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A Canticle for Leibowitz
Walter M. Miller, Jr wrote most of his science fiction in the 1950s. His work was influential in its treatment of character and for the complexity of his approach to standard science fiction themes. He converted to Catholicism in the 1940s and his faith had a direct bearing on much of his output. His short stories have been collected into a number of volumes but he is remembered principally today for the one novel published in his lifetime, A Canticle for Leibowitz, and, to a lesser extent, its sequel, Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman.
It is indicative of the nature of science fiction in the 1950s that so much of what was published in novel form had a previous life in the monthly magazines. A Canticle for Leibowitz is no exception to this, being a collation of three separately published novellas covering a long period in the future of humanity. This results in a book that could be described as a condensed trilogy. It is perhaps best read in that manner, with a pause for contemplation between sections separated in original publication by a couple of years and in setting by six centuries. Such a reading is aided by the lyrical drawing away from detail as each part concludes.
The story is of the slow rise of a new civilisation from the ashes of our own, which was ended by the Flame Deluge and the Age of Simplification. Leibowitz was a "booklegger" from this time who was martyred as he attempted to save knowledge from the mob which believed that all learning led to the hubris of Mutually Assured Destruction. The plot is centred on the abbey of a monastic order which honours Leibowitz and treasures the material he and his accomplices saved. As the story opens, this material is more religious relic than literal knowledge. Too much of the foundation of twentieth century culture has been ripped away for the remnant to be understood in a superstitious age. Despite this the Order believes that a time will come again for such work to be understood and so it keeps the holy duty of preservation. The later parts of the story carry through the grand historical process of building a new civilisation.
However, this is not so much a dynastic saga as the illumination of history through a series of vignettes. The characters spring fully formed into print. Their past lives are barely sketched but their hopes and fears are individual and realistic. As the world around them changes, the monks must each confront in their own lives the nature and execution of their duty to God and its relationship with duty to man. The central theme of pride and humility is played out repeatedly but in such different ways that new insight is gained on each iteration.
Whilst the monks of the abbey are restricted to a normal span of years, Miller manages a powerful continuity of presence in the abbey itself. It is filled with the words and ideas of centuries of Christianity. It evokes the belief in eternity of the medieval church builders and echoes the timeless feeling often experienced in any truly old building. Miller also recalls characters from earlier periods in the story through the artefacts and ideas they leave behind them. Partly as a product of this, the tone darkens through the course of the book. The weight of history increases with the rate of progress, along with an increasing fear that humanity may not have learned the lessons of its past.
For most modern readers the book itself almost becomes its own metaphor. It is littered with learning which has lost much of its currency in recent generations. As a result, it tends to represent the books sealed in barrels by the bookleggers of the next age - many of us could use a guide to interpret the Hebrew lettering or Church Latin. Despite this flavour of the arcane, it addresses fundamental questions of our relationship with knowledge and technology. A Canticle for Lebowitz is a well rounded and thought provoking book. Its concepts and conclusions are as relevant today as when it was written.
Purchase this book at fatbrain.
Along with Alfred Bester's "The Stars My Destination" and "The Demolished Man", I picked up "A Canticle for Leibowitz" after a recommendation from JMS (Babylon 5 creator). This is good stuff.
It's almost like a retelling of the dark ages of Western civilization when the monks (especially the Celts and Irish) spent centuries collecting and hiding manuscripts and preserving knowledge for future generations. (The difference, of course, is that the 20th century world becomes the new Roman Empire in Miller's retelling).
On the surface, it may not seem as relevant these days, without the Cold War looming in the background. The real meat of the story, though, is in the depiction of history and knowledge, and man's place in that tapestry. Well worth a read -- and not only to show that there's more to a dystopian post-apocalyptic future than Mad Max.
--
how to invest, a novice's guide
Miller includes a mass revolt against learning. A book burning if you will. All digital records could conceivable been destroyed at that time as well. Many scientists, scholars and other educated people were killed (hence the monks' need for 'booklegging'), so its not out of plausibilities reach.
Along those lines it was rather interesting to read about a monk 'discovering' the electric light, and seeing what they did to a small electrical schematic.
For me, discovering The Jew (and The Poet), the mystic elements of the story was a wonderful experience. The book got a new dimension: it really showed the authors talent. This repeating leitmotive... the words - "As long as there is a single Jew, there will be someone to mend their tents" - beautiful. This book acomplished a kind of fullness, completeness which is in my eyes reserved for rare pearls of world literature. It's structure resembles a well written piece of classical music, a... well, it must be said: a canticle.
Regards,
January
Very good point! Granted, in CFL, the guys spent a lot of time redrawing a schematic, then drawing it again and making a religious artifact out of it. They had no clue whatsoever of what it was they were copying. They were just doing it.
I think there is always going to be a type of rosetta stone out there. For example, we have dictionaries, and most of them have the history of whatever word it is, which translates to French, Latin, German, etc. So it may take a while, but it could still be figured out. Same with CFL - if they ran across the "Holy Parts Guide" I bet they could figure that out as well. Even two or three thousand years after CFL happened, someone is probably going to discover electricity and start building circuits and someone along the way might say, "Wow! This religious text matches my radio circuit!"
But, all this is quite high on the woe and intrigue meter. I play around a lot with old audio recordings. How does one make sure that the recording will exist way down the road? I have old reel to reel tapes and those were bastards to get converted because I did not have a reel to reel tape deck. Technology has pretty much passed it by. It does not matter if it is digital or analog - if there are no machines around to play it on, it can't be played.
Currently NPR runs a segment on Friday afternoon called "Lost and Found Sound" - they have played lots of things that were recorded back in the 1950s - usually stuff from someones grandmother - but the recordings were made on paper records. That stuff was and is lost to the ages every day. Having the original is good, but it is always good to have other copies of it too. Digital copies just let you send multi-generational versions all over without degradation (provided of course you use lossless methods).
I don't think we are going to see digital copies of actual books until the Holodeck becomes reality - or copies good enough that we can kind of relax some instead of worrying about the originals.
But, back to digital in recordings - I would not trust just one copy. If you make many copies and spread them around all the better. They would all be identical. Say you made 1000 CDs and 100 years from now you want to read them. Even if only 10 of them survived, chances are going to be pretty good that you will be able to reconstruct the data that was on them. And if you got really stingy and said "every 10 years they must have new copies made of them", then you would be even better off. Those copies 10 years from now would contain the same data that you wrote today.
Just keep making backups every few years.
Before you all get the wrong idea about the Christian aspects, the book does not get preachy as you might expect from the review. Instead, it portrays the conflict between reason and religion from a third-party perspective, showing equally the beneficial and harmful aspects of each. It forces you to look at both sides of the issue - not from the perspective of which is wrong and which is right - and shows how very similar the two points of view can be.
Above all, it's a study of human nature. I can't elaborate much more than that without spoiling it, but it highlights our inability as a race to learn from past mistakes. And scattered through the deep philosophical implications are some of the most humorous situations I've encountered since Douglas Adams (I'm not saying it's a laugh riot; the humor is well balanced to provide just the right amount of comic relief.) All in all, I wholeheartedly recommend this book if you haven't already read it. And if you have, read it again! (Especially if it's been a while...)
--Fesh
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
Re Catholicism: Also check out the James Blish series After Such Knowledge, which includes the classic A Case of Conscience (that novel won a Hugo award, IIRC) in which such questions as "Do aliens have souls?" and "If so, can aliens receive grace?" are considered at length.
(BTW, I'm not a Catholic, but I was sent to an Episcopal-run school for the first few years, so I got a healthy[?] dose of much of the same theological/moral/ethical stuff as the Catholic kids did.)
Zontar The Mindless,
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
About 5-6 years ago there was a Scientific American cover story on the permanence of data, from Egyptian payrii and Gutenburg Bibles to CD-ROMS (I've checked their site, but their archives don't go back that far -- sorry!). The thrust of the article was that magnetically stored data decays (albeit very slowly) and the hardware and software required to access much of it is unavailable. Sure, we could always build new Commodore 64 tape drive and CPM machines to access the files, but what if the specs on how to build *those* becomes unretrievable in a few centuries? The article commented on the good luck had by Gutenburg in selecting the materials to make the materials for his books. By chance, no strong acids or alkalis were used in the paper and ink, and as a result there are still a few well preserved 500-year-old books around. Had he magically has access to industrial papers and inks from the first half of this century, his books would not have lasted 100 years! Don't be so sure that digital information is all that retrievable.
I put two and two together, and listened to one in the background while playing the other in all its 320x200x256 glory.
At first, I thought it was just a coincidence that I seemed to develop literacy and basic technology at about the same rate as the radio play, but I was truly freaked out as time went by and my technology was always within a generation of that in the play.
The climax came when, in the story, the bombs had begun to fall and the debate on euthanasia begun -- because about 20 minutes earlier, my last AI opponent and I had each developed nuclear weapons and started using them on each other. It was bad enough when I started building the nukes at the same time as the world of Canticle, but the timing of the war and the resultant mess... "spooky" doesn't even begin to describe the feeling.
The game ended within about half an hour of the radio play - 40,000 of us headed for Alpha Centauri, yet another one of those staggering coincidences.
Kudos to Miller for the novel, to NPR for the radio play, and to Sid Meier for Civ. Yeah, I know that what I experienced was just a coincidence -- but after 8-12 hours in a darkened room playing Civ and listening to Canticle, I'll never feel that the timing of my game and the events in the radio play were just a coincidence. Too spooky for words, but awe-inspiring. Which is, of course, what good SF - whether it comes in the form of a novel, a radio play, or a strategy game - is all about.
This is definately one of the great examples of Science Fiction, in that it remains firmly grounded in strong characters and thoughtful developments.
There is probably several layers of meaning in there, but to preserve my enjoyment of the book I just enjoyed it at the surface.
Hotnutz.com
Miller didn't write a lot of SF - few people have read any of his stories, other than CFL, but that book bought him his well-deserved place in the pantheon of anglophone SF.
I graded some student papers on CFL some years ago, and there was a surprising array of conclusions about the book's message. Some saw it as straight SF about the consequences of nuclear war, a few seeing strong anti-nuclear messages in it. Others saw it as an anti-clerical novel, like the work of Victor Hugo. Some saw the reaffirmation of Clarke's maxim that any advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, especially in the second part.
One thought the book was about the unnaturalness of modern society, suggesting that without constant efforts, man would naturally return to a feudal lifestyle. He made his point well, carefully avoiding the suggestion that Miller was a closet Luddite.
Another saw the preservation of knowledge as a key theme. He thought Miller was saying that preservation of knowledge is a holy calling, a cause requiring a kind of missionary devotion.
Many students found CFL a counsel of despair, suggesting that nuclear war is inevitable and that it would destroy our civilisation. Most caught on to the theme of despair in the last section, suggesting that man could never learn from history.
A few thought the last section had a theme of hope, that man could ultimately escape his own destructiveness, either by starting over elsewhere or by submission to God.
This is a complex novel, rich in subtle meaning and interpretation and full of diverse themes, told through a relatively small cast of characters. One of the most powerful things I brought out of it was new perspective on medaeval European history. Seeing how the people in CFL reinterpreted my civilisation made me think about how feudal Europe reinterpreted the Roman Empire.
A Canticle for Leibowitz is a powerful book, more than worth reading and timeless in a way that very little SF is. Stay away from the so-called sequel though, it will only diminish the first book.
I picked up "A Canticle for Leibowitz" after a recommendation from JMS (Babylon 5 creator)... It's almost like a retelling of the dark ages of Western civilization when the monks ... spent centuries collecting and hiding manuscripts and preserving knowledge for future generations.
Very interesting. There is an episode of Babylon 5 entitled, "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars", which includes a segment about this exact same thing, nearly verbatim.
If you read the page linked to for the episode, you will find JMS came up with this idea independently, and then, on an unrelated project, discovered both the dark age connection and the Canticle connection.
Great minds think alike, I guess.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
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