Fantastic Fiction: The Atomic Treadmill

Seattle’s first Worldcon was held on the cusp of humanity’s self-destruction.

Just two months before, the Soviet Union shattered a two-year informal hiatus on atomic tests with the explosion of Tsar Bomba—a 52-megaton monstrosity that remains the biggest H-bomb ever detonated. Both superpowers stepped up their antagonistic rhetoric, and the stage was set for the Cuban Missile Crisis, which would unfold just one year later.

It was under this Sword of Damocles that the world’s science fiction fans voted Walter M. Miller Jr.’s melancholy masterpiece, A Canticle for Leibowitz, best novel of 1960—and what more suitable choice was there for that historical moment?

The cover of A Canticle for Liebowitz, featuring a monk in brown robe with a rosary hanging off of a rope belt standing among rocks outside of a ruined stone wall with a flock of birds flying overhead.Miller’s three-part novel was originally published as three separate stories in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, recounting 1,700 years of history following an atomic apocalypse in the 20th century. The protagonists are monks associated with an abbey of the Catholic Church which, as it did in Europe’s “Dark Ages” after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, keeps the flame of knowledge kindled even as the world sinks to barbarism around it.

In the first part, Fiat Homo, a 26th-century novitiate discovers a fallout shelter that bears relics of the long-departed, venerable Leibowitz, in whose honor the novitiate’s abbey has been founded.

Fiat Lux, Part 2, is a 32nd century tale that takes place during a Renaissance. As abbey monks re-invent the arc light, a natural philosopher from a would-be continental empire visits the compound to conduct research. His coming presages an invasion by the empire’s ruler as prelude to a bid for American conquest.

Part 3, Fiat Voluntas Tua, takes place in the 37th century. Humanity has reached a new peak, with robot highways and interstellar travel. Yet the old rivalries between East and West remain, and the superpowers are just a hair-trigger away from a second Diluvium Ignis. The Church stands ready to launch a mission (of the religious variety) to the stars to preserve itself through the impending catastrophe.

Canticle moves at a majestic, unhurried pace, and yet is also a page-turner–no mean feat! Throughout is the feeling of inexorability, that humanity is doomed to a certain cycle of events as long as we remain human. The book is the embodiment of Santayana’s now-famous aphorism, “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.”

A depressing message, to be sure, but I think Miller intended us to see a sliver of hope in the Church’s final peregrine mission. So long as we recall history, Miller says, we might just break the cycle the next time.

We dodged the nuclear bullet in 1962, thanks in part to cautionary visions like Miller’s. But the atomic genie is restless in the bottle. And with war on Russia’s doorstep edging the cork ever further toward the lip, A Canticle for Leibowitz remains today as compelling and relevant as ever…

3 thoughts on “Fantastic Fiction: The Atomic Treadmill”

  1. I’d like to think that people do better as time goes on, but this story that is older than I am still holds many ideas about the state of the world – some things don’t seem to change.

  2. I read Canticle in 7th Grade. My Mom worked on an Air Force base which went to Defcon 2 in ’62. We had a bomb shelter in our basement. My real life and my Sci-Fi reading life converged with this amazing book. Wish Mr. Miller had written many more!! Thank you for lauding my fav book!

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