I do have to admit that I spent the first few chapters wondering why I liked the book so much. It opens in a monastary in the desert, with Brother Francis of Utah on a Lenten fast. The world has blown itself up, purged itself of all intelligence and started over. Isaac Edward Leibowitz, scientist and unwilling perpetrator of the first nuclear holocaust, decides to help save the knowledge, and organizes a group of monks into bookleggers and memorizers, a group which eventually becomes a monastery devoted to the work of Beatus Leibowitz. Anyway, back to Brother Francis…. he discovers, with a help of a wanderer, a fallout shelter, a shopping list and a blueprint of Leibowitz’ which guarantees his sainthood.

By the second part, set 600 years in the future from the ending of the first section (I think we’re at 3175 by this point), I remembered why I liked it. It’s a compelling story of human history. The second part, age if you will, is telling of learning, of discovery. The Age of Reason, when people are not discovering electricity, but re-discovering it. There are some very interesting and involved passages in this section between Thon Taddeo, a respected scientist and natural philosopher, and the abbot of the monastery, Dom Paulo.

However, by the third part, I realized that while this is a very deep and profound and possibly important book, it is also a very hopeless and depressing one. By 3781, human society has advanced enough to have space travel and computers and, yes, nuclear weapons again. And because human nature is primarily a violent one, they are set about trying to kill each other again. In spite of its depressing nature (really, isn’t there any hope for us? Are we really doomed to repeat history? Can’t we learn?), I found it incredibly relevant. The opening passages of this section are a press junket with a defense minister, that could be something that some upper level administration flunky gave yesterday. And there are some challenging passages about euthanasia, too; heart-wrenching ones after a nuclear bomb was launched on the city where the monastery is.

It’s not a perfect book; just when you get involved in one character, Miller up and kills him. There is very little compassion, and as I’ve already said, hope. It’s a dark, depressing look at what the future might hold, especially if we can’t get past our current violent tendencies. It’s a very anti-war book, which as a pacifist I can totally sympathize with; but it’s also an anti-technology and anti-progress book. At least progress for progress’ sake. And I’m not sure I totally agree with that. Are we really better off when the knowledge is in the hand of a few, even if (especially?) they are devoted to God? Isn’t it better that we know more, and have learned more?

I guess the rub is that it is, only if we use it responsibly. And we so seldom do.