. The date is important for context. The Cuban Missile Crisis, arguably the closest that mankind ever came to nuclear annihilation, was a mere three years in the future. The threat of nuclear war was pervasive, a common topic in magazines as popular as Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report was the building of fallout shelters; every major U.S. city had designated underground shelters for civilians stocked with olive drab square five gallon tins containing water, medical supplies, and survival biscuits that tasted something like a cross between dust and graham crackers. Virtually every school routinely went through nuclear war drills, in which the Civil Defense sirens would go off, the students would "duck and cover" under their desks to wait until the all clear signal was given. Daytime images of Nikita Khrushchev pounding his shoe on the lectern and saying "We will annihilate you" merged in my mind with the 2 AM growl and roar of the Strategic Air Command nuclear armed B-52's doing practice launches against the USSR from nearby Beale Air Force Base. Few books, if any, have captured the ubiquitous dread of those years as well as Miller's.

At the same time, the Catholic Church with its pre-Vatican II liturgy in full Latin throat, was at a peak in terms of mystery and majesty, long before its loss of priest and nun vocations, long before what atheist Christopher Hutchens refers to as the Church's "No Child's Behind Left policy" become a scourge of the Church's image. Miller's depiction of postulant training, the role of the Church in the preservation of pre-apocalyptic knowledge (including the mysterious sacred relic from St. Leibowitz himself that reads "Pound pastrami, can kraut, six bagels"), and the Church's role in trying to preserve the gentle candle light of the soul side by side with the eyeball frying arc welder light of technology is mesmerizing, nuanced, and yes, brilliant, hearkening back to the role of the Church as protector and promoter of knowledge during the Dark Ages. If there is much that is dated (and there isn't much) about this tale, it is the idea of the contemporary Catholic Church as a beacon in the age of intellectual darkness.

There are other sci-fi tales that eschew space opera and military hardware to examine the role of religion in an age of nearly omnipotent technology, e.g. Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow, a gentle but provocative tale of the Jesuits privately financing an expedition to make first contact with a nearby alien civilization. But there is something special in the intensity of the technology versus science duel in Canticle for Leibowitz, the awkward waltz that results when the two ways of knowledge WANT to dance, but can't avoid treading each other's toes into pulp. I suspect the articulate, profound, and tragic conversation on the topic is a direct reflection of William Miller Jr.'s own trichotomy: an excellent scientist, a man of liberal arts education, a person of great religious passion. It was no small struggle for Miller to resolve, who eventually took his own life.

Miller's quest in this book, though, is not to give us one more iteration of the potential conflict between science and religious faith (though he does address this), it is a bigger fish, maybe a Leviathan, that is at the core of his search: does the very nature of being human condemn us to endless cycles of destruction and redemption. Poignant, haunting, and uncommonly accurate in depiction, A Canticle for Leibowitz functions as a sort of Hubble Space Telescope turned towards the surface of the Earth, rather than towards the stars, with the resulting images no less spell-binding. Bravo, William Miller, Jr., and thanks for the gift you bequeathed to us.

38 people found this helpful

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Peer Sylvester

Immer noch grandios

Reviewed in Germany on August 4, 2023

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Viele SF-Bücher aus der "golden Age" sind nicht gut gealtert. Insofern war ich etwas vorsichtig, dieses Buch noch einmal (nach 30 Jahren oder so) zu lesen. Tatsächlich ist das Bucch zeitlos gut. Ja, man merkt an manchen Stellen dass das Buch älter ist, doch es fühlt sich nicht überaltert an. Die Themen des Buches - die Gefahr des Atomkrieges, die Streitereien, die Bedeutung der Kirche - sind immer noch aktuell. Die drei Geschichten, aus denen das Buch zusammengesetzt ist, sind immer noch spannend, der leicht augenzwinkernde Stil lädt zum Durchlesen ein, können aber nicht täuschen, dass hier keine Wohlfühlliteratur vorliegt. Ich wei nicht, warum an Schulen immer nur die Physiker gelesen werden und niemals Leibowitz, denn diese beiden Werke sind mindestens ebenbürtig.

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Pete Peru

A product of its time

Reviewed in Spain on November 16, 2020

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I really enjoyed this. Perhaps younger readers will not feel this book the way the older "cold war" generation do. The spectre of nuclear annihilation was strong at the time this was written, and the story, set in the far future, revolves around the idea that M.A.D. had indeed taken place in what was for the narrators a distant past. The story traces the slow recuperation of humankind beginning in a post-war dark age, proceeding to a renaissance based upon fragments of, to the persons living at that time, very ancient knowledge. For a very long time monks are the guardians of this knowledge - even though few of them have any idea just what exactly it is they are preserving. In the end....well, read it and find out for yourself.

Just me. 😁

Canticle for Leibowitz

Reviewed in Australia on October 10, 2024

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Quick delivery well packaged and in great condition. I'm happy.

rosesinbud

This might be an appropriate warning for the world we are seeing around us today

Reviewed in Japan on June 13, 2017

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This is a book that was first published quite a while back. I read it in high school. And, remembering that it was a good sci fi read, I ordered it so I could read it again. Glad that I did. With the recent developments in international politics in the direction of bigger and better weapons, maybe everyone needs to read this book. What happens if the nukes rain down on the world? In this story, humans aren't totally burned off the face of the planet, but they suffer the retributions of their nuclear folly. After that kind of experience, do you think humans will change and become peaceful and good-hearted towards each other? Will the learning that resulted in that holocaust be forever cast aside? or re-embraced? And what could the result be in either case? The author created a story that is haunting in its apparent possibility. I recommend this book to anyone who likes Sci Fi and also for those who are a bit worried about recent political trends in the world.

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Great reading

Reviewed in Brazil on September 25, 2016

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Miller successfully takes on the challenge of captivating the reader not only once, but thrice. He connects the past of the future and the future of the past in a brilliant way

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A Canticle for Leibowitz (Bantam Spectra Book) Paperback – September 2, 1997

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