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A Canticle for Leibowitz
from the under-stand-the-world-more-completly dept.
| A Canticle for Leibowitz | |
| author | Walter M. Miller, Jr. |
| pages | ? |
| publisher | Bantam |
| rating | 9/10 |
| reviewer | Duncan Lawie |
| ISBN | 0553379267 |
| summary | A powerful and thought provoking study of human nature in a wellconstructed future history. |
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.
A True Classic (Score:3)
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.
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Re:Digital? (Score:3)
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.
Canticle and Civilization (Score:5)
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.