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Charles GnilkaA Canticle for Leibowitz is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by American writer Walter M. Miller, Jr., first published in 1960. Set in a Catholic monastery in the desert of the Southwestern United States after a devastating nuclear war, the story
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Inspired by the author's participation in the Allied bombing of the monastery at Monte Cassino during World War II, t
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alter Miller was a prolific writer of science fiction short stories
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During World War II, Miller served as part of a bomber crew that participated in the destruction of the ancient Roman Catholic monastery at Monte Cassino, Italy founded by St. Benedict in the 6th century
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opens 600 years after 20th century civilization has been destroyed by a global nuclear war,
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violent backlash against the culture of advanced knowledge and technology that had led to the development of nuclear weapons.
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anyone of learning, and eventually anyone who could even read, was likely to be killed by rampaging mobs, who proudly took on the name of "Simpletons"
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Leibowitz had been a Jewish electrical engineer working for the United States military. Surviving the war, he converted to Roman Catholicism and founded a monastic order, the "Albertian Order of Leibowitz", dedicated to preserving knowledge by hiding books, smuggling them to safety (booklegging), memorizing, and copying them.
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Leibowitz was eventually betrayed and martyred. Later beatified by the Roman Catholic Church, he became a candidate for sainthood.
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The story is structured in three part
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bbey is visited by Monsignors Aguerra (God's Advocate) and Flaught (the Devil's Advocate), the Church's investigators in the case for Leibowitz's sainthood.
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3174, the Albertian Order of St. Leibowitz is still preserving the half-understood knowledge from before the Flame Deluge and the subsequent Age of Simplification.
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d a new Renaissance is beginnin
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Taddeo, frequently compared to Albert Einstein, is interested in the Order's preserved collection of Memorabilia.
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hon Taddeo, by studying the Memorabilia, makes several major "discoveries", and asks the abbot to allow the Memorabilia to be removed to Texarkana
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3781, and mankind has nuclear energy and weapons again, as well as starships and extra-solar colonie
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world superpowers, the Asian Coalition and the Atlantic Confederacy,
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both sides are assembling nuclear weapons in sp
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rained monks and priests depart on a secret, chartered flight for New Rome, hoping to leave Earth on the starship before the cease-fire ends.
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he war resumes and a nuclear explosion occurs near the abbey. Abbot Zerchi tries to flee to safety, bringing with him the abbey's ciborium containing consecrated hosts, but it is too late. He is trapped by the falling walls of the abbey and finds himself lying under tons of rock and bones as the abbey's ancient crypts disgorge their contents.
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Zerchi is startled to encounter Mrs Grales/Rachel, a bicephalous tomato peddler and mutant.
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o conditionally baptize Rachel, she refuses, and instead takes the ciborium and administers the Eucharist to him. It is implied that she is, like the Virgin Mary, exempt from original sin
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heme of cyclic history or recurrence in Miller's w
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elements which unify its three sections.
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he first section, "Fiat Homo", depicts a Church preserving civilization, a counterpart to the "Age of Faith" after the Fall of Rome. The action of the second part, "Fiat Lux", focuses on a renaissance of "secular learning", echoing the "divergences of Church and State and of science and faith". "Fiat Voluntas Tua", the final part, is the analog of contemporary civilization, with its "technological marvels, its obsessions with material, worldly power, and its accelerating neglect of faith and the spirit
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Walter Miller, reclusive for years, committed suicide several decades after publication of his novel.
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is considered a "science-fiction classic ... [and] is arguably the best novel written about nuclear apocalypse, surpassing more popularly known books like On the Beach"
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ay be the one universally acknowledged literary masterpiece to emerge from magazine SF
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best novel ever written in the genre.
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ward the end of his life, Miller wrote another installment of the Abbey of Saint Leibowitz saga, Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman.[1
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t is set in AD 3254, seventy years after the events of "Fiat Lux" but several centuries before "Fiat Voluntas Tua"; it is a midquel to A Canticle for L
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Suffering from writer's block and fearful the new work would go unfinished, Miller arranged with author Terry Bisson to complete it.
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14 Jan 08
ben maslenMeant to be a classic. I'd love to read this. Probably a bit hard to find as it's on oldie.
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