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ejrathke 's review for:
A Canticle for Leibowitz
by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
Reading SF from 60 years ago is always going to be troubling in some ways. Often times, I think these older SF novels are more concerned with ideas than they are with characters and so on. I'd say this novel suffers from that, to a degree. But I was also pleasantly surprised by this novel, and I think it works well, all these years later, because it's not focused on a concept so much as a social reality.
Weirdly, there are basically no women characters in this whole novel and only a few ever mentioned by name. This sort of cements it in its time period, but also makes some amount of sense, given the thrust of the story. We're at a monastery, full of brothers and priests. And so it's not that surprising that there wouldn't be many women in the novel.
Even so.
Setting that aside, the novel is very solid. It sets such a great foundation to its reality, that I wish the novel didn't have the time jumps. I mean, I appreciate the structure and flow of the novel greatly, but I don't know if any of the characters are as captivating, to me, as Brother Francis. But maybe that's unfair, since the second section is also full of many great characters. The third section does some intellectually and socially interesting things, but it loses sight of its characters a bit, I think.
One thing I appreciate about this novel is that it does not have a progressive view of humanity. Over a thousand years, humanity doesn't really change much, and possibly we're locked into a cycle of our own destruction.
But, yeah, this is a great novel. Despite being so old, I think it stands well today, which is a huge rarity for these old SF novels.
Weirdly, there are basically no women characters in this whole novel and only a few ever mentioned by name. This sort of cements it in its time period, but also makes some amount of sense, given the thrust of the story. We're at a monastery, full of brothers and priests. And so it's not that surprising that there wouldn't be many women in the novel.
Even so.
Setting that aside, the novel is very solid. It sets such a great foundation to its reality, that I wish the novel didn't have the time jumps. I mean, I appreciate the structure and flow of the novel greatly, but I don't know if any of the characters are as captivating, to me, as Brother Francis. But maybe that's unfair, since the second section is also full of many great characters. The third section does some intellectually and socially interesting things, but it loses sight of its characters a bit, I think.
One thing I appreciate about this novel is that it does not have a progressive view of humanity. Over a thousand years, humanity doesn't really change much, and possibly we're locked into a cycle of our own destruction.
But, yeah, this is a great novel. Despite being so old, I think it stands well today, which is a huge rarity for these old SF novels.