I don't understand what that comment means. As I said, I don't see the connection to 1984 (unless it's simply that international states are always in conflict, because that is a backstory to the last part of Canticle for Leibowitz)?My reading of it was quite different together with the takeaway.I don't see the thematic connection to 1984?A Canticle For Leibowitz. I first read this in 1965. Found the audiobook at the library five years ago.
One is a post nuclear war novel about the reconstruction of civilisation -- centred around a monastery in the US southwest, where "St Leibowitz" appears to have been a scientist who survived the nuclear exchange, and the preservation of arcane forgotten knowledge about things like "electricity". With very Catholic themes - the author, having been a US Army Air Force bombardier in WW2, converted to Catholicism. It is a deeply touching story about the best, and the worst, of humanity.
1984 is about the totalitarian state and humans functioning within same. Canticle for Leibowitz is about nuclear war (or rather the aftermath), humanity's enduring frailties and salvation - it's a deeply Catholic novel, and indeed I believe the Pope recognised it as a "Catholic Great Book" or whatever the term (presumably for its condemnation of euthanasia in that last part).
Orwell was a great disbeliever - having been a creature of the British Empire and British government, but rebelling against that. Walter Miller became a great believer - perhaps as a result of his experiences on bombers in WW2. There's an echo of Vonnegut's autobiographical Slaughterhouse 5 in that. Again, a novel which is only incidentally SF but is informed by WW2 experience (as a Prisoner of War during the Dresden firestorm raids).
Homage to Catalonia is Orwell's reportage of his Spanish Civil War experience.
1984 & Canticle are both "speculative" novels. Not many critics would classify 1984 as Science Fiction - perhaps because there's a literary snobbery about SF, given its pulp origins (and the fact that much of it is cliched and simply bad writing). On the other hand Margaret Attwood or William Gibson... If the literary world likes an SF novel they tend, I have noticed, to rebrand it as "speculative": Attwood, Gibson, Philip K Dick etc.
Canticle for Leibowitz I think pretty much everyone would classify as Science Fiction. It just happens to be quite philosophical -- although you can see its pulp magazine origins in the fact that it is really an interlinked series of short stories.
The Literary world has made its peace with detective fiction, I think. Not so much so with SF despite the pervasiveness of SF themes in popular culture. Or maybe because of that pervasiveness (Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel, anime etc).
Statistics: Posted by Valuethinker — Thu Jun 27, 2024 3:09 am