Writer Wander 042 - Musings on a Canticle for Leibowitz

Wander goes over some stray thoughts on the forgotten Post-Apocalyptic Sci-Fi novel, A Canticle for Leibowitz

Transcript

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Rider Wander42. I am still in Miami. And considering the fact that uh I'm in a house crowded with a lot of people, I'm not sure I feel too comfortable doing my typical style of episode where I just keep going like full force on my voice and just coming out with whatever uh you know comes through my mind. So on that point I was thinking that on this episode I could also read something from my old backlog that uh of old essays that I'd written at one point, because at one point I had thought of launching a blog, and I think that with things like Substack nowadays, maybe it will be worth looking into something like that again. But for now, um, Rider Wander is gonna be my main my main effort, which is not really an effort. This isn't I'm not putting too much effort into promoting this or or anything like that. Uh it's just a nice space to have. But uh today we're gonna be reading another essay that I wrote from a while ago, and it's from an old sci-fi book that I really enjoy, and I feel that doesn't get enough love, and it's called A Canticle for Leibowitz. And even though I'm gonna talk about this in the essay, I want to give it a bit a bit of a prelude as to what this novel is about, and basically it to put things bluntly, a canticle for Leibowitz is a post-apocalyptic, basically a post-post-apocalyptic science fiction novel that concerns uh uh three different stories, if I recall, three different novellas that have to do with how the Catholic Church survives into the future of a nuclear apocalypse. And uh the I really like this book for obvious reasons, you know. I'm I'm Catholic, but I feel that aside from that, the themes in the book are universal. There's a lot of the very typical commentary that you see in these kind of things about cyclical history and the patterns that we tend to fall into as societies, and there's a lot of commentary as to how certain human social structures seem to remain even after the destruction of civilization as we know it, and how we slowly preserve knowledge and start sort of coming back to the state that we were before as humans, before the apocalypse, only to completely ruin everything for ourselves yet again. And it's a very good book because of that, and honestly, the audiobook the audiobook version is very good. Um, the voice of the narrator when I read it was excellent, and I would highly recommend it to anyone looking to get into it. But a bit of a writing update before I get into reading that essay, and it basically um I've been making smooth progress again, and uh I'm just chugging along. I think it's safe to say that I'm about to hit the third act of the story, and I say that very loosely because as I've already mentioned in prior episodes of the Rider Wander podcast, uh Echoes of Heroes is not a novel with a traditional three-act structure. It is a novel that is explicitly going with the Odyssey structure, which is quite interesting because the Odyssey movie came out recently and I watched it recently, and um basically it's a lot of independent stories that are only tied together by the fact that you know our protagonist is going from point A from point A to point B, and it's about what he what he meets along the way to getting to point B, right? But I'm I'm reaching like something like the 75% mark of the story, and I reached a very interesting point where our characters basically stumble into a primeval god that has been forgotten inside of a cavern. And the priestess character, which I've been talking about a lot, the Lady Astris, she sort of sacrifices her her soul uh in order to exercise the demon. But since she's in a heavily weakened state, she seals the demon inside of herself, and as a result, um that will have consequences that I've already talked about. But Lady Asterisk will exit the story at this point, and she will uh go on a self-imposed exile to prevent her body being used as a host for this demonic entity, and uh she will willingly enter a hell dimension. I haven't gotten to that point, uh, but I know that this is part of my planning, and uh I I I thought it'd be interesting to see like what would happen if that thread just went along on its own. But uh I'll probably be doing an episode about that uh later on once I have a bit more privacy. I'll be back home uh very soon. Uh my flight is scheduled in in two days, so by then I'll hopefully be able to produce some episodes in like more comfort. But for now, please enjoy this uh old essay that I wrote uh when I was very young. But I I think they're they're relatively good. Saint Liebowitz and the Church Imperishable. A missed opportunity that crops up in post-apocalyptic slash dystopian fiction is the crucial role that organized religion could play in such a society. There aren't many traces of Anglicanism in George Orwell's England, nor hints of surviving religious communities in much of the YA dystopias that were the rage in the 2000s. If your time in the post-apocalypse has been mostly spent through the lens of a monitor, you'll note that most of what the Fallout Universe has to offer in terms of religious faith are kooky cultists. This is obviously not a criticism. Creators have a right to focus on whichever aspect of their respective worlds they find interesting or suitable toward expressing the themes of their stories. That being said, my stomach has hungered for a concrete handling of organized religion in this branch of fiction. Only two authors spring to mind when I think of the execution of this opportunity. The dearly missed Gene Wolfe, whom admittedly focuses more on the survival of the spiritual aspects of his religion than the institution itself, and Walter J. Miller. With Gene Wolfe being a subject I am not even capable of tackling in these articles yet, I'm going to focus on the Christianity present in Walter J. Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz. More the Frankenstein of three short novellas than a novel, a canticle for Leibowitz focuses on taking a central tenet of Christianity to its logical extreme. Namely, the notion that the church founded by Jesus Christ would prevail against the flaming gates of hell. Of course, with Miller, the flaming gates of hell were modified into the torrent of flame from a nuclear apocalypse that devastated the world. In the fascinating world revealed in this book, the United States has regressed into a patchwork of petty states fighting over the wasteland. These states vary from nomadic tribes roaming the plains to quasi-feudal empires with disturbingly familiar names: Empire of Denver, Kingdom of Larido, Empire of Texarcana, Smackdown, in the middle of that chaos are the relatively robust remnants of the Catholic Church. History after the fallout has continued in a familiar, albeit archaic, fashion. New Rome finds itself in similar political engagements as were seen during the Middle Ages, namely with the pontiff jostling with the new princes of the wastelands in order to secure a future for the Christian Church, trying to establish a post-apocalyptic Christendom. But the affairs of the throne of St. Peter are not as simple as they seem. The powerful state of Texarcana, led by Emperor Hanigan II, has set its eyes on reuniting the wasteland under its banner. The warmongering of Texarcana results in political friction with the Holy See that mirrors the historical relations of the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic Church. Miller expertly allows this political conflict to feel pressing on the reader, despite the story mainly focusing on an order of monks dedicated to preserving ancient knowledge. The political tensions make themselves manifest organically through dialogues between church officials and secular diplomats, or through rumors of armies on the march spreading through clattering teeth. Add to this a virgining scientific community that holds both the promise of Renaissance and the potential regression to nuclear holocaust in its hands, and it leaves you with a story whose seemingly focused scale serves to masquerade a broader crisis in civilization. That broader crisis mainly being what role the church has to play in such dire straits? Despite Miller's own Catholic faith, most critics will tell you that the man is no preacher. He, like Gene Wolfe, has talents for presenting perspectives in opposition to his own in the most reasonable light. What is the use in preserving knowledge only to keep it tucked in the dark recesses of abbeys? What value is there to a Christendom where political leaders only pay lip service to the cross? Will the price of civilization always be an increasing potential to end itself? Will men, shackled by original sin, be forever destined to repeat the mistakes of history? These questions only make up a fraction of the thematic scope present in this book. Questions that Miller is subtle enough to allow the reader to form his own conclusions as to their answers. For both the secular and religious reader, this novel has weighty subjects that are worth biting into. The former might be drawn to the critique of the church's hesitance to make use of the valuable knowledge at its disposal, or the degree historic skepticism presented regarding, or to the degree that historic skepticism is presented regarding the church's documentation of history after the fallout. The latter might be drawn toward the theological commentary on the Christian conception of original sin or the exploration of how the church prevailed over the flames and how it continues to navigate a precarious path through the wasteland. In a world where Christian media is dominated by horrible films like God's Not Dead and similar films, it's increasingly important to retreat back into the past, into a time where religiously inspired media had a talent for subtlety that has been lost in the modern age. Walter J. Miller and Jean Wolfe should serve as profound examples for any writer seeking to inject religious themes into their work. While the Christianity found in their work is quieter than the writing in God's Not Dead or the Seats of a Hillsong concert, it is a Christianity whose impact pierces the soul further than the others. For those willing to seek it at least. P.S. If you are interested in purchasing a canticle for Leibowitz, I highly recommend the Audible version, which I listen to. The narrators give across the regional dialects of Millish Dystopia in an engrossing fashion. This was a shorter one, but don't let it fool you. Uh this is me done after the narration, by the way. Don't let it fool you. This is a very good book and very short. You know, one of the things that I've always found very strange is that I feel that sometimes the r the undercurrent of religious writers in science fiction is much more present than the undercurrent of religious writers in fantasy, which is very strange because science fiction was a genre that was started by by and large by atheistic people, yet I feel that over time it has accommodated a more religious audience. Whereas with fantasy, it's the other way around. Fantasy is a genre that began in large part or was popularized in large part by religious authors like C.S. Lewis or um or Tolkien, but I feel that over time a lot of the fantasy that we are seeing is very secularly inspired. So I feel like that's a very interesting frame reversal, and it it sort of goes the opposite way of what we'd we would expect. So that's always a very interesting thing to dwell upon. And I feel that Canticle for Leibowitz is honestly a great example of what a religious science fiction book looks like and how it should be done. Walter J. Miller, and you know, I'm talking based on like memories that I have from a long time ago. I have not read this in a while. I am meaning to reread it, and I know that there it has a sequel that I haven't really gotten around to. But one of the things that the author here does, very similar to Jack Vance, is that uh he presents multiple perspectives, and I feel that yeah, he does so in a relatively reasonable light. Right? He you know, there's his phrase, it's called steel manning, it's the opposite of straw manning where if you straw man someone's argument, you present the weakest version so that you have an easier time taking it down. But when you steel man someone's argument, you uh you you present the strongest version so that uh by contrast, when you do refute that argument, it will be much more effective because you're not you're not just making a fake version of the argument. And I feel that, you know, it reminds me a lot, a lot of the stuff that happens in this book where you know uh you have characters uh in the church questioning the historicity of certain certain saints that were uh that were proclaimed uh during this apocalyptic period. Or you have like these uh you know one I remember like the the one of the the opening scene I believe from the very first short story is basically a our main character who's like this monk that's wandering the wilderness getting mugged. And one of the first impressions I had from that novel is that it's not like this super dramatic scene, it's really like just a fact of life, and uh he has like a conversation with the guy mugging him and it's like oh yeah, um, do you want me to take this off or how much money do you want? Whatever. And it's like a very business-oriented transaction, and it it just flows like that, and it gives you the impression, it sets the tone for how the story's like, where it's like the this apocalyptic condition that we've lived in has been around for a while now, and so we're we're past the point where it's scandalous to be robbed in the middle of the wilderness. It's it's just it's just the thing that happens with the breakdown of centralized authority. And obviously, this was written during the Cold War, so there's a lot of commentary about you know that kind of stuff, like Cold War stuff, uh, you know, and certainly the nuclear war was something that worried a lot of golden age science fiction writers for for obvious reasons. And the way that he handles that reminds me of the opening to Leoness, which was the Arthurian novel written by Jack Vance, where it does like a very like, you know, just a very part of the early chapters. It's it's discussing an incident in which a a Christian missionary nun goes to this pagan region to preach the gospel, and you know, it's sort of calculatedly in the way in the style of a history book describes how she is violently raped and murdered by a troll that lives in this very magical, very mystical pagan region, and there's a certain sense of you know wry humor to it, um to the way that it's written, that kind of dark humor. And I feel that that dark humor is also present in in this book, and you know, again, I'm I'm talking about like a lot of you know, I really need to reread this. It's it's been many years, but uh, you know, what can I say? I absolutely recommend it. Uh Canticle for Liebowitz. I listened to the audiobook last time. I'd like to read it in text because I I feel that, especially with the last story, I missed out on a lot. But uh, absolutely recommend it. Rider Wander, keep wondering.