A Canticle for Leibowitz

***A Canticle for Leibowitz*** is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by American writer Walter M. Miller Jr., first published in 1959. Set in a Catholic monastery in the desert of the southwestern United States after a devastating nuclear war, the book spans thousands of years as civilization rebuilds itself. The monks of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz preserve the surviving remnants of man's scientific knowledge until the world is again ready for it.

The novel is a fixup of three short stories Miller published in *The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction* that were inspired by the author's participation in the bombing of the monastery at the Battle of Monte Cassino during World War II. The book is considered one of the classics of science fiction and has never been out of print. Appealing to mainstream and genre critics and readers alike, it won the 1961 Hugo Award for best science fiction novel, and its themes of religion, recurrence, and church versus state have generated a significant body of scholarly research. A sequel, *Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman*, was published posthumously in 1997.

## Publication History:

By 1955 Walter M. Miller, Jr. had published over 30 science fiction short stories in such magazines as *Astounding Science Fiction*, *Amazing Stories*, and *Fantastic Adventures*.[1] Significant themes of his stories included loss of scientific knowledge or "socio-technological regression and its presumed antithesis, continued technological advance", its preservation through oral transmission, the guardianship of archives by priests, and "that side of [human] behavior which can only be termed religious".[2][3] These thematic elements, combined with the growing subgenre of the "post-disaster" story and Miller's own World War II experiences, set the stage for the short story that would become the opening section of *A Canticle for Leibowitz*.[4]

During World War II, Miller served as part of a bomber crew that helped destroy the 6th century Christian monastery at Monte Cassino, Italy, founded by St. Benedict. This experience impressed him enough to write, a decade later, the short story "A Canticle for Leibowitz", about an order of monks whose abbey springs from the destroyed world around it.[5][6] The story, which would evolve into "Fiat Homo", the first part of the novel, was published in the April 1955 edition of *The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction* (*F&SF*). Although not originally intended as a serialization, the saga continued in "And the Light Is Risen", which was published in August 1956 (also in *F&SF*). That work would later grow into "Fiat Lux". It was while writing the third story, "The Last Canticle", for magazine publication in February of the following year[7] that Miller realized he was really completing a novel: "Only after I had written the first two and was working on the third did it dawn on me that this isn't three novelettes, it's a novel. And I converted it".[6]

The publication of the three "Canticle" stories,[8] along with Miller's "The Lineman", in *F&SF*, marked a significant evolution in the writer's craft. Under the editorship of Anthony Boucher, *F&SF* possessed a reputation for publishing works with "careful writing and characterization". Walker Percy considered the magazine "high-class sci-fi pulp".[9] The appearance of these stories in the magazine is indicative of the direction Miller's writing had taken toward "'human' stories, less crowded with incident, more concerned with values".[3]

*A Canticle for Leibowitz* was the only novel Miller published during his lifetime.[10] For the fixup, Miller did not just collate the three short stories. He changed the title and the names of some characters, added new characters, changed the nature and prominence of existing characters, and added Latin passages. These revisions affected the religious and recurrence themes of the story, improving it from the magazine version.[3]

The Latin phrases in the novel related to Roman Catholic Church practices, rituals and official communications. Susan Olsen writes that Miller did not include the Latin phrases just to "add dignity" to the work, but to emphasize its religious themes, making it consonant with the tradition of Judeo-Christian writings.[11]

Changing the name of the abbot of the first part from "Father Juan" to "Abbot Arkos" strengthened the cyclical/recurrence motif, since the name of the first abbot encountered, "Arkos", begins with the first letter of the Latin alphabet and the name of the last abbot, "Zerchi", begins with the last letter.[11] Miller also expanded scenes, increasing their importance: for instance, the initial encounter between Brother Francis and Abbot Arkos in "Fiat Homo" grew from two pages in the short story to eight pages in the novel. Abbot Arkos was shown to possess doubts and uncertainty, unlike the dogmatism of Father Juan.[11]

Miller also used the adaptation process to add a significant layer of complexity to the story. Walker Percy recognized this dimension of the novel, which he compared to a "cipher, a coded message, a book in a strange language".[12] David Seed deemed the novel "charged with half-concealed meaning", an intricacy that seems to have been added as Miller was revising the stories for publication as a novel. Decoding messages such as this is an important activity in Miller's works, both in *A Canticle for Leibowitz* and in his short stories.[2] For example, in the original version of "Fiat Homo" Miller limits his "wordplay" to an explicit symbolism involving the letter "V" and Brother Francis's "Voice/Vocation" during Francis's encounter with the wandering pilgrim. In the novel, however, "Miller reserves such symbolistic cross-references to the more intellectual analysts and builds a comedy of incomprehension around Francis".[2]

Miller's extensive experience in writing for science fiction magazines contributed to his achievement with *A Canticle for Leibowitz*. His strengths were with the medium lengths of the short story, novelette, and short novel, where he effectively combined character, action, and import. The success of this full-length novel rests on its tripartite structure: each section is "short novel size, with counterpoint, motifs, and allusions making up for the lack of more ordinary means of continuity".

### References:

-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A\_Canticle\_for\_Leibowitz