A Canticle for Leibowitz PDF Æ A Canticle PDF \

A Canticle for Leibowitz PDF Æ A Canticle PDF \ Walter M Miller JrMiller was born in New Smyrna Beach Florida Educated at the University of Tennessee and the University of Texas he worked as an engineer During World War II he served in the Army Air Corps as a radioman and tail gunner flying than fifty bombing missions over Italy He took part in the bombing of the Benedictine Abbey at Monte Cassino which proved a traumatic experience for him Joe Haldeman reported that Miller had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for 30 years before it had a nameAfter the war Miller converted to Catholicism He married Anna Louise Becker in 1945 and they had four children For several months in 1953 he lived with science fiction writer Judith Merril ex wife of Frederik Pohl and a noted science fiction author in her own rightBetween 1951 and 1957 Miller published over three dozen science fiction short stories winning a Hugo Award in 1955 for the story The Darfsteller He also wrote scripts for the television show Captain Video in 1953 Late in the 1950s Miller assembled a novel from three closely related novellas he had published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1955 1956 and 1957 The novel entitled A Canticle for Leibowitz was published in 1959A Canticle for Leibowitz is a post apocalyptic post holocaust novel revolving around the canonisation of Saint Leibowitz and is considered a masterpiece of the genre It won the 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel The novel is also a powerful meditation on the cycles of world history and Roman Catholicism as a force of stability during history's dark timesAfter the success of A Canticle For Leibowitz Miller never published another new novel or story in his lifetime although several compilations of Miller's earlier stories were issued in the 1960s and 1970sIn Miller's later years he became a recluse avoiding contact with nearly everyone including family members; he never allowed his literary agent Don Congdon to meet him According to science fiction writer Terry Bisson Miller struggled with depression during his later years but had managed to nearly complete a 600 page manuscript for the seuel to Canticle before taking his own life with a gun in January 1996 shortly after his wife's death The seuel titled Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman was completed by Bisson and published in 1997