An Apocalyptic Future Ian Likes: A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr

Brother Francis is supposed to be on his Lenten Vigil, prior to being enrolled as a Brother of the Order of The Blessed Leibowitz. However, a chance encounter with a ragged pilgrim has led to a discovery of an ancient shelter. Within this shelter are objects that could be attributed to the founder of the order, Isaac Edward Leibowitz himself.

But the use and interpretation of these artefacts could lead to a blessed future or no future at all…

Walter M. Miller (1923 – 1996) was an acclaimed author of more than forty short stories but he is most famous for the single novel published in his lifetime, A Canticle For Leibowitz (1959). His short stories are quite varied; his most famous, “The Darfstellar”, features an actor who has been replaced by AI-controlled mannequins, who seeks a return to his former glory days on the stage. My personal favourite of his is the superb “The Will”, in which a terminally ill boy makes a bargain with the future.

Miller won the Hugo Award for Canticle. He never wrote another novel in his life, although he did leave behind a lengthy manuscript after his death (he took his own life several months after his wife passed away). This new book was completed by Terry Bisson and published as Saint Leibowitz And The Wild Horse Woman. It has nowhere near the charm and impact of the first book, but we aren’t talking about that one, so it doesn’t matter.

A Canticle For Leibowitz is superb. It was originally published as three novellas in The Magazine Of Fantasy And Science Fiction (or F&SF as it is known to fans). These short stories were “fixed up” (as the practice is known) into a full-length novel.

The first section, “Fiat Homo” (published originally as “A Canticle For Leibowitz”) is the story of Francis, a novice who discovers the hidden vault filled with relics. It initially ruins his nascent career as a priest because his superiors, notably Abbot Arkos, head of the monastery, worries that outsiders will think the relics were planted or exploited for gain by the order in their quest to have Leibowitz become a saint. However, Francis overcomes the obstacles his naivety and the cynicism of others throws in his path and he achieves a measure of quiet success as an illuminator/copyist of ancient documents. His story culminates in his trip to New Rome to present some of his work to the Pope. Unfortunately, he is held up by highwaymen on his way there and some of his work is stolen. On his return trip – somewhat disillusioned by the shabby state of the seat of his beloved religion – he seeks to buy back his belongings but is killed instead.

It’s a mostly delightful piece of writing, with Francis being a naïve, though not stupid, protagonist. The story of his adolescence and adulthood in the Order is pleasant and charming, reminding you of any number of historical or fantastical fictions that deal with members of some form of priesthood. That this was rooted in Miller’s own Catholicism makes it feel even more authentic and timeless.

The mix of our own history and that of the world after the “Flame Deluge” (as the nuclear holocaust is known) comes across effortlessly and seamlessly, although it does feel jarring to come across references to archaic Latin phrases being used in relation to post-apocalyptic problems

From the curse of the Fallout,

     O Lord, deliver us.

From the begetting of monsters

     O Lord, deliver us.

From the curse of the Misborn,

O Lord, deliver us.

A morte perpetua,

     Domine, libera nos.

It just unfolds beautifully: at first we aren’t really sure when this part of the story takes place: the contextual clues lead us to believe that this is a setting with a technological and social structure similar to that of Europe some time before the Renaissance, but Francis sits his vigil in what can only be a desert, and it is not long before we gather that the Abbey is based in what used to be the US Midwest.

Miller gives us a potted history of the order, explaining that Leibowitz, after finally accepting that his wife died in the nuclear war, became a monk and began to accumulate papers and books and other artefacts of the past in order to rebuild society. It’s stated that many of his fellows were martyred by other survivors who despised the knowledge that had led to their destruction:

Simpletons! Yes, yes! I’m a simpleton! Are you a simpleton? We’ll build a town and we’ll name it Simple Town, because by then all the smart bastards that caused all this, they’ll be dead! Simpletons! Let’s go! This ought to show ‘em! Anybody here not a simpleton? Get the bastard, if there is!

This struck me on my first reading of it, in 1986, as something explored a little by Roger Zelazny in his post-apocalyptic novel Damnation Alley (1969). In that tale, a courier (a former biker named Hell Tanner) is tasked with taking a plague serum across what is left of the United States. On his many adventures he meets a former scientist who talks to him about “Batesian Mimicry,” a process whereby some organisms can mimic larger, more threatening organisms to stay safe in their environment. The scientist claims to have done that to avoid being murdered by other survivors who wanted to take the lives of those who they thought responsible for their predicament. Of course, it is extremely likely that Zelazny had read this book and merely wanted to give this digression a suitably logical explanation.

But something else in that first section reminded me of another source: Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953). There’s a moment shortly after the last quote where we learn about a peculiar type of monk known as “memorizers”:

The memorizers committed to rote memory entire volumes of history, sacred writings, literature and science…

This immediately brought to mind Guy Montag, the hero of Fahrenheit 451, who ends that novel memorising the text of The Book Of Revelations.

It’s entirely possible that Miller was engaging in a “nod” to the work of Bradbury, although this short story was only published a couple of years after Fahrenheit 451, which means that it could also just be a coincidence, since Miller was working on the short story at roughly the time Bradbury’s book was published.

At any rate, it was enough to start me thinking about a Bradbury/Miller/Zelazny shared literary universe about the survival of humanity after a nuclear war…

The second section, “Fiat Lux” (originally published as “And The Light Is Risen”), takes place six centuries later. Leibowitz is now a saint, but the world in which his priests labour is still harsh and unforgiving. In this section, Thon Taddeo, a leading scientist of the day takes a trip to the Abbey of Saint Leibowitz to read some of their ancient texts to research some of his own findings. On arrival, he is crestfallen to discover that what he has been lauded for has only been the rediscovery of ancient knowledge, and also that the monks at the Abbey have begun to harness the power of electricity, lost since before the Flame Deluge, the nuclear holocaust that destroyed the old world. But these developments are meaningless in the face of the empire-building that has been undertaken by Taddeo’s employer, Hannegan, Mayor of Texarkana…

This middle part of the novel seems to be hinting at success for the monks of the Order over the technological and social darkness that has befallen humanity, but it ends with Hannegan achieving a massive victory over the barbarian nomadic tribes that surround his territory. Literacy and technology will be taking a step backward before they have even returned to the fore, it seems.

Taddeo, though disillusioned by his trip to the Abbey, nonetheless behaves honourably and decently when he returns some plans that his bodyguard – assigned to him by Hannegan – has secretly made of the Abbey, thinking that it might have some tactical value in the upcoming conflict, possibly showing that knowledge might lead to a better more honourable future. (This storyline may also be informed by Miller’s own experiences as a pilot during World War II, when he took part in the bombing of the Benedictine abbey at Monte Cassino.)

The third section, “Fiat Voluntas Tua” (originally “The Last Canticle”) jumps ahead another six centuries. Humanity has surpassed their ancestors technologically, with spaceflight being a routine occurrence and computers and other technological achievements being quite commonplace as well. But the order of Saint Leibowitz is still there, working for the betterment of mankind while the world falls apart again. In this section Abbot Zerchi, the current head of the order, is planning a mission to a space colony. But this is no ordinary mission: with the increased tensions around the globe, Zerchi is looking to transfer the order to a new environment, away from the perils of earthly existence, where knowledge will be safe.

Fortunately, the planned mission does manage its escape, but the world undergoes another Flame Deluge. The reader is left to wonder if there will be another Saint Leibowitz to preserve the knowledge of the past this time…

It is a profoundly moving novel. The scope of the story is epic, covering around twelve centuries of history. It also features many events that echo or rhyme with events from our own history, particularly in the climactic section of the novel in which we see two large blocs of power poised to destroy the rest of the world because they can’t learn how to live amicably on it.

What seals the deal for this reader are the codas that conclude each section. The first one follows the death of Francis, after he has been buried by the same wanderer who directed him to the fallout shelter years before (a wanderer who mysteriously also takes part in the later parts of the book and could possibly be older than human experience may allow for). We follow a buzzard who has been denied a feat of freshly-killed man and moves on to other pieces of carrion. It’s hinted that the buzzard does quite well out of the conflicts of man, suggesting that life will go on even if mankind disappoints their own potential.

The second follows more buzzards as they feast on the remains of one of the subsidiary characters of “Fiat Lux.” It mimics the philosophies of man – in particular, religious philosophies – by stating outright that buzzards have their own complex schools of thought:

Their philosophies demonstrated by unaided reason that alone that the Supreme Cathartes aura regnans had created the world especially for buzzards.

Again, we get an idea that the petty conflicts of man are not a bad result in the grand scheme of things, given that they support the lifestyles of buzzards and other carrion-eaters.

But it is the third – in which we see a shark swimming to depths of the ocean to brood – which suggests that there might not be a recurrence of human life after this apocalypse:

He was very hungry that season.

I remember being profoundly depressed by this book when I first read it. I was 16 and was living through what was – though I didn’t know it – the last throes of the Cold War. I had lived with the peril of nuclear war hanging over my head for all of my short life thus far and it was something that was rarely far from my thoughts when the news bulletins turned grim, as they often did in 1986.

Fortunately, as you may have guessed, we have managed to avoid the fate of the world as imagined by Mr Miller (so far), but it was a close-run thing on some occasions. Miller offered a brief hope that mankind and the power of intellect couple with compassion might allow a chance for survival, but his own mistrust of our better selves – a mistrust that may have contributed to him taking his own life in 1996 – did not allow for any kind of long-term survival.

However, he does allow a chance: the expedition into space is sensibly prepared and crewed and just might succeed where humanity has failed. Like the monks of the Order of Saint Leibowitz have shown, it may be possible for knowledge to survive hidden away from the prying eyes of those who would exploit it or ignore it for their own gain.

You can find out more about Walter M. Miller, Jr at https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/miller_walter_m