Swords, Sorcery, and Socialism - A Canticle for Leibowitz: Part 1

Episode Date: October 18, 2021

Part one of our discussion of the 50s science fiction story where we discuss cyclical history, the danger of technological advancement, and a poor dumb guy named Frances. Follow the show @SwordsNSocPod or email us at [e-mail]: @Himbo_AnarchistKetho: @StupidPuma69patreon.com/swordsandsocialismEmail: [e-mail] The Show: @SwordsNSocPodAsha: @Herbo_AnarchistKetho: @MusicalPuma69

hello everyone and welcome back to swords sorcery and socialism a podcast about the politics hiding in our genre fiction uh today we are talking about a sci-fi short story from the 1950s or a series of short stories called a canticle for lebowitz um with you today obviously of myself darius and my co-host kethetho. Hello, Ketho. Howdy. Like I said, today we are talking about A Cannicle for Leibowitz, which is something I had literally never heard of until Ketho brought it up. And boy, am I sure glad you did, because I had never heard of this,

and after reading it, it has become one of the favorite sci-fi books I've ever read. So start off, how did you know about this? I literally just looked up post-apocalyptic fiction and saw the first one that said that the creators of Fallout were like, yeah, this book is good. And I was like, was like hey book that inspired fallout why not the nerdiest possible way to come across a classic sci-fi novel yeah and you told me that and i was like sure i'm in i didn't again i had no idea what it was about oh yeah i didn't explain anything i just said you didn't in the future yeah which i appreciate you

didn't explain it and you're like okay but it was listed as like a as like as an inspiration for fallout and i was like all right i'm in let's do this uh listen to it and i can only describe this book as being like so much happens, but nothing happens. Like if you look at, like if you take it from like a direct screenwriting perspective, like how much like physical things happen within the story,

it's not a lot. It's mostly just people. It's literally mostly just people talking to each other. Yep.'d say almost all of this book is people talking to each other, but not a single word of it is wasted. Every single bit of this novel is either directly referencing one of the themes or is symbolism for something else. Like every single inch of this novel was incredibly well planned out to not be wasted. To like put you in exactly what the author wanted you to be thinking about. It's kind of funny. Like this is kind of like the anti-Earthsea in that regard.

Where Earthsea, there's essentially no talking three quarters of that book there's no dialogue it's huge swaths of that book and this book has whole pages of nothing but dialogue um it's it's all dialogue and like aside from there's one two three times maybe total we ever essentially leave the premises of the Abbey of St. Lebowitz section one our poor

twink goes to New Rome section section two section two we get seen with Apollo, the Cardinal Apollo, our martyred boy in Texarkana. We get a scene with him like at the beginning of section two. And in section three, they leave to go to the spaceship?

In... Well, in section three, he kind of drives off the grounds yeah but they do he just goes into the town next to the abbey and in section two he goes up the mesa next to the abbey yeah i'm talking like literally leaving the like the the and like technically section one opens with Francis in the desert near the Abbey. But if you're talking going out of sight of the Abbey, once per section... There's one other. I think there's an interaction between

Thaddeo and the nomads where he has to drink blood. Yes, you're right. It's when Thon Thad tatio is on his way to the abbey you get to meet the nomads for like four pages so okay four total times in three sections you leave like leave the side of the abbey so when i say nothing happens i mean mostly it's people having conversations with each other while stuff happens around while stuff happens around them.

Like the Abbey, you can picture the Abbey as essentially it's it's a rock in a stormy sea like the Abbey is there while everything swirls around it. you know you imagine like that camera trick they do like you'll see they do in movies at like in like a busy train station where like the protagonist is standing still and there's just blurs of all the other people like walking by you know i'm talking about that's i mean that's it's time lapse the abbey but the abbey's barely changing it's literally a time lapse of this abbey in the utah desert and every 600 years you check back in to see what's going on um and it's wonderful like i can't say enough good things as someone who typically reads like prefer stories where people are going out adventuring this was a wildly good change of pace where people just hang out and get stressed out about stuff.

Yeah. Like stressed out about things. They have very little to any control over. Which is one of the major themes of the book is the fact that lots of stuff happens and you have absolute and over control over it and that you have to live through it anyway. Like when I say this, when I say this book is heavy on themes it is heavy on its themes

it does not hide them it wants you to see them and it puts them everywhere and if like and if we're talking about themes i feel like the the most direct theme like the most surface level theme here like from front to back is this sort of cyclical history repeats itself scenario. Um, because in, in essence, I suppose, um, it is a post-apocalyptic novel about the apocalypse happening again. Yes. So, um, obviously for listening to this this i'm going to assume you've read it because otherwise it won't make nearly as much sense if you haven't we're sort of like a like a movie review podcast in that way or if you haven't seen it or haven't read it it's probably going to be

hard to know exactly what we're talking about but we can go through the plot sort of in order um and yeah so the basic setting here is there's an abbey in the Utah desert, the Abbey of St. Lebowitz, the Albertian Order of St. Lebowitz. The story starts in, there's a specific year it's supposed to be, it's in the 20, well, I know it's in the 26th century. I don't remember what year, but it's in the 26th century. Yeah. It's, it's indicated to be just like all the sections are 600 years after each other. It's indicated to vaguely be about 600 years after the apocalypse.

Yeah. So what happened was as this was a novel written in the early years of the cold war in like 1955, it was originally published as three short stories in uh sci-fi magazines then later collected into one book um it's about a nuclear apocalypse because of course it is it's sci-fi from the 50s um so what happened in this world is that eventually um print uh they refer to them as princes, but it just means world leaders,

because everything is through the lens of Catholic monks. So everything, all of human history that they talk about is referenced through a very Catholic and religious lens. So world leaders are referred to as princes. Everything is very symbolic. But we had a nuclear war that destroyed large swaths of civilization. What happened immediately afterwards is everyone, all the survivors, got real pissed off at world leaders and intelligentsia that let it happen. leading to a thing that they call these that in the book he calls the simplification where if you're a fan of real history if you know what uh happened in cambodia it's essentially that

but on like a global scale where they start off with like world leaders just killing them outright they then move on to killing all academics and then it comes down to like burning every book and then down to like you know where pol pot killed you know was famous like famously would just like kill people that needed glasses like this the simplification is like mobs of people calling themselves simpletons would go around literally just murdering anyone that knew how to read yeah it was like an intentional refutation of all learning generally um in this time there was a man a probably a jewish like electrical engineer or engineer of some kind who worked for the united states army uh uh, named Isaac Edward Leibowitz.

I'm going to tell you to people who are fans of fallout, this sounds an awful lot like beginning of brotherhood of steel, just a big shout out. Yes. So you have Leibowitz. Um, he spends the beginning of the simplification, like trying to find his wife. He, people then try to kill him because he's smart.

So he takes shelter in a Cistercian Abbey among the monks, all while surreptitiously. So looking for his wife, Emily, he eventually discovers that Emily is dead and then devotes himself. Like I assume converts to Catholicism and devotes himself to the order. Well, whether or not he converts to catholicism i'm not sure they never say he does but you kind of you kind of have you kind of have to to become a monk i would assume well that's true but he also i mean he also was that's that i haven't read the i'm sure this is actually solved in the second

book i'm sure this is solved in the second book. We didn't read that. He becomes a monk. And then he starts his driving mission in life is to save as much knowledge, specifically books and learning that he can. So he gets permission from the Catholic Church that is now headquartered in a place they call New Rome, which looks like it's located roughly in Branson, Missouri. To set up an order of monks out in the Utah desert where he's from, dedicated to preserving knowledge. So they become what they call book leggers. So like bootleggers, but for books. So they memorize books a la like Book of Eli. like bootleggers but for books so they memorize books a la like book of eli um and then they like smuggle books try and try and bury them all in the desert for preservation he eventually gets

caught by simpletons and martyred he gets like hung and burned alive and then the abbey uh becomes dedicated to him he gets beautified whatever they call it when like you're on your way to becoming a saint beatified beautified whatever it's called um when you're on your way to becoming a saint, beatified, beautified, whatever it's called. I'm sorry. Neither of us are Catholic.

Sorry. Which would have been helpful for this book. Then she gets beatified. And like the, the order still serves his founding principle of preserving the memorabilia, which is random gadgets and books and texts that they found from what they call pre deluge.

Cause they call it the deluge of fire. So it's pre deluge. And so this is taking place like roughly 600 years after the first section of the book is 600 years after the apocalypse. Everyone is still rabidly anti-learning at this point. The monks are essentially just hiding in their Abbey as like a defensive structure where they can squirrel knowledge away and hide it. Their whole principle is saving it for when humanity wants it again.

They're preserving knowledge for when humanity is prepared to, for advanced knowledge again, even though a bunch of the stuff they don't understand like they have stuff from leibovitz that's like electrical engineering blueprints and they like don't even know what they do they just know that they're old um so our first section focuses on our our poor little monk named francis francis my poor baby our poor baby. Our poor dumb boy. Our poor dumb boy. Francis is a kind, albeit not that smart, apprentice.

Intensely naive. Intensely naive apprentice of the brotherhood. He's not yet a monk. He hasn't found his call to service yet. I feel like I identify with him too, but. He's a nice boy. He's like 17 at the start of the book. Every

once a year, they have to go out into the desert and fast and hide and just hang out in the desert trying to commune with God to figure out what their life's all about. While out there, Francis runs into

a man he calls a pilgrim. He assumes it's an old man on a pilgrimage to the Abbey. The pilgrim does not give his name. Well, Francis does not ask. Because Francis is dumb. The pilgrim is an old man

with a beard and just like a burlap loincloth and like a rough belt. This is going to be a recurring character. His name is Benjamin. You don't know that yet. Benjamin is probably immortal. Maybe we'll talk about that. We'll talk about that later,

but there's some light supernatural elements here. Yeah. Francis like gives Benjamin a a little information and then benjamin trying to help francis out is like i'm gonna find you a rock to finish building your shelter so wolves don't eat you um points finds a rock and labels it so francis can find it later because francis is too busy praying because he like almost ate cheese and he feels bad about it. So the hermit, the monk, sorry, the hermit, the pilgrim leaves. Francis finally goes over to look at the rock. He moves the rock and underneath the rock buried in the sand,

which is the rubble of a town. He finds the entrance to a fallout shelter. This is things that may sound familiar. He goes down into this cave underground he's a bunch of signs explaining the rules for how long the door must be sealed under what conditions it can be opened here we go um all these things will be familiar to people who have played bethesda games um he in there he finds a toolbox with some blueprints and other stuff in it which he um can sees it has the initials of uh lebowitz in it and so he's like holy shit i just found a holy

relic i just found a relic of our saint this is the greatest day of my life i also found the skull of his wife probably yeah it's um because it's it's heavily heavily implied that his wife emily made it to this fallout shelter but didn't make it inside in time and so she died out like underground but outside sort of the inner door of the shelter that's heavily implied that her, at least then eventually in universe, in the story, they agreed that it's her because the church accepts it. Anyway, Francis goes back to the Abbey and tells everybody what he found.

And everyone just loses their abs, their ever loving shit because they think he's like found saintly relics and all that and then the rest of part book one is just a series of people either believing or not believing his story um and focusing on the pilgrim the importance of the pilgrim they all think the pilgrim was like an apparition of the saint himself and the abbot is like determined to get poor francis to say that it was not a saint. Because the abbot, I think,

we're led to believe at the end that the abbot wants to stop the more fantastical elements of the story because by quashing them, it's more likely that new Rome will accept Leibovitz and actually sanctify him, lift him up as a saint. I think if they let all these crazy stories run wild, the church, the new Rome will be like, you guys are full of shit. Your fucking saint didn't

show up out of nowhere and grow roses at his feet. And in the end, Francis ends up doing the right thing simply by being dumb. Yeah, because the whole time he's like, well, he was an old man, but I can't say if it was or wasn't him.

I guess. Francis's whole thing is he's like, look, I'm dumb and I know I'm dumb. So I can't say the old, I will not say the old man was our saint, but I also can't say he wasn't because I don't know. And you're like, okay, dude. And then he keeps getting like beaten by the abbot for it yeah he keeps getting in trouble for it anyway in the end his sort of naivete wins because when the church sends people to come interview him about it he literally just tells him the truth because he's too stupid to lie and that ends up working out in his favor uh eventually uh they do decide to

make libu it's a saint he goes to new rome for the ceremony it's cool on the way back he gets killed uh and that's the end of basically the end of section one but now let's start talking about the themes that are represented here let's get into the meat of it we can talk about details as we go theme one like you said at the start cyclical history yes the world went the world went through a holocaust yes it did and we are looking at sorry go ahead no and at its and at its core again um by the time you get to the end of the book spoiler alert it happens again um so i think people listening to our podcast should be aware that this is all spoilers yeah um so but as you like progress through the book

it it follows a very similar progression to the way things had already happened um in a sense obviously things are still different because it's you know the future but by the time you get to the second section you know you have city-states forming a la rome yeah you've got a couple kingdoms a republic a mayorship yeah um and you even have this character tattie on tattie who is effectively like an einstein for the new age he's he's supposed to be um he's referred to you supposed he's often supposed you're supposed to be comparing him to like copernicus or galileo yeah where he's like a secular scholar in a world that's still heavily religious yes so um and then it ends up coming like that section ends up coming

down to something we'll get into later this argument about technology and it's you know the responsibility of people to use it which is a much more like that's like a next layer deep yeah that's that's the next theme down this first one is the cyclical nature of history so like there's an apocalypse we go back to to dark, some dark age shit. We then second section two city States, local government, you would say sort of small areas. And that book ends around the time that one of those small areas, Texarkana is actively gobbling up the surrounding areas. Section three, you're each one of these is 600 years apart, like we said. Section three, you're in the future.

We're back up from, we're actually above current modern levels of technology. Yeah, there's colonizing space. Well, I mean, we're at what people in the 1950s thought we'd be doing after the year 2000. Yeah. We've got like generation like we've got like generation we've got like colony ships in space full self-driving cars that actually work apparently well actually you know they said they don't work they said they still run over pedestrians it's too accurate they literally point out that the self-driving cars even in this future still

hit pedestrians um and then what happens by the end of the third section is there's a nuclear war again, wiping everybody out. So that's the first theme here is that everything is cyclical. And that is true at the grand scale in the novel, as in that's the arc of human history. But it's also like true in sort of of smaller scale even like within the novel itself like things are like patterns are repeated like across different generations yeah in different times in the abbey in each chapter essentially each not chapter but each each of the three sections is like sort of repeating what happens in the section before by the way the three sections is like sort of repeating what happens in the section before, by the way, the three sections are, are, there's a lot of Latin in the book,

which I did not know because I'm not a nerd and I didn't go to school in like the UK or anything. So the first section is Fiat Lux, which is let there be light. Oh no, I'm sorry. That's section two. Section one is Fiat Homo, let there be man, which makes sense because this is the most primitive one. And this is where humans are learning how to human again. Then there is Fiat Lux. Let there be light, which is the section about humans rediscovering technology and specifically electricity, which is sort of a bit on the nose. The idea is that

they're rediscovering technology and sort of bringing light back to the world. But he does it also literally and that the main thing they discover rediscovers electric lights. And then section three is Thea Voluntas Tua, which is Thy Will Be Done, which is a reference to the fact that we're into the future and that the people still need to be submitting to God's will. And that is a, that is a section about the fight, a bigger section about the fight between secular and religious rules in society,

like who has authority, whether it be God or the state. And at the end, the state kills everyone. So I guessing the book comes down on the side of God in this case. has authority whether it be god or the state and at the end the state kills everyone so i'm guessing the book comes down on the side of god in this case yeah state murders everyone um so i mean yeah i'd also say that you know his will be done is also just kind of a well his will be done y'all got blown up again y'all got nuked a second time um the thing the

thing is i don't want everyone to think that this book is like some drudgerously hopeless thing no it's because it because it like obviously it's bleak i would call it bleak but i wouldn't call it like hopeless because like in each of them, there's a through line of the almost stubborn tenacity of man surviving this shit. Yeah, it is a balance between his belief that humans will continue to repeat our mistakes, but we will persevere anyway. Yes. I think for him, it's specifically through the light of God. Yes. You know, through the Catholic Church church we will persevere anyway um but you like that's what he

means but like you don't have to necessarily take it that way even though again we're talking about everything is drenched in theme in this book like everything is either a reference to one of the themes or like directly like christian symbology there's an entire section here that's essentially just the Garden of Jessamine. Get sent to me? Oh, I don't know. But there is a pretty direct

analogy. The other reason I bring up that scene in particular is because I really love that scene. Which scene are you talking about? It's the one where, is it Jonathan? It's the one at the very end. Oh, that's the one where he's sitting outside. He's deciding if he wants to lead the group into space.

Yeah, he's deciding if he wants to lead the group into space. And then a snake, like something rustles in the grass after he asks for a sign. And he picks up a stone off the ground and throws it at it. And then immediately says after he does it, Oh shit, you send me a sign and I stone it where it's literally him sitting down and saying, Lord,

am I called to lead these people? Yeah. It's a very, I mean, honestly, it's one of my favorite scenes in the book, but it's, um,

that was, that was one of the scenes where I was immediately like oh oh hold on this is just this is just the last temptation of christ but this is the bible um but in um and it's for a character that's barely like really in the last third like the last third doesn't actually follow that character you follow him like once or twice yeah okay so as we said main theme cyclical nature of humans and our civilization because like the governments recycle themselves but this obviously harkens back to what is an older and now sort of not necessarily favored view of sociology and human history. It is a classic one,

which would have been definitively in vogue in the fifties. But even today is now like sort of being directly disproven by wonderful thinkers like the late great David Graeber talking about the fact that human society necessarily progresses in a linear fashion from like hunter gatherers to settled farmers to small petty kingdoms to large kingdoms to complex democracy to some extent to international government yeah and then it all gets wiped out and you have to start over again it necessarily believes that that linear progression of human society is, is the one that happens, which again,

in the fifties would have been like totally understandable. But now in, you know, in the time we're in, we have plenty of wonderful thinkers who have sort of gone on to prove that that's not necessarily the case in real life. It's not human. Civilization is not a a a sort of linear a linear grind um from you know one stage yeah it's not it's not a purely progressive phenomenon that moves from a to b to c to d it's not a video game where you're like aha i've procured enough technology i can declare that i am now out of the stone age and into the bronze age yeah very yeah and if i if i collect

enough resources i can upgrade and be in the iron age like that's that's these days we understand that's not how it is, but this book definitely takes that route. Yeah. And that and that, you know, is used to great effect here to back up the the world blowing itself up that repeats, like you said before. It's even mundane things, in a way, that are repeating themselves. one of the other sort of secondary themes in here, which is the tension between linear progress that is cyclical and also things that are consistent in human nature. Like some things never change, which I do think is this is the, it's the other side of the same coin.

If you believe that we always progress in the same order, then reset the progression, the same order, it would be logical that certain human behaviors are also therefore consistent. Yeah. And you see that a lot in, say, like life at the Abbey. No matter which section of the book you're in and the setting of it being an Abbey lends itself to that theme because you have the same positions.

You've got the Abbey, you've got the friars, and every day you wake up at the same time, you go you have the same positions. You've got the Abbott, you've got the friars, and every day you wake up at the same time, you go and do the same prayers, you go to service, you do your job, you eat in the same room, you eat the same foods, you go to bed in the same rooms. And that happens in the year 2600. It also happens in the year 3200. It's the same people doing, going through the same motions every day, despite the fact that technology has changed around them. They're still going through the same motions that the Abbott, you know, that the monks were doing 600 years ago. They are performing the same tasks of preserving technology and whatever.

And it's very like, while the world progresses and falls, progresses and falls, humans on the individual level are still the same people. Man, that makes me want to talk about my specific favorite thing from this book, which is talking about a line of consistency throughout the whole book which is the character benjamin but i don't i want to save him to the end yeah he'll get what we'll talk about benjamin at the end because benjamin is fun yeah um and yeah i'm just going to call him benjamin because that makes me more comfortable than the other title he's given yeah um the other title has some baggage attached but yeah the what i would say in my mind is is the next most like

coherent theme throughout the book the most adequately referenced is the main theme mostly of the second uh the second act the second chunk of material let there be light in you know this sort of tension between man and technology this sort of questioning skepticism of our ability to control our technology adequately or to let it kind of control us, um, to question whether or not we are capable of using it properly in a way that doesn't lead to the same self-destructive outcomes as before. Um, yeah, this, I, the same self-destructive outcomes as before. Yeah, it's the tension between the innate human desire for technology

and also the inherent danger in us having it. And this, talking about sort of the tiers of theme, this hangs itself directly on the tier, the cyclical tier above it is that it's understood that they are preserving technology from the pre the fallen civilization because they believe that humans will want it again and will need it again once they come out of their sort of self-imposed primitive stage. So the monks are convinced of the fact that they must preserve this technology because it will be needed in the future. And like Catho said,

you're saying here is that in section two is what it focuses on this tension, because it's a tension between the Abbott whose name I do not remember offhand. Hold on. I've literally got a page, Don Paolo. Don Paolo. So between the Abbott, Don Paolo, and this secular scholar, Fontadio. Fontadio represents scientific progress purely for the sake of progress. Yes. In a way.

Now, Fontania will argue, or does argue, that scientific progress is necessary to improve the lives of humans, generally. The catch there is that he is willing to do that or allow progress to happen on the back of violence, specifically state violence, because he is attached to the mayor of Texarkana, a man named Hannigan, who Hannigan you hear about, but never see, is the mayor of, he's like referenced once, but you never like hear him talk or anything um hannigan is in the middle of doing politicking creating alliances and backstabbing people so

he can conquer a wide range of territory he's state building he's empire building fontanio in his role as sort of the the what i want to call it sort of the, I would say Galileo is a good one. Yeah. He's, he's Galileo. Like he's a representation of scientific,

secular scientific progress. But the, the, what the prop, the problem that Abbott Paolo brings up is that Thontadio is willing to allow his progress to happen on the back of Hannigan murdering people.

He gets all of his funding from Hannigan. Hannigan allows him to do his work as long as Hannigan can gain access to the work first. So, again, I'm just going to not cast aspersions on any specific political tendencies.

But I want to be pointed out that the problem with Thantadio is that he does scientific progress by tactically endorsing state violence. That's the problem. He's not doing science for science. He's doing science, but only because the state allows him to, and because he is tacitly okay with the state doing murder and genocide, because that allows him to do his technological research. Don Paolo, on the other hand, even though the monks believe that humans should have access to the technology, think it should be more restricted, like that you shouldn't use it if you're like morally compromised in any way?

It's more of an almost like they have it there for those who seek it, but only really those who seek it like those who know and are want to find it themselves as opposed to them like walking out and proselytizing it and giving it out to other people yeah because thon taddeo wants to take the work from the ad yeah the old the old scientific manuscripts from the Abbey back to his secular university. And the monks are like, well, no, you can't do that. We safekeep them here. And Thontadio argues that they are hiding the technology from the world.

The monks argue that they are safeguarding it from reckless use. Again, I would say the author comes down on the side of the monks. Oh, yeah. Without a doubt. Without a doubt, because, again, the book ends in nuclear hellfire. So you would argue that Don Paolo was correct. And a lot of Taddeo's justifications are pointed out as pretty horrifically flawed.

Like when they're at the dinner and he kind of explains what he's doing, he's just getting... Like, Paolo isn't calling him out immediately, but he's already thinking to himself, he's like, oh, this is the shit he's using to justify to himself the horrible things that Hannigan is doing in order to not have to morally analyze that very closely. Yeah, it's like that's the clear point is that Thontadio is doing scientific progress without morals because he has had to justify to himself that all the horrible shit Hannigan is doing is permissible. It's a, it's a very ends justify the means argument for Thantadio where Don Paolo disagrees that he says, if you're going to be doing, if you're going to be using this horrible violence to accomplish your

progress, then your progress is tainted and meaningless. Yeah. The, the section in particular I was thinking of here and i had it starred because i like that whole dinner scene is fantastic i i say that most of the scenes in here are fantastic again for a book that's mostly scenes of people talking to each other they are fantastically well written yeah like this like there's there's a whole this this big

chunk in the middle here that i think is really fantastic it's just a dinner like people are just sitting around having food and they have and they let thaddeo have do a speech and he gets like interrupted by three people or some shit in the middle of this like first like well certain people certain people ask questions and they get thrown out and then obviously benjamin eventually interrupts yes benjamin eventually interrupts and and people like the poet are just incessant and get kicked out because he's just being a little pissant, kind of. The poet is a pissant. He gets this whole thing.

He's a pissant, but he's right. Oh, he's right. He's insane, but he's right. But here's this shtick here. Thon Tatio knew the military ambitions of his monarch he had a choice to approve of them to disprove of them or to regard them as impersonal phenomenon beyond his control like a flood famine or war would evidently then he accepted them as inevitable to avoid having to make a moral judgment but how could a man thus evade his own conscience and disavow his responsibility so easily

um cool that's good. It's so... It's like the hubris of this man. Well, that is the author not even being subtle. No, he's just saying. Miller, in this case, is not subtle. Saying he was...

Yeah, Fontania looks at his monarch and what his monarch does, and has a choice. He can either say it's cool, he can. And as a choice, he can either be, say it's cool. He can speak out against it, or it can just go, well, it's going to happen whether I like it or not.

Might as well go with it. And that third option is the coward's option because it, it is a way of lifting his moral responsibility for the act, for what is done with his research. By claiming that he has no responsibility for it and has no way to stop it therefore it we should just let it continue in the name of progress it's like it's a real it's a real defeatist like realist mindset um you i don't know what you'd call it here you wouldn't call it capitalist realism in this case, but like, what would you call that here?

Other than a realist, like a realism of, of a kind where you're just like, yeah, like, well, it's going to happen anyway. So I might as well just go along with it.

Yeah. Might as well go along with it. And then it's, it's the same mindset of people that like, yeah, like, you know, participate in,

you know, in capitalism or certain things while like it's know, like, you know, participate in, you know, in capitalism or certain things while like, it's sort of the out of sight, out of mind thing you get in America a lot. We're like, we don't worry about homeless people. Or even that, or like, Ooh, I got my, uh, Oh yeah. I know my phone was made in some, like the, a thing in my phone was made in some Bangladeshi like slave camp effectively

and it's like but it was made anyway so me buying it or not buying it doesn't matter um it's sort of what people turned uh when i've seen people have sort of corrupted the idea of that there's no ethical consumption under capitalism yeah it's like it's the vulgar interpretation of that there's no ethical consumption under capitalism. Yeah. It's like, it's the vulgar interpretation of that, where we were like, well, because there's no ethical consumption under capitalism, I don't have to care. Yeah. I can still consume because there's no good way for me to do it. And that's just a way of alleviating your conscience of responsibility. Yeah.

It's like, I mean yeah sure there's no ethical consumption over capitalism but there is more there is less ethical stuff and slightly more ethical stuff like there is there are varying degrees of ethical fuckery here that you can mess all right it's one thing to be like oh man no ethical consumption under capitalism and going to buying a book from your local bookstore that they bound there or some shit and going oh there's no ethical consumption under capitalism and buying shit from amazon in the same way exactly it's like there is a big difference here yeah and i think that's, that's, even

though he wouldn't have put it that way, that is the message that is the heart of the message that's being spoken here about Don Taddeo's support of his state, because it applies not only to like capitalism generally in corporations, but like governments like, yeah, I know the American government does some terrible stuff, but they do it with or without me. So it doesn't matter if I support the government or oppose the government. It doesn't matter. They're going to do it anyway. They give me a decent life, so I don't care what they're doing. That's sort of the heart of this critique that he's making right here.

I just immediately flashed in my head. I know we haven't talked about it yet, but the ones who walked away from Omelas immediately popped into my head. Yeah, it is. They see that, well, this is going to happen. This one has to suffer, but I have a good life. I want to say that's originally,

the core of that idea is originally a henry james quote um but i like it goes back that far you have people asking this question um in literary form for you know centuries at this point and that's clearly the question that miller is asking here and miller is definitively coming down on the side of you should have a conscience about your actions and the actions of people you support and who are supported by you. And it's funny because he says that.

And then... I mean, we're not even going to get... He obviously says, but it happens again anyway. We're also just not going to get into like the fact that this whole thing is like super praiseworthy of the Catholic church and about like supporting institutions that are doing terrible things in your name and creating your conscience. That's that's,

that's true. Holy shit. The man was Catholic. Fuck. The man wasn't Catholic. He converted to Catholicism. He chose to become Catholic. Fuck. Amandus wasn't Catholic. He converted to Catholicism. Yeah, he chose to become Catholic. So let's not

let the kettle get too self-righteous about calling, like, about the color of the pot. Right. Because he has talked, like, the idea of, I mean, you might be able to argue in the 50s they weren't as aware of the,

of the abuse. And the other things that we all know happened all the time. And, but it is, it is in retrospect. Does come across as sort of wildly hypocritical for a man. Who spends the whole novel talk, making the good guys,

Catholic priests, Catholic monks. Yeah like yeah you shouldn't you shouldn't uncritically support institutions that do bad stuff and you're like the way it was presented here because the rest of the world around it is so shit

if you slapped me into this setting and asked me what do you want to do i'd be like i'm gonna go be a monk at the order of saintly woods yeah like in the scenario he's created it is it is the most honorable like and safest thing you can do it's like sure but in a way in a way it is presented as so good where you're like is is this like a, is this like mild propaganda? I don't, it, it, I think it, it is. No, it is presented as better than the rest of the stuff because the rest of the stuff is so shitty. It's not presenting it as good necessarily. It is, it is Catholic church propaganda.

Absolutely. Because the story has a hard Catholic moral at its heart, but I wouldn't call this any, this – I wouldn't say this is any more problematically propagandistic than anything C.S. Lewis ever wrote. Oh, yeah, no. Yeah, no. There's nothing – I'm not actually like – I'm not begrudging this book that it's Catholic tendencies at all. No. It's not even a tendency. It's just like through the heart of it.

That's like saying C.S. Lewis was a little Christian. Okay. So I know we did it in like a chat, but I want to get it on the podcast here. If you had told me going into making a podcast about fantasy and sci-fi would require me to be some sort of Christian scholar, specifically a Catholic scholar, to understand everything that was going on in all these books I read. I went, what the fuck? Why is every fantasy or sci-fi book just littered with Catholicism? to understand everything that was going on in all these books I read. What the fuck? Why is every fantasy or sci-fi book just littered with Catholicism? These goddamn papists everywhere.

And Latin sounds cool. Yeah, okay. Latin sounds cool. Yeah, I feel like that's a decent number of the reason why. Because not just because there aren't Catholics a lot present in the zone. When you're writing down medieval language stuff, you're like, oh, Dominus Sancti, your money all over. I think it's because what the Catholic Church sort of represents in popular culture lends itself towards specifically medieval fantasy. And in sci-fi, it lends itself towards that sort of for like moralistic questions. It's easy to put those sort of things on the church.

So there's reasons, more complicated reasons why. But it's just funny that we've had to talk about the church so much in like our first like eight episodes or whatever. Because I'm including the episodes I accidentally ruined about his dark materials, which also heavily talked about the church. Yeah. So that was getting back on track here. It's that was section number two was sort of the danger slash hope of technology. And I, we, we can't move on without talking about section three because section one is definitively hope for technology.

We found new tech like Francis spends the whole book trying to recopy some sort of electrical blueprint right it's not like those like the bin has those little like circuit resistors in it yeah it has resistors in it about how people didn't know what they were so some people wore them as necklaces as like a shamanistic thing and some people like ate them yeah which is great which is just like but i had to look up what they were because i was like i think i know what these are yeah they're like little resistors they're like part of the electrical yeah because he because he describes them in such a vague way because it's like he can't call them resistors because none of the people around it know what they're called yeah they also

do this he does this like fun world building thing where they talk about like thingamabobs and do hickeys like well clearly they read that in something somebody wrote down where they just reference like you know they use like slang terms for things like you know do hickeys and like thingamawatsits and then just in the future that's what they call circuitry, because that's the only word they know for it, which is fine. But so what I was saying is section one is hope. Section one is hope for technology. Section two is the conflict, hope versus the danger. And the danger wins because even though Fontontadia leaves the Abbey, it ends with Hannigan launching his war. And you get to section three and you realize Hannigan won

because the ruling family of the new North American continent-wide government is run out of Texarkana and the Hannigan family, you sort of led to believe. And they're super advanced technology again. Like they've got flying cars and all the other shit like we talked about before. But so section three is section two is that conflict between the hope versus the danger. Section three is all danger. Section three is this is what your technology has become.

And it ends in hellfire. It ends in nuclear Holocaust again. And so it's sort of a three stage thing across the three parts to hope, to conflict, to danger. And so you clearly see that Miller comes down on the side of that technology advancing for the sake of, for its own sake is dangerous and will lead to dangerous things. But then again, if you go back to the principle we started with, he thinks it's going to happen anyway.

He's very fatalistic about that. Rampant technology is bad for us, but we're going to do it anyway, which again is an acceptable outlook to have in the heart of the cold war like that's totally understandable thing to think in 1955 like why wouldn't you think the world's gonna end in a nuclear holocaust oh yeah i mean it still might what are we doing right but like it's clearly like understandable yeah But so he clearly lays it out in an arc from part one to part three. This sort of technology thing, which is, you know,

this ties into a lot of arguments and debates. You see people across the political spectrum have specifically in sort of our, our areas of the political spectrum, this idea of the sort of liberatory potential of technology that like is advancing tech going to be used to aid the human race or destroy it and you see examples for the pro and con all the time now you see a lot i would argue i also come down on the side of the author in this debate. I find myself to I side with Miller because I look at things like sort of technocratic solutions to world problems.

You know, sort of your liberal politician, Elon Musk solutions like, oh, don't worry. I've got we're going to do carbon capture. That's going to fix things. And we're going to make cars drive in tunnels. And we're going to get some South African billionaires to send us to space. I find I agree with Miller in that technology is not inherently going to save us. And it's often used for bad. It's often used for repression. I mean, just look you're weird police robots like every time i see a video of a boston dynamics robot i want to i want to beat it with a lead pipe yeah yeah like um um and so i did on this

point i agree with miller well i mean it's, I mean, the book obviously mostly touches on the liberatory versus the destructive tendencies of technology in the hands of man. I mean, there's also that running argument as to whether or not technology is ecologically sustainable, certainly at the level that we've got now, which leads into that same destructive thing, even though it's less the fault of technology itself doing things and more the fault of technology being created. But, you know, like the I feel like that's mostly like this stuff is mostly a debate on the left end of the spectrum in general. Well, to be fair, I don't really know what debates they're having on the right end of the spectrum. That's true. Yeah, I don't. I don't. I don't really know what debates they're having on the right end of the spectrum that's true yeah I don't I don't I don't wish to know but on the left you definitely see this in sort of the debates between like sort of transhumanists um you know more of the um there's I mean and and and I mean and prims are silly but so we're not going to talk about them. I'm going to drop my hot take, though, in that the simplification in this story is kind of what would really happen if like and prims kind of got their way in a way where it's like anything that's technology. Like this is some like this is some like this is some like Unabomber shit.

Well, also like – We're like we're going to destroy all technology because all technology is bad. We're going to destroy all knowledge because knowledge is bad. lived uh posadas uh communist reality where everything got blasted back to the absolute technically back to primitive communism for a short period of time so you're like huh uh it's technically classless for a little while where the proletarian is running around murdering everyone who can read it's classic it's stateless i don't know i wouldn't i wouldn't think so but um um there's like yeah not enough i don't know it's not not enough dolphins for it to be pesada there's um i mean there's that you know whether you're talking transhumanist or and frame even though it's obviously like the most

extreme there's extremes like you have people like me who are sort of more um you know like more into like social psychology and degrowth and like that sort of yes but to say there's extremes like you have people like me who are sort of more um you know like more into like social psychology and degrowth and like that sort of yes but to say there's a bit of those arguments about growth degrowth still happen a lot between more in more workerist like industrial style communists versus like social ecology eco-anarchist style communists eco-anarchist versus you're more like syndicalist type yeah like there's where where it's like even in a way even in a way this is like hey this like touches on stuff like you said before like degrowth and how even that's like still a contentious topic um look i know people some people are going to listen listen to my takes on technology and

just label me an amprem so well listen for for for eco especially for eco anarchists in general it's like a badge of honor to get called an amprem at some point for everyone being like maybe nuclear power won't save us and then someone's like they just go completely insane when you're like hey you know you got to get the uranium out of the ground somehow that might require cutting down a lot of fucking trees like reminds me that reminds me of the time i got accused of being authoritarian because i said that a nationwide chat platform needed mods yeah it's like are you gonna get are you gonna get called like anprim by like some cyber leninist or you're gonna get called uh an authoritarian by like an egoist um

i literally was accused i uh used to be um a a high-ranking member of a of a nationwide organization and for suggesting that nationwide general chats might need moderation. I was accused. Yeah, you know, you might need somebody there to, you know. No, it's fine. We'll need this turning into 4chan, thank you. And 4chan still has mods.

It's like, what the fuck? Right. So, the point we're getting at here is that this is like, this is the point he was bringing up in 1955 after seeing like the horrific destruction of nuclear war. But even though nuclear war doesn't hang over us directly anymore, the question is strong now and maybe even stronger now than it was before, now that we have politicians and business leaders who openly advocate saying that technology will save us.

It more stringently brings to light this conflict between the idea that technology will be used in a helpful way or used in a destructive or repressive way. And for those who don't know, Miller himself is a veteran of World War II, fought for the Allies, and so he got to see firsthand the sort

of destruction technology can cause, especially in a wartime setting. Yeah, if I can the sort of destruction technology can cause, especially in a wartime setting. Yeah. If I can say directly here, he was inspired to write these short stories. He was a radio operator and tail gunner and a bomber. And he participated in the Battle of Monte Casino? Well, in the bombing of it, at the very least. Yeah, in the bombing of of monte casino casino well in the bombing of it at the very least yeah in the in the

bombing of monte casino which was when yeah casino which was when the allies destroyed a fifth century monastery possibly what is recognized as the oldest church in the world um old sorry in the western world my apologies the oldest surviving christian church in the Western world, my apologies. The oldest surviving Christian church in the Western world was set up as a monastery in the 6th century by St. Benedict. And so he directly participated in technology destroying the old world, destroying the old religious world. And that clearly directly led to the output of this novel, where after the war, he got married converted to cantholicism

and then wrote a book about a church saving the world from like saving technology and trying to use it to save the world as opposed to technology destroying the church so unless you have another another direct part about that directly hoping technology i i think i want to go ahead and move on to uh sort of our our next sort of theme, sort of our next layer down, unless you have another point on that. I mean, the other thing I'm actually seeing is a quote. I like doing these quotes. I think it gives people a little bit of an idea. You know, it's great.

It's great. And we need you to do the quotes because as we've discussed, I'm illiterate, so I don't have any actual books. I just do audio books. So I need you to read the quotes. But this is also from the second portion it's once again the same dinner scene um with thon taddeo and uh it's just inside don paulo's mind he says to himself god had suffered the wise men to know the means by which the world itself might be destroyed um which i thought

was particularly poignant for like his um fairly anti-technical not anti-technology but anti technology for technology's sake stance yeah um i i do i do want to point out just something kind of funny before we move on because we probably won't mention him really again, but Thontadio has like extra reasons to hate the church. Then like normal people where he was like raised in a, in a monastery separate, even though he like had a birthright that he should have been given and then wasn't because he ended up at a monastery.

Really? I don't remember. He was, he was, he was a bastard son. Yes. Of the previous king of Texarkana. Yeah.

And because he was a bastard. Hannigan's his half-brother, right? It's his cousin. It's his cousin. Hannigan's his cousin. So by birthright, Fontadio should have been the king of Texarkana. But because of his birth, he was sent off to a monastery to be raised and so he resented the church for raising him for its role in raising him within sight of his birthright but keeping him from it and that comes back in

one of one of i think the most like funny but also kind of chilling lines in the entire book that kind of summates this moment when it's decided that progress for progress' sake is what's going to happen now is the last line that you get from him, I believe, where he's asked, Taddeo's asked by Paolo, to serve God first or to serve hannigan first that's your choice and he says i have little choice then answered the thon uh would you have me work for the church the scorn in his voice was unmistakable and that's the last time he talks like he leaves yeah and that's the last thing he says um which is like

oh shit I guess this is what's happening now um which I don't know I mean that to me that reads as a little bit of like oh he's being unreasonably contemptuous of the church I'm like I think he has a good reason to be a little

bit contemptuous yeah yeah