A Canticle for Leibowitz
First edition 1960 - With wraparound band
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960) by Walter M. Miller Jr. is one of the defining works of post-apocalyptic science fiction, structured as three linked novellas spanning roughly twelve centuries, each set in the desert Southwest in the aftermath of a nuclear war that erased modern civilization. A Catholic monastic order devoted to preserving the remnants of pre-war scientific knowledge serves as the thread connecting all three sections, and the novel's central question, whether humanity is capable of learning from its own destruction, is answered with a precision and moral seriousness that few science fiction novels have matched. Winner of the 1961 Hugo Award and the only novel Miller published during his lifetime. First edition published by Lippincott in 1960, and present is the rare orange wraparound band, carrying quotes by Ray Bradbury and Carlos Baker.
Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, bound in quarter cloth with mauve colored boards. New York: Lippincott, 1960. Hugo Award winner (1961). Pringle, Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels (30). #10763.
Fine in near fine dust jacket with some darkening and soiling along the spine, visible only on the verso. Externally the jacket remains bright and attractive, with slight rubbing and minor wear at the extremities. The orange wraparound band is stained along the spine but otherwise very good. A lovely copy overall.
Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, bound in quarter cloth with mauve colored boards. New York: Lippincott, 1960. Hugo Award winner (1961). Pringle, Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels (30). #10763.
Fine in near fine dust jacket with some darkening and soiling along the spine, visible only on the verso. Externally the jacket remains bright and attractive, with slight rubbing and minor wear at the extremities. The orange wraparound band is stained along the spine but otherwise very good. A lovely copy overall.
Additional Details
A Canticle for Leibowitz unfolds across three linked novellas, each separated by roughly six centuries and set in the desert of what was once the American Southwest. The continuity running through all three is the Albertian Order of Leibowitz, a Catholic monastic community whose founding purpose is the preservation of whatever written knowledge survived the Flame Deluge, the nuclear war that brought the end of twentieth century civilization. The monks copy documents they do not fully understand, illuminate manuscripts whose technical content is beyond them, and maintain the abbey as a repository of pre-Deluge learning through an age that has turned its back on the knowledge that led to catastrophe.
The first section, "Fiat Homo," is set in a new Dark Age roughly six centuries after the war. Brother Francis Gerard of Utah is a novice on a Lenten fast in the desert when he discovers a fallout shelter containing documents that may have belonged to the Order's founder. Isaac Edward Leibowitz was a Jewish electrical engineer who converted to Catholicism, created the Order, and was martyred for it. The section establishes a world in which the word 'fallout' has become a liturgical term, blueprints are copied as sacred illuminations, and a grocery list from a past era is treated as a holy relic.
The second section, "Fiat Lux," is set during a period analogous to the Renaissance, when secular scholarship has re-emerged and is beginning to challenge ecclesiastical authority over knowledge. A scholar named Thon Taddeo arrives at the abbey to examine the preserved documents and is contemptuous of the monks who have kept them without understanding them. The debate between the abbot Dom Paulo and Thon Taddeo is the novel's most intellectually direct passage, and raises concerns about the possession of knowledge, and whether understanding and wisdom are the same thing. In the background, political tensions between city-states are escalating toward war.
The third section, "Fiat Voluntas Tua," is set in a future that has rediscovered nuclear weapons and is using them. The abbey's abbot, Dom Zerchi, is managing a population of radiation casualties while fighting a legal battle with the state over euthanasia, and organizing a starship mission to carry the Order's knowledge off-world before the second Flame Deluge falls. The novel ends as it began, in the desert, in the aftermath of catastrophe, with the suggestion that the cycle will continue wherever humanity goes next.
Miller served as a radio operator and tail gunner during the Second World War and participated in the Allied bombing of the Benedictine abbey at Monte Cassino, one of the oldest monastic institutions in Europe. A Canticle for Leibowitz is understood to be in direct conversation with that experience. The novel grew from three stories published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction between 1955 and 1957, which Miller expanded and revised into the novel published by Lippincott in 1960. In his later years he became increasingly reclusive, withdrawing from friends, colleagues, and his literary agent. He was at work on a sequel, Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, when he took his own life in 1996, shortly after the death of his wife. The manuscript was completed by Terry Bisson and published the following year.
The first section, "Fiat Homo," is set in a new Dark Age roughly six centuries after the war. Brother Francis Gerard of Utah is a novice on a Lenten fast in the desert when he discovers a fallout shelter containing documents that may have belonged to the Order's founder. Isaac Edward Leibowitz was a Jewish electrical engineer who converted to Catholicism, created the Order, and was martyred for it. The section establishes a world in which the word 'fallout' has become a liturgical term, blueprints are copied as sacred illuminations, and a grocery list from a past era is treated as a holy relic.
The second section, "Fiat Lux," is set during a period analogous to the Renaissance, when secular scholarship has re-emerged and is beginning to challenge ecclesiastical authority over knowledge. A scholar named Thon Taddeo arrives at the abbey to examine the preserved documents and is contemptuous of the monks who have kept them without understanding them. The debate between the abbot Dom Paulo and Thon Taddeo is the novel's most intellectually direct passage, and raises concerns about the possession of knowledge, and whether understanding and wisdom are the same thing. In the background, political tensions between city-states are escalating toward war.
The third section, "Fiat Voluntas Tua," is set in a future that has rediscovered nuclear weapons and is using them. The abbey's abbot, Dom Zerchi, is managing a population of radiation casualties while fighting a legal battle with the state over euthanasia, and organizing a starship mission to carry the Order's knowledge off-world before the second Flame Deluge falls. The novel ends as it began, in the desert, in the aftermath of catastrophe, with the suggestion that the cycle will continue wherever humanity goes next.
Miller served as a radio operator and tail gunner during the Second World War and participated in the Allied bombing of the Benedictine abbey at Monte Cassino, one of the oldest monastic institutions in Europe. A Canticle for Leibowitz is understood to be in direct conversation with that experience. The novel grew from three stories published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction between 1955 and 1957, which Miller expanded and revised into the novel published by Lippincott in 1960. In his later years he became increasingly reclusive, withdrawing from friends, colleagues, and his literary agent. He was at work on a sequel, Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, when he took his own life in 1996, shortly after the death of his wife. The manuscript was completed by Terry Bisson and published the following year.
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