A Canticle for Leibowitz

All right boys and girls, I've got a book excerpt for you, and if you're the type of deranged people I think you are then this is definitely a book you'll enjoy. The book is called A Canticle for Leibowitz, and it was written by Walter M. Miller, Jr. in the late 1950's. It's amazing how it was written 50 years ago but still applies so well to society today. It won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, and even though the Hugo is a scifi award this book is more along the lines of "speculative fiction." I like that term. Anyway, the excerpt below is from pages 61-62, and it kind of gives a brief synopsis of what happened before the beginning of the novel. Enjoy.

It was said that God, in order to test mankind which had become swelled with pride as in the time of Noah, had commanded the wise men of that age, among them the Blessed Leibowitz, to devise great engines of war such as had never before been upon the Earth, weapons of such might that they contained the very fires of Hell, and that God had suffered these magi to place the weapons in the hands of princes, and to say to each prince: "Only because the enemies have such a thing have we devised this for thee, in order that they may know that though hast it also, and fear to strike. See to it, m'Lord, that thou fearest them as much as they shall now fear thee, that none may unleash this dread thing which we have wrought."

But the princes, putting the words of their wise men to naught, thought each to himself: If I but strike quickly enough, and in secret, I shall destroy those others in their sleep, and there will be none to fight back; the earth shall be mine.

Such was the folly of princes, and there followed the Flame Deluge.

Within weeks--some said days--it was ended, after the first unleashing of the hell-fire. Cities had become puddles of glass, surrounded by vast acreages of broken stone. While nations had vanished from the earth, the lands littered with bodies, both men and cattle, and all manner of beasts, together with the birds of the air and all things that flew, all things that swam in the rivers, crept in the grass, or burrowed in holes; having sickened and perished, they covered the land, and yet where the demons of the Fallout covered the countryside, the bodies for a time would not decay, except in contact with fertile earth. The great clouds of wrath engulfed the forests and the fields, withering trees and causing the crops to die. There were great deserts where once life was, and in those places of the Earth where men still lived, all were sickened by the poisoned air, os that, while some escaped death, none was left untouched; and many died even in those lands where the weapons had not struck, because of the poisoned air.