A Canticle for Leibowitz
Tuesday, September 18, 2007 by kookie
This is an excerpt from the review I posted on my blog, which can be found here.Mankind is nearly destroyed in a nuclear war. Most of the survivors decide that science and intellectuals are the ones who caused the trouble, so all books should be destroyed. A few, including an electrical engineer for the Army, named Leibowitz decide to save as much written material they can through hiding and transcribing and memorization (like 'Farenheit 451'). That makes Leibowitz a candidate for sainthood many, many years after his death. That is where the story picks up.
Basically, the church (which wields an extraordinary amount of power in the future) puts Leibowitz's good works into action by recreating modern society. Cars, architecture, the space program, all get restored by these monks with their knowledge of past scientific discovery. Of course, that puts them at odds with the other residents of the world who don't see the benefit of scientific progress. Guess where this all leads? Right, the same kind of war that destroyed mankind to begin with.
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Hugo Award,
kookiejar
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This has been one of my favorite books since I was in my teens. I'm glad to see it reviewed.
I thought the sequel was dreadful!