Friday Review: A Canticle for Leibowitz

First of all, muchos kudos to Sarah Hoyt for blogging about this book once upon a time. Otherwise, I never would have heard of it.

If you love post-apocalyptic science fiction, then A Canticle for Leibowitz is a book you need to add to your reading list. Set in the future of a world recovering from nuclear war, it follows the path humanity might take as it tries to hold its history together through one of the few institutions likely to survive something as massive as a full-scale nuclear war: the Catholic Church. The brothers of the Order of Leibowitz first struggle to have their patron recognized and canonized by the Church and then later must deal with skeptics, heretics, and those who see the influence the Church has as a threat to their own power base.

It’s a really interesting book that shows just how short-sighted most institutions really are. Governments, social movements, even the military have nothing when it comes down to the long-term survival instincts of religion. It was also interesting to see how the brothers and the priests struggled to try to piece together their “ancient” history and how they approached similar situations that we’ve already had to deal with but they, of course, have no knowledge of due to the loss of records in the conflagration.

This book is easily one of my favorites and it’s one I find myself going back to again and again because the questions it makes me ask and the ideas it inspires are just so…intriguing. If we were to blow ourselves to Kingdom Come, what would survive? My money probably would be on the Church (Catholic and Orthodox) surviving. Governments come and go, empires fall, kingdoms crumble but those two religions, alongside Judaism, have real staying power.

Five rainbow farting zebricorns. A Canticle for Leibowitz is just that good.

— G.K.

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