Brother Francis and the Wanderer

Both Brother Francis and the Wanderer are characters that begin the novel A Canticle for Leibowitz,

a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by American writer Walter M. Miller, Jr., first published in 1960. Set in a Catholic monastery in the desert of the southwestern United States after a devastating nuclear war, the story spans thousands of years as civilization rebuilds itself. The monks of the fictional Albertian Order of Leibowitz take up the mission of preserving the surviving remnants of man's scientific knowledge until the day the outside world is again ready for it.

There's quite a lot on the web about this novel, but no eBook.  When I say this, I'm excluding ebookbrowse, because downloading the full version produces a small .EXE file (which spells d-a-n-g-e-r to me), and ebook3000, because clicking on the download link takes you to a page with a downloader app and I haven't had good experiences with them (other than Amazon's).  An interesting possibility is a radio drama adaptation by John Reed at Internet Archive. 

Why am I talking about this novel?  Because it seems applicable today.  I first read it at a time when we were still living in the shadow of the Cold War, a shadow that didn't dissipate until the Berlin Wall came down in November, 1989.  Now that's a day worth celebrating.  Many lives were lost when trying to escape Communist rule by crossing the wall to freedom.  (For an idea of what the Soviet occupation was like, take a look at Michener's The Bridge at Andau.)  A map showing the Berlin wall is below.

A Canticle offered a ray of hope in a dark time, humor, an interesting viewpoint, and was a damn good story.  Here's a sample from goodreads, Walter M Miller, Jr's page:

The closer men came to perfecting for themselves a paradise, the more impatient they became with it, and with themselves as well. They made a garden of pleasure, and became progressively more miserable with it as it grew in richness and power and beauty; for then, perhaps, it was easier to see something was missing in the garden, some tree or shrub that would not grow. When the world was in darkness and wretchedness, it could believe in perfection and yearn for it. But when the world became bright with reason and riches, it began to sense the narrowness of the needle's eye, and that rankled for a world no longer willing to believe or yearn.

Another good one is Earth Abides by George R. Stewart -- I still see the copper rivets in their jeans reflecting the firelight in mind's eye.

-- Marge