I bought this book based solely on the back cover, not knowing that it’s a classic and has been included (by very respectable SF writers) in lists like “if you are only going to read 3 SF books, here’s the ones you should read”.
Here’s what it says about the book (minus the usual gushing quotes from major newspapers):
The atomic Flame Deluge was over.
The earth was dead.
All knowledge was gone.
In a hellish, barren desert, a humble monk
unearths a fragile link to a twentieth-century
civilization. A hand-written document from the
Blessed Saint Leibowitz that reads:
Pound pastrami
can kraut
six bagels
– bring home for Emma
Civilization has been destroyed, and in a subsequent backlash against the science that enabled this, anyone who can be somehow considered responsible (meaning anyone with an education) is killed. All books are destroyed, and most of the world becomes illiterate.
In an effort to save at least some knowledge, a man named Leibowitz founds a monastic order dedicated to gathering and preserving whatever scraps of written material they can find. Most of it is incomprehensible to them, but they store it all, for many long centuries, in the hopes that some day it will prove useful.
Generally classed as science fiction, but there is no science in it. There’s far more religion than science, in fact. I guess it’s really speculative fiction – what-if fiction. It’s one of the classic post-apocalyptic novels, written in the deepest depths of the cold war and a fear of nuclear destruction. It’s a very pessimistic book in one sense. History keeps repeating itself: the fall of Rome and the loss of the knowledge of antiquity is followed by the Deluge, which in turn is followed by another apocalypse that we see coming at the end of the book. Knowledge is lost, rediscovered, and grotesquely distorted in history’s mirror. Our efforts are futile and our lives ultimately achieve little.
But while the book is about man’s everlasting hubris and folly, it’s also about his hope and persistence. Man knocks himself down flat and still stands up again and again. And while the monks’ lives may be filled with years of futile striving, there is also belief, a sense of meaning and community.
There is a lot of religion in the book, naturally, but although it is generally presented as a force for good, Miller is not uncritical of it. The monks combine commendable persistence and patience with blind veneration of random scraps of paper. Their abbots have a tendency to oppose scientific progress and, later, stubbornly insist that euthanasia is always wrong, etc.
Two quotes that really summarise what I think Miller’s main intended message was (pages 252 and 139 in my edition):
… there was still the serpent whispering: For God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened: and you shall be as Gods. The old father of lies was clever at telling half-truths: How shall you ‘know’ good and evil, until you shall have sampled a little? Taste and be as Gods. But neither infinite power nor infinite wisdom could bestow godhood upon men. For that there would have to be infinite love as well.
“How can a great and wise civilization have destroyed itself so completely?”
“Perhaps […] by being materially great and materially wise, and nothing else.”
On the whole this is a wonderful book, well written, thoughtful, beautiful, funny and grim and also optimistic. It hasn’t aged at all in the 40 years that have passed since its writing, and it is still absolutely worth reading.
Leave a comment