[A Canticle for Leibowitz] is a curious and original and very serious book, and it will be so satisfactory to the right reader that I think a warning is in order: though the action takes place in the future, and though a space ship takes off on the final page, this should not be confused with what is usually called science fiction. In a way, it is a cautionary tale about man's perennial inhumanity to man, and the invevitable use he will make of scientific means to that end. But even this is not Mr. Miller's gist. What he has really written is a highly imaginative, and basically joyous, celebration of human kind's instinct to keep going, and especially of those members of the race who are not so much discoverers and pathfinders, as preservers and safekeepers, whose instinct is to build and retain a tradition….
In three sections, Mr. Miller … shows mankind up to its oldest tricks, tasting the fruits of knowledge, and killing its own brother. In AD 2600, science is dormant, asleep in the archives garnered by the Blessed Leibowitz's abbey. With no power instruments, the scale of warfare is intimate—a matter of bows and arrows and laying seige. Five hundred years later, electricity has been rediscovered, in Leibowitz's own community, and it is by the light of this new illumination that a number of agents of an ambitious prince examine the Memorabillia and make secret sketches of the abbey's fortifications, in order to capture it and exploit its buried knowledge. In the final section, AD 3700, a new scientific revolution has produced space ships, atomic fission, and thanks to Leibowitz's dedication, the Flame Deluge is re-enacted. Yet, as the bombs are falling, another generation of preserver-priests takes off with books and children for outer space.
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