Beginning of Essay
Walter M. Miller, Jr.'s A Canticle for Leibowitz treats religion very differently than does most science fiction. Miller's Brother Francis is charged with discovering the meaning of faith and God in the wake of total nuclear destruction. The particular religion ex ....

Middle of Essay
.... doubt which becomes his major way of approaching life and finding truths. History is revealed to be inconsistent and subject to interpretation and loss. History is not nearly as reliable as Francis' frail desert faith. The last section of the novel shows the first Earth colonists arriving at Alpha Centauri. There is another nuclear explosion and the threat of another apocolypse, but the real question hinges upon suicide. Government sanctioned euthanasia has encroached upon the monastery of Leibowitz, both physically, in the form of a euthenasia station, and spiritually, as the abbot and a doctor spar over ethics and scripture. As a ....