Thirteen Days of Atomigeddon 5: A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

[james_davis_nicoll]

My review of that classic post-apocalyptic novel A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

"Granted, knowledge of the first Flame Deluge meant it took nations much longer to convince themselves an atomic war would be survivable than it did the first time round and that bought enough time for the extrasolar colonies to be founded."

There's almost an "unexpected hanging paradox" going on here. The first flame deluge demonstrated that it is possible for such a disaster to occur. The second flame deluge demonstrates that humans can make decisions leading to such a disaster _even after_ its possiblity has been demonstrated, and so on to aleph null.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

I read this when I was somewhere around twelve ot thirteen(1965or 1966 -- it can't have been later than the sumer of 67, since I took it out of the library in Philadelphia). And I was so totally mystified by it that I was convinced it must be Great Literature. The Wandering Jew part was particularly opaque to me at the time and I have not re-read it -- I kind of wish you had said something about it. And the lady with the two heads? What was that?

I don't think it was set as a required text till later though.

[elusis.livejournal.com]

I had a high school (or was it college?) boyfriend who loved it, and I read it not knowing about the 3-novelette structure. Then I was furious when just as I got into the first story's characters, everything flashed forward 600 years and it was all "ruined." (Kind of like I felt between the first and second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, before I figured out how terrible they were. And before I heard of clench racing.)

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

IIRC, basically Rachel is the Second Coming, and the priests just missed it by shaking the dust of the earth from their feet and taking off.

Whoops.

[celestialweasel.livejournal.com]

Your review has cast doubt in my mind as to whether I really have read it, as opposed to skimmed it. This would not be the first time that has happened. The only bits I remember clearly are all in the 3rd part. Alternatively I may have read it at such a young age to have not really understood it.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

The only thing I remember at all is the monk illuminating the wiring diagram.

[awesomeaud.livejournal.com]

I can't recall where the bit on euthanasia was....could you refresh my memory?

[(Anonymous)]

In the last section, after a brief nuclear exchange, the government sets up a euthanasia center near the monastery. A young woman headed there with her baby are intercepted by the priest who is the main character of this section, and he and the woman debate the ethics of euthanasia, at some length. The priest also hits the doctor running the center (and later confesses this sin); the doctor refuses to testify against the priest so the priest isn't in jail when the real war starts.

Harimad here

[(Anonymous)]

In the third section, after a couple of nuclear bombs fell, the government set up both medical and euthanasia centers. The brothers objected to the latter, saying suicide is immoral and god doesn't burden us with more than we can bear. The government doctor doesn't agree at all, that bad things happen to good and/or innocent people, and - pointing to a specific, lethally-irradiated child in extreme pain - asks how the hell one can talk about bearable burdens to a 4 year old.

[bruce munro (from livejournal.com)]

"As ad hoc social movements go, the Simplification seems to have been surprisingly successful (and also wide-spread – no other nation seems to be doing significantly better than the former United States of America)."

Perhaps it's because you are Canadian that you don't get this, but all other nations exist to serve as bit players in the American Drama. In post-apocalyptic scenarios, other nations must patiently wait in the wings and weave baskets until the US has recovered to the point where it can play a global role again. They therefore cannot recover faster than the US, with the admitted exception of American Drama Number Variant 11, Swarthy Rapey Invaders Take Over, to be Eventually Overthrown/Expelled/Exterminated

[bruce munro (from livejournal.com)]

Ah, but that's a bit mean of me. L Sprague De Camp knew better, Poul Anderson, H. Beam Piper, Fred Pohl...

[(Anonymous)]

See KSRs Wild Shore, for example.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

Miller knew about other nations. The town that grew up around the abbey was called "Sanly Bowits" -- from San Leibowitz. Not Saint. There are other signs that they're not speaking a language primarily descended from English.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Read the original novella in my early teens, found it terribly sad for reasons I cannot remember. Also confusing, but affecting.

[sesmo.livejournal.com]

I had to read that book for a high school class and have hated it since. Now I feel like I should reread it.

Other views

[llennhoff.livejournal.com]

Google groups is giving me difficulties, but Steve Simmons repeatedly wrote excellent essays on Canticle that completely inverted my understanding of the book. Alas, most of the references I could find were pointers to early and now dead versions of the article. Side note: Ok, links to deja news can reasonably be dead. But links to google groups should be backwards compatible, IMO.

Re: Other views

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

I saw Steve a couple weeks ago at Conclave in Dearborn, but it was a rushed hallway encounter with zero literary content. Too bad.

Two of Steve Simmons's 1996 postings are here and here.

This ought to get you to part of the 1996 thread in which Steve's postings appeared.

A 2002 thread from rec.arts.sf.written about Canticle for Leibowitz to which Steve also contributed. He gives links to several older postings, but as llennhoff suggests, these links are now broken.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

I wonder if JFK was deliberately diverting both sides' money away from bombs, back when the Space Program was the Space Race.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Interesting conjecture, but I fear the historical record does not tend to support this hypothesis.

Also, even if true, it apparently did not work; on both sides of the Iron Curtain, plenty of money was available for bombs.

[monte davis (from livejournal.com)]

Thanks for the link to the WHA radio adaptation, which I'm enjoying during daily walks. On my shelves I find a 1962 Ballantine paperback Conditionally Human, of three early-1950s Miller novellas, but Canticle either fell apart or was lent away long ago.

Atomigeddons aside, the first part of Canticle incorporates a subtle treatment of Max Weber's "routinization of charisma": how a religion's initial visionary, ecstatic, and transcendental impulses are tamed, even suppressed, by the needs of an ongoing institution. The abbot's remarks on how not to pursue a campaign for canonization are very funny. Also, the exchange between Brother Francis and Brother Jeris about the Liebowitz circuit diagram is a neat little cartoon of late medieval philosophical issues. I didn't see these when I first read it back in the day, but i did grasp at some level that Miller's sense of history left Asimov's or Heinlein's in the dust.

[(Anonymous)]

I spent some time working in a monastery when I was in high school. Miller's depictions of life in his monastery really rang true.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

People wanting a cheap laugh should keep a copy of one of Herman Kahn's escalation ladders handy while reading the bits about the Atlantic/Asian Crisis.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

WHY IS MY LADDER'S RUNGS NOT MARKED WITH THE VARIOUS STAGES OF ESCALATION?

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

I am quite fond of this book. Once upon a time I found an opportunity. As I have written:

I have always loved Brother Francis's illuminated reproduction of St. Leibowitz's circuit diagram. In 1979, I was rooming with Todd Johnson, a young electronics whiz. At a fan gathering, we met Mary Lynn Skirvin, a talented artist. I was intrigued to learn that she knew how to do calligraphy.

"Wouldn't it be cool," I told Todd, "if Mary Lynn could draw the circuit diagram from A Canticle for Leibowitz?"

Todd provided a plausible diagram for Transistorized Control System for Unit 6-B-- some kind of servo driver, if memory serves. I dug out the book and loaned it to Mary Lynn, who hadn't yet read it.

The result was wonderful. Vines grow up the wires. Hovering cherubs unroll blueprints. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost gaze benignly upon the Schmitt Modulator. St. Leibowitz himself, carrying a bundle of smuggled books, raises his hand in blessing. Radiation symbols and resistor color codes serve as decoration.

Mary Lynn made 600 prints and, over the years, she sold them all to delighted members of the technoculture. Her diagram hung over many a workbench, many a computer terminal.

I have Print Number One on my own wall.

The original she gave to the man she loved.

When Mary Lynn married Todd, I was their best man. Saint Leibowitz must have interceded, for they are still making amazing art together.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Neat!

[felila.livejournal.com]

I looked up 'clench racing' and I found Nick Lowe's essay on the Well-Tempered Plot Device

http://news.ansible.uk/plotdev.html

which is utterly hilarious and wonderul. I am grateful for the reference.

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

A graduate of our MFA program composed a "soundtrack" for A Canticle For Leibowitz (http://www.johnkannenberg.com/sound/leibowitz.html) some years ago.

[nelc.livejournal.com]

By coincidence, a new review of aCfL from 1959 by galacticjourney. (An explanation for why it's from 1959 is linked at the very end of the post.)

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

I guess this was the week to post reviews of Canticle for Leibowitz.

I'm not used to seeing The New Yorker play follow-the-leader with James, though. Wonder if they monitor other popular LJ blogs looking for ideas?