A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller, Jr.

 

The only novel written by Mr. Miller and published (1959) during his lifetime--a sequel was posthumously written/published, supposedly based on his own writings and outlines...I will not be reading it.  It won the Hugo in 1961, and is a three-part story that spans a couple of thousand years, beginning in a post-nuclear-holocaust world circa 2600, wherein most of Earth's inhabitants are illiterate stone age types. Although plenty of educated and technoliterate folks had survived the holocaust of 2000-something, over the next hundred years or so they were hunted down and killed by less literate survivors, the logic being that Smart People and Their Machines got us into this mess, hence, kill 'em all so we don't end up with Electricity and Engines and, eventually, Atom Bombs ever again. 


When Literacy equals Witchcraft, it becomes Unfashionable and a Liability To One's Survival...hence, it gradually faded out of Humanity's toolbox. The exception to this rule was one ex-engineer named Leibowitz, who set about saving books when and where he could, and founded a society of Bookleggers, whose purpose was the finding and hiding/burying of literature. Leibowitz ended up being burnt at the stake by an Illiterate Horde. 600 years later, the book opens in southwest Arizona, in a monastery whose monks live out the tradition of Leibowitz, preserving whatever books and manuscripts they've managed to hang onto, and petitioning the new world church for Leibowitz's canonization. It's a New Stone Age, essentially...the book moves on from there, through a New Dark Ages growth period and all the way up to a New Modern Day period (aroundabouts 4600 A.D. or so). The monks and their literate monastery are the focal point of all three sections. The book is fun and, more important, made me think about a couple of practical concerns/issues, both of which I'll detail in a separate post.