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.

Joint Winners

Twenty novels have won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel since 1966 (when the Nebula Award was first bestowed). The excel sheet is available here, and embedded below. Two-time joint winners are Arthur C. Clarke, Orson Scott Card, Joe Haldeman, and Ursula K Le Guin. I know that I've read four of these books (The Forever War, Neuromancer, Ender's Game and The Windup Girl), and I definitely started and possibly finished a few others in my early teens (Dune, Rendezvous With Rama, Ringworld), but Dune is the only one of those three that I remember much about. I'll be making my way through the sixteen that I never read or can't fully remember over the coming year. This is a Promise.

Compiled List of Hugo Award Winners

On a more practical note, here is the compiled list of Hugo winners that I ripped off from YouShouldaMarriedMe.com. The list runs from 1953-2010. I believe Richardo is compiling another list of Nebula winners and then cross-referencing the two.