A Canticle for Leibowitz: Straight Outta the (Gernsback) Ghetto Anonymous 12th Grade

After the end of World War II, Americans lived under the fear of nuclear war. The government built up huge arsenals of nuclear bombs, and used propaganda to assuage the American people’s fear. The best known example of that is the Duck and Cover propaganda film which tells Americans that a picnic blanket could protect them from a nuclear bomb (USA). To reflect these trends, fiction authors wrote plenty of novels hypothesizing what would happen in the case of nuclear apocalypse (Brians). Some of these, like Pat Frank’s Alas, Babylon, simply described the effects that a nuclear war on the United States might have (Frank). Similarly, Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz details The Bomb’s impact after mankind’s advanced civilization has been destroyed. Since its publication in 1960 during the height of the Cold War, A Canticle for Leibowitz has been highly regarded not just by the rather geeky science fiction community (often called the “Gernsback Ghetto”) but also by the broader literary community because Miller’s post-apocalyptic world strongly resonates with literary readers who identify with the political and social message of the novel, thereby transcending the Gernsback Ghetto.

As one might expect, writers of literature...