A CANTICLE for LEIBOWITZ (audiobook) by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

Originally published in 1960.
Read by Tom Weiner.
Duration: 10 hours, 55 minutes.
Unabridged.

Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel, 1961.

A Canticle for Leibowitz is a Golden Age of sci-fi novel that originally started out as three related short stories that were published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1955, 1956, and 1957. The author, Walter M. Miller (1923-1996) was convinced to rework them into a single novel - the only novel he published in his lifetime (a sequel to this book was published after his death.)

Synopsis:

The story is set in a dystopian future. During the late 1950s or early 1960s the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union became a nuclear war called the "flame deluge." Human life was nearly destroyed and genetic mutations are fairly common in man and nature. 

Six hundred years later the only surviving constant from the pre-war times is the Catholic Church. The story focuses on an abbey of monks in New Mexico who collect any and all information about science and technology from the past and treat them as relics of Leibowitz, the founder of their order. They collect technical drawings and anything else they can find. Over time, their abbey becomes one of the places of learning that spark a new technological revolution over the centuries because of its isolation.

The second part of the book features the beginnings of technological renaissance. Governments and universities are now recreating technology of the past and even start working together to learn and create even faster.

Eventually, after around 1800 years, in the third part, mankind has gone beyond the technology of the 1960s. There is space travel to other systems, travel around the world is easy. But, the world is not an integrated place and the world faces another Cold War with nuclear weapons...

My Review:

Like so many books in the Golden Age of Science Fiction, A Canticle for Leibowitz goes for big themes in a big way. You have to give it credit for being much more than a sci-fi adventure.

But, big themes does not necessarily mean a good read. The pacing is slow, especially in the first third of the book. I almost stopped listening to the audiobook multiple times because I could not figure out what was going on and the story seemed to be going nowhere.

The book is stuffed full of Latin phrases that may have been familiar to plenty of Catholics (when the book was written, the Latin Mass was the norm) but was not necessarily familiar to this Lutheran. I mostly followed along, allowing for context, the similarity of Lutheran and Catholic liturgies, and my knowledge of Spanish. The Latin added authenticity, but it also was also mostly unnecessary padding. I appreciate that the Latin symbolized a constant moving through time - in the story Latin, along with the Church, survived the Fall of Rome, the Dark Ages, a nuclear war, a horrific dystopian period with genetic mutations, a rebuilding, and was still here in a new Cold War.  My criticism is that a lot of it could have been translated into English with a note that said that the priests or monks were speaking to one another in Latin.

On last criticism is the reader. I am not fond of Tom Weiner as a reader. I've listened to a few books he has read and he just turns me off.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It's not bad. I am glad I read it, but it is hardly a page turner. It can be found on Amazon.com here: A Canticle for Leibowitz.