I felt like I had been neglecting science fiction, so I went hunting around last weekend. There's a book of some of the early Hugo-winning short fiction, and first up there was The Darfsteller, by Walter M. Miller, Jr. Well, I went looking for alternate copies of that novella and everywhere I looked the covers recommended Miller's classic novel, A Canticle for Leibowitz. Sometimes loudly. I figured I'd check it out.
I've heard of it but I had never read it until a few days ago!
What I found was a very solid book, with excellent worldbuilding, and with very good tone, characters, ideas, and perspectives. But the "very good" elements each fell slightly short of excellence for a specific reason, but more on that below.
First off, the worldbuilding is a clever and striking combination of tried-and-true and novel. It's a pretty normal-feeling post-apocalyptic setting, but our perspective is focused on a monastery of Catholic monks whose job it is to try and preserve the information from before the apocalypse. The monks are handled very authentically. Miller must have known or researched monasteries extensively, because it seems really real.
It's gritty without reveling in it, and sad and pitiful and uplifting all at the same time somehow.
One slight barrier is the prominent use of Latin, which I thought was strange, considering that these monks were in America, and had never seen old Rome. Turns out this book from 1959 was written when the Latin Mass was still really common, if not universal in Catholic churches. Apparently the writings that started pushing the Catholic church toward holding Mass in the vernacular started in the 1960s, but I had to look that up!
Another point is that Miller portrays the monks very genuinely. While there is quite a bit of humor and comedy in the book, the monks aren't themselves parodies or satires. It's the kind of thing I don't think we get anymore from modern sci-fi writers; injection of satire and cynicism are just too common today.
The characters feel very real and human, and while you might not relate closely to them, their motivations are explained and consistent enough that you at least come to understand them.
The book is separated into three broad parts, and each part covers a different time in the future, so character development is a little abbreviated by ends of parts. Still, we get some pretty interesting developments.
The style is solid with generally a decent amount of detail. There are a few very long descriptions here and there, but often the important bits are given to us as flashes of attention or subtle facial expression changes. We get plenty of crucial and colorful details where appropriate, and Miller doesn't try to drown us in flowery language.
Dialogue is sometimes funny, often serious, and frequently extremely interesting. It's mostly believable, and some of the philosophical discussions and questions are really thought-provoking. Moreover, the book doesn't give you answers, just two or more perspectives and you have to think about it yourself. Really admirable restraint.
There are a few annoying and frustrating bits, though. Each part has at least a few pages that I found really kicked me out of my immersion. They were jarring speed bumps, so watch out. I kept reading, though, and I'm glad I did, so try to push through if you can!
Then, while there is a decent amount of good humor in the book, there is also quite a bit that just didn't land for me. It felt like Miller's sense of timing and how to use comic relief were a little off.
Finally, while there are quite a few fascinating ideas and arguments, most of them are jammed into the final part!
All in all, it was a good book that made me want to put it down a few times for being annoying, but there was some really good stuff as well. It had a balanced mix of worldbuilding, science fiction ideas, and action, and very good dialogue for the most part.
Sometimes the crypticness of the book worked against it, but thankfully the really interesting ideas are not presented cryptically. It was rewarding for a single read-through and probably would be good for a second, too, because of the subtle connections that appear between the three parts.
For more spoilers, check out the section of the video starting at 18:40.
Check it out free here.
No comments:
Post a Comment