Search - A Canticle for Leibowitz

A Canticle for Leibowitz is a cautionary tale set in a post apocalyptic America which emphasizes the adage that those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. This book is actually three separate stories but all very much related and important for understanding the message of the book. The first story is probably the most popular and interesting of the three, which relates the tale of a monk in the New Mexico desert many years after a nuclear war has happened and the great lengths his order goes through to preserve knowledge. The second story takes place years later but relates to the things that the monks had done. The third story takes place perhaps a century or more later and is probably the most important part of the book and also somewhat less interesting and hard to follow, but once you understand what the third part is about, it brings the story full circle and delivers the final message that the author is trying to express. Shocking and poignant, A Canticle for Leibowitz is a true classic science fiction novel that should be read by pretty much everyone interested in the genre. 5/5 Stars.

Having just finished A Canticle for Leibowitz (hey, better late than never), I've been mulling some of the similarities between this book and Isaac Asimov's Foundation series (the original trilogy, at least), as well as the differences. Both series are episodic, of course, as they focus on certain moments in history following the fall of civilization â€" in Asimov's book, the fall was gradual; while in Leibowitz it's more instantaneous. Both books reveal a long-term plan to preserve human knowledge in the wake of the onset of a new Dark Age; and both use the ideals of an initial prophet to build the foundation that evolves over time.

Leibowitz, however, depends more upon faith and religious devotion as opposed to Foundation's ingenuity and endurance of humanity. It's interesting to note that the religious dogma followed in Leibowitz result in the group dedicated to the preservation of knowledge (the Albertian Order of Leibowitz) remaining modest and overlooked through the years; whereas the Seldon Foundation becomes the dominant force in the Galaxy through the execution of its own master plan.

Both books, in addition, base their histories on the working theme that history repeats itself, and that we are doomed to repeat the past. This theme is more subtle in Foundation, though; it is based on the concept of Hari Seldon's psychohistory, which predicts the behavior of large groups of human beings based upon their predictability. This predictability led to Seldon's ability to predict when certain crises of history would take place, based upon the tendency of humans to repeat their past mistakes…at least, until his predictions were negated by the presence of the unknown X-factor, the Mule. Then, the books focused on the attempts by the Second Foundation to pick up the pieces of their plan and return it to a pattern of predictability. (I won't get into Foundation's Edge, which IMHO negates a large part of Asimov's concept of human predictability.)

Foundation is more optimistic than A Canticle for Leibowitz, which by its final chapters is brow-beating the reader over the head with its message that mankind is doomed to repeat the past. What's interesting in Leibowitz is the way that science becomes more opposed to religion with each book in the story: in the first, science is an artifact to be kept hidden and preserved; in the second, newly-born science finds itself at odds with religion; and in the third book, science (and Mankind) has abandoned religion and considers it above religion, as exemplified by the argument over euthanasia in the last chapters. Miller is unquestionably in the pro-religion camp in this book, but if you accept this and just take his preaching as character storytelling, then it's still a good read.

I like this book so much that I have kept a copy of it for years and reread it once in a while; but, like Susi H, I have to admit that the last part of the book is the least interesting.

As anyone who has read the book knows, Brother Frances was not in the Utah desert, he was a native of Utah. Although never officially identified, the story takes place at Los Alamos, New Mexico.