A Canticle for Leibowitz with Such Verisimilitude of Detail

Books A Canticle for Leibowitz with such verisimilitude of detail. character, and situation that one feels by Walter M. Miller, }r. while reading it that it is indeed not J. P. Lippincott Company . $4.95 fiction but, as I have said, extra- hy hawS. Bishop polated history. DO~IM~~.,I!~-:\V?~/~(I~Book's . $1.2.5 Reviewed by Harvey Eagleson, Though this story is the first in- professor of English terest, the second (and by all means Reviewed !XJ William A. Fniokr, the most important) interest is the professor of physics This novel, I suspect, will not re- moral and philosophical aspect of the ceive the attention that it should, be- novel - the presentation of modern Amasa S. Bishop, BS '43, former cause it will be erroneously classified man's dilemma. What should his Chief of the Controlled Thermopiii- as "science-fiction" and will therefore values be? An excerpt from a dia- dear Branch of the Atomic Energy be ignored by "serious" critics and logue between Dom Paulo, the abbot Commission, has written a frank and readers. It is not science-fiction. On of the monastery, and Thon Taddeo. lucid history of Project Sherwood- one level it is extrapolated history, the scholar whose learning is to in- the U. S. program in controlled fu- but on another it is a syn~bolicaland angurate the nev renaissance, sng- sion. It is a story of failure. The up? philosophical novel. A Canticle for gests in part the theme of the whole. and downs, the hopes and frustra- Leibowitz is one of the most brilliant " 'But you promise to begin re- tions, the alarums ancl excursions are pieces of imaginative writing this re- storing Man's control 01 er Nature. all here, and it all makes interesting viewer has ever read. But who will govern the use of the reading. The book was prepared at Four years ago I received, as an power to control natural forces? Who the request of the U.S. Atomic Energy advertisement. a copy of the rnaga- will use it? To what end? How will Commission's Division of Information zine Fantasy and Science Fiction. you hold him in check? Such deci- Services, so it would not be expected Most of the issue was devoted to the sions can still be made. But if you to be a critical appraisal - and indeed publication of a long story entitled and your group don't make them it is not. "And the Light is Risen" by Walter now, others will soon make them for This reviewer served as a member M. Miller, Jr. I glanced at the story, you. Mankind will profit you say. of the ill-fated Sherwood Steering having no intention of "wasting my By whose sufferance? The sufferance Committee, the "civilian" members time on it," and was immediately en- of a prince who signs his letters X? of which resigned in a body over grossed. That story, much revised, Or do you really believe that \our policy disagreements last year. The now forms the central section of A collegium can stay aloof from his dim view of our prospects held by Canticle for Leibowitz. ambitions when he begins to find out the reviewer and his colleagues can- The novel, leaping over many cen- that you're valuable to him?' not becloud the devoted and cease- times in its three parts, centers around "-'What you really suggest,' said less labor of those clown the line the Abbey of the Albertian Order of the scholar, 'is that we wait a little whose story is told by Bishop. After Saint Leibowitz located vaguely in while. That we dissolve the colle- all, the Russians and the British the New Mexican desert. It begins gium, or move it to the desert, and haven't been able to do it either! Why six centuries after the coming atomic somehow - with no gold and silver be down-hearted; another 100 million war. What is now the United States of our own - revive an experimental dollars and we may still be able to is a sparsely inhabited area divided ancl theoretical science in some slow do it without a good idea! Hope under the jurisdiction of barbaric hard way, and tell nobody. That we springs eternal; even a good idea may kings and chieftains and having a cul- save it all up for the day when Man come along! tural level similar to that of Europe is good and pure and holy and wise.' Starting with the basic principles in the first centuries after the fall " 'That is not what I meant . ,' underlying self-sustained, controlled of Rome. 'That is not what you meant to fusion, the book comes very soon to The abbey contains all that is left say, but it is what your saying means. the problem of confinement of the of the scientific knowledge of our Keep science cloistered. don't try to nuclear fuel - deuterium and/or tri- time, saved by a Jewish engineer be- apply it, don't try to do anything tium. Magnetic confinement of the fore he was martyred by the mob about it until men are holy. Well, it hot plasma - ionized but neutral gas during the Simplification. a period won't work . If you try to save - is treated as "the most promising after the atomic war when the masses wisdom uri ti1 the world is wise. (if not the only) solutionv' of the rose and destroyed the intellectuals Father, the world will never have it.' " problem. The early work on the three and all their works as being the cause This review has only indicated the major lines of experimental effort is of man's plight. Now learning once theme of this brilliant ;ind unusual then delineated. Chapters are devoted again begins to stir. T h e n o v e l novel. I urge the reading of it to to the pinch research at Los Alarnos, sweeps on through time until man has anyone who wishes a new experience Livennore, and Berkeley; the stellar- again reached a period of techno- in \ fiction and at the same time a ator research at Princeton; and the logical advance slightly beyond where shock to his "think-cells,' which we magnetic mirror research at Liver- we now are and again prepares to are all too inclined to use too in- more, Los Alarnos, Oak Ridge, and destroy himself. This narrative is told frequently . confirmed on page 8 EXPLORER VI IS A the Naval Research Laboratory. Then thermonuclear reaction. Oak Ridge is comes the discussion of the gloomy still at it. SPACE question of stability which in October The final chapters cover the con- LABORATORY 1954 brought "the whole of the Sher- troversial decisions to go to larger wood program face to face with a geometries in some devices in the NOW problem which threatened its very hope that bigness would solve some existence." of the problems. The exponentially ORBITING The intermediate chapters are de- rising cost and scientific man-hours voted to the major research programs, required for Project Sherwood fiorn THE and others, after stability had raised 1952 to 1958 are shown forthrightly its ugly head in Nottingham and the in a graph in one of these chapters. EARTH men of Sherwood doggedly attacked There is an addendum on "Progress, this most galling nemesis. Early 195.5 June 1958 to June 1959," by Arthur brought the false hope of "instability E. Ruark, who succeeded Bishop as neutrons" which were shown by bril- Chief of the Controlled Thermonu- liant diagnostic techniques to be of clear Branch, and there are five ap- non-thermonuclear origin. Thermonu- pendices including a comprehensive clear neutrons may now be just glossary of technical terms. around the corner, but that comer is In one sense the judgment that far distant from the eventual goal - Project Sherwood is a tale of failure thermonuclear energy. is perhaps wrong. Plasma physics has In 1956, Oak Ridge started a new become a flourishing b r a n c h of approach. A beam of particles, pro- science in the quest for easy energy. duced in a conventional accelerator Perhaps it is best that the book does at energies already in excess of that not play this theme too hard. The needed for thermonuclear reactions, message comes through without the is injected and trapped in a confined need for embellishment. For scien- region in the hope of igniting the tists and laymen, for different reasons, plasma and initiating a self-sustaining the book is worth reading. Space Technology Laboratories carried out the Able 111 Science Study Series Dotd)Zeday-Anchor Books program which put Explorer Four new titles in the series initiated by the Physical Science Study Comrnit- VI in space.. .one of a tee, set up to revise the teaching and study of high-school physics. series of advanced scientific The Birth of a New Physics Waves and the Ear experiments conducted by STL hrj I. Bernard Coheri . $.95 by Willem A. van Bwgeijk, John R. in conjunction with the Pierce and Edward E. David, Jr. $.95 Air Force on behalf of NASA. I. Bernard Cohen, professor of the history of science at Harvard, traces This is a brightly written book on STL's leadership in military the evolution of modern physics from the physics of sound and the physi- applications of space technology Aristotle through Copernicus, Galileo, ology of the ear -- or, to use the is illustrated by its successful and Kepler to Newton. Dr. Cohen9s books own subtitle, What We Hear and How. Of the three authors (all accomplishments as the purpose, as he explains, is not to pre- sent a popular history of science, but of whom work for the Bell Telephone contractor responsible for to "explore one aspect of that great Laboratories), Willem van Bergeijk over-all systems engineering scientific revolution which occurred is a zoologist, Edward David is an and technical direction of during the sixteenth and seventeenth acoustics engineer and Caltech Alum- the Atlas, Titan, Thor, and centuries, to clarify certain fundarnen- nus.

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