“Ipsa scientia potestas est”
A Canticle for Leibowitz is a well-regarded science fiction novel written by Walter M. Miller Jr. and published in 1959. The biography in the back of my Bantam Books edition explains that Miller was in the American Air Force during World War II, where he participated in the bombing of the Abbey of Monte Cassino, “the oldest abbey in the Western world”. One can’t help but wonder if Miller wrote this novel because of his role in the bombing.
The novel has a good sense of humour. Brother Francis’ commitment to honesty and uncertainty is played for laughs when his abbot interrogates him about his discovery of additional documents from the distant past and his interaction with the mysterious wanderer. Francis insists that he can’t be certain that the old man wasn’t Leibowitz himself, much to the abbot’s despair.
Miller has created a cast of empathetic characters. Thon Taddeo Pfardentrott’s is passionate about knowledge and ambivalent towards the religious stewards of ancient texts. Despite his misgivings, we can see a begrudging sort of respect he has to the people responsible for protecting those old tomes. Even a character like Dom Jethras Zerchi, with whom I fundamentally disagree with on matters of life and death, is written in such a way that the reader can understand why he thinks the way he does.
One minor quibble for someone unfamiliar with Latin: why no footnotes? Perhaps Miller thought his late 1950s audience would be a bit more familiar with the long-dead language. In this modern age, it’s pretty easy to find websites with the complete translation of the Latin passages sprinkled throughout the book. (Incidentally, so I can’t be accused of not practicing what I preach, the Latin title of this post means “knowledge itself is power” and is, according to Wikipedia, a famous quote from Sir Francis Bacon.)
Although the novel is technically a “fix-up” of three separate short stories, they feel connected enough in themes that it’s easy to see how they came to be joined together. It also helps that each section is separated by hundreds of years.
The novel has an ending similar in tone to Dr. Strangelove. While we don’t see the higher-ups making the decision to engage in a second thermonuclear war, we do see the effects of those fateful decisions. A Canticle for Leibowitz is perhaps a little more optimistic than the aforementioned film in that the novel has a group of clergy escape Earth by spaceship. Whether that’s an entirely happy ending is up for debate, of course. The extinction of humans on Earth seems like a tall price to pay for a handful of people to carry on among the stars.
On page 282, Miller writes: “immortal brain-rot”, which stuck out. The phrase “brainrot” has entered the popular vernacular in recent years. Clearly it’s been around for a long time, much longer than I would have guessed. Here’s to hoping that our societal brainrot is not terminal.