I picked up this book after chatting with Kurt about sci-fi/cyberpunk novels and mentioning how much I’d enjoyed Neal Stephenson’s Anathem – a novel essentially about a world where monastic orders are built around science rather than religion, but with much of the trappings of medieval Christian monasticism. He told me I had to read A Canticle for Leibowitz as soon as possible, a recommendation I took on faith, since I’d honestly only vaguely heard of the book before and didn’t know anything about it at all. Turns out he was totally right, both on its similarities to Anathem and how much I’d like it.

The only novel published by Walter M. Miller Jr. during his lifetime (a sequel would be published posthumously), A Canticle for Leibowitz (1958) posits a postapocalyptic world in which a straggling group of monks in the Utah desert are the only preservers of the scientific knowledge left behind by one Isaac Edward Leibowitz. After a global nuclear war sometime in the 20th century leaves most of humanity either dead or deformed, a Simplification movement arises to destroy the learning that led to the creation of such devastating technology, with only a few, like the monastic order Leibowitz created, left to preserve books and knowledge. The first third of the book takes place 600 years after the Simplification, the middle third 600 years later as a new Renaissance begins to dawn and people begin to understand how to use the materials collected by the Leibowitzians, and the final third another 600 years after that, as nuclear war is again on the horizon. Thus the book is post-apocalyptic but also parallels history from about 400AD to the present day.

The book was originally published as three short stories which were then re-edited heavily into novel form. That background shows in that each section is self-contained, but they also play into each other nicely, especially in some callbacks from the third section all the way back to the first. Miller is satirical to some degree, with a good bit of humor coming from both Christian and scientific foibles, as well as the exasperatingly believable cyclical nature of the story, with humankind repeating the same mistakes of the previous millennium, even though they should know exactly what will happen. The combination of distance and intimacy – we can look on and say what fools these people be, yet how different are we, really – gives the book extraordinary depth and complexity, despite the relatively simple page-to-page plot. The fear of nuclear war may not hang over us quite like it did in the 1950s, but that hardly lessens the impact of the story.

Miller’s use of explicitly Christian (even Roman Catholic) monks as his main character is fascinating, all the more so because despite a certain amount of skepticism introduced as the monks build their theology over the three sections, this remains one of the most positive and pure representations of Christianity and Christian men I’ve seen in literature, especially speculative fiction. The monks don’t always do the right thing, their values often come into conflict with those of the up and coming scientists and modern atheists, and sometimes those conflicts are handled rashly. They’re refreshingly human, while always trying to balance what they believe is right with the unexpected realities of the world they’re faced with – the depiction rang very true to me, which as I said, is rare.

As a history buff, a speculative fiction fan, and a Christian, I found A Canticle for Leibowitz an invigorating and intellectually challenging read, though it’s also deceptively simple and fun as a sci-fi page-turner. It’s very easy to read, but it gives you much more to chew on than you’d expect. More books like this, please.