A Canticle for Leibowitz is a fascinating compilation of three linked short stories, tied together by the fictional Saint Leibowitz, an engineer who survived the nuclear war that laid waste to much of the world. Leibowitz spends his post-war life preserving books and knowledge in the face of a Luddite-like “Simplifier” mob bent on extracting revenge against the world’s intelligentsia for allowing the devastation in the first place. Ultimately, the combined three stories that make up this novel present a compelling study of the cycles of history and myth.
Walter M. Miller Jr. wrote the novel in the 1950s, and it won the Hugo Award for Best Novel from the World Science Fiction Convention in 1961. Miller is someone I can understand: an engineer by training, an author by years of practice, and a man preoccupied with technology’s impact on society. He served in the military and, like many veterans, carried things from that service that haunted him. He was also drawn to themes I find myself circling back to again and again—religion, church versus state, historical symmetry, societal decay, truth, courage and sacrifice.
So I came to this novel with real excitement. I knew how it had influenced many of today’s familiar novels and video games, and I knew the regard it’s held in among science-fiction-loving friends of mine. I’ve read that it’s the one literary masterpiece to emerge from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction—reason enough, on its own, to give it my time.
The Three Stories
I don’t want to spoil anything, so I’ll tread carefully. The first of the three stories opens generations after Saint Leibowitz—not yet officially a saint in the story’s own timeframe—lived and ministered. It follows Francis, a poor, long-suffering acolyte who spends long vigils in the desert, largely as a consequence of his gift for annoying the Abbot of the monastery where the Beatus Leibowitz is venerated, and where books and scraps of “ancient” technological memorabilia are protected. A wanderer leads Francis to discover a buried nuclear shelter containing an original blueprint drawn by Leibowitz himself, back when he was still an engineer. The discovery sets off a chain of events that eventually brings Francis to the priesthood.
What’s interesting about the second and third stories is that they echo the pattern of the first without ever feeling formulaic. The Wanderer—apparently very long-lived—reappears in each. Someone within the Abbey, generations later, remains underappreciated yet still willing to take a risk. And slowly, technology begins its return to the world, still shepherded by the Albertian Order of Saint Leibowitz. This is the pattern of cycles Miller’s writing keeps circling back to. Some reviewers call it recurrence; I read it more as what the social sciences term social cycle theory—a framework standing in direct opposition to social evolutionism.
Cycles, Not Progress
What’s the difference? Social evolutionism assumes progress projects forward indefinitely, as far as the historical eye can see. It’s a relatively recent idea, and honestly, not one history bears out very well. Social cycle theory, by contrast, is evidenced by the myths and stories found across nearly every human society. Like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, I’m convinced these myths recur because they are imperfect reflections of an objective truth. Miller sees the same pattern at work in this novel—the conflicts between the Abbey and the “secular” world echo those experienced by the early church fathers, then later the Holy Roman Empire, and, broadly, the tension still playing out today between secular science and the church.
Passages Worth Sitting With
Several passages are both thoughtful and quietly devastating. In the second story, the scientist Thon Taddeo watches a peasant pass before him and Father Apollo of the Abbey, and scoffs:
“Look at him, and tell me if you see the progeny of a once-mighty civilization? What do you see?”
“The image of Christ,” grated the monsignor, surprised at his own sudden anger. “What did you expect me to see?”
The scholar huffed impatiently. “The incongruity. Men as you can observe them through any window, and men as historians would have us believe men once were. I can’t accept it. How can a great and wise civilization have destroyed itself so completely?”
“Perhaps,” said Apollo, “by being materially great and materially wise, and nothing else.”
— Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz (p. 165)
A society materially great and wise, but great and wise in no other way—worth pondering for a while. Later, Thon Taddeo addresses the assembled monks at dinner about the learning he’s uncovered in their hidden archives. He speaks of a coming “new prince”—Truth—who will rule the future, and of technology’s return, the world remade in the image of the one it lost. But first, he warns:
“And how will this come to pass?” He paused and lowered his voice. “In the same way all change comes to pass, I fear. And I am sorry it is so. It will come to pass by violence and upheaval, by flame and by fury, for no change comes calmly over the world.”
— Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz (p. 274)
The monks listening demur, and when the scholar presses them on why, one answers:
“Ignorance is king. Many would not profit by his abdication. Many enrich themselves by means of his dark monarchy. They are his Court, and in his name they defraud and govern, enrich themselves and perpetuate their power.”
— Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz (p. 274)
Much of what the monks tell the scholar proves an accurate prediction of what continues to unfold in the novel. Eventually the story arrives at a resolution to the pain that keeps resurfacing under the kingdom of ignorance. In the third story, Abbot Zerchi imagines a conversation with Dr. Cors, a man he had clashed with over Cors’ recommendation of euthanasia for nuclear-strike victims:
“Listen, my dear Cors, why don’t you forgive God for allowing pain? If He didn’t allow it, human courage, bravery, nobility, and self-sacrifice would all be meaningless things. Besides, you’d be out of a job, Cors.”
— Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz (p. 425)
Verdict
We arrive, in the end, at what seems to be the author’s reason for capturing this cyclical pain and suffering: without it, there is no way to speak honestly of the courage and self-sacrifice that rises to meet it.
And that is an awfully good reason to write stories.
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