Who wrote the novel 'A Canticle for Leibowitz'?

Walter M. Miller Jr. wrote the novel “A Canticle for Leibowitz.” Published in 1959, it is a post-apocalyptic science-fiction novel set around a Catholic monastery in the American Southwest after a devastating nuclear war.

The novel grew from three connected stories Miller published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction: “A Canticle for Leibowitz” (1955), “And the Light Is Risen” (1956), and “The Last Canticle” (1957). Miller reshaped them into a three-part fix-up novel spanning thousands of years.

Miller’s World War II service influenced the book. He participated in the bombing of Monte Cassino, a historic Italian monastery, an experience reflected in the novel’s themes of faith, war, technological knowledge, and cultural recovery. The monks preserve fragments of science while civilization repeatedly rebuilds and destroys itself.

A common mix-up is confusing the book’s author with Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, or Robert A. Heinlein, all major mid-century science-fiction writers. Miller’s novel won the 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel and was his only novel published during his lifetime.