["A Canticle for Leibowitz"] is an extraordinary novel. It is apt to arouse either enthusiasm or distaste, but little middle ground opinion. It will be a most unusual literary experience even if you don't like it—but already it has made this reviewer and many other readers enormously enthusiastic.

It is projected into the future—it has elements in common with science fiction, yet it would be quite impossible to classify it narrowly as such. It is fanciful, yet as deeply true as any book I've read. It brilliantly combines several qualities: It is prodigiously imaginative and original, richly comic, terrifyingly grim, profound both intellectually and morally, and, above all, is simply such a memorable story as to stay with a reader for years.

As a speculation on man's destiny and most horrendous possible catastrophe, its vision and scope make so good a book as "On the Beach...