Run Program by Scott Meyer (2017) review

Run Program will be released on June 20th, 2017

Run Program follows Hope Takeda, who works at a tech company as a lab assistant in an experimental A.I. development program.  The job is far less rewarding or stimulating than it sounds.  Or rather, it was, before the A.I. escaped.  What makes this different from any of the countless "A.I. on the loose" stories is that the A.I. (named Al) is the mental equivalent of a six year old human.*  His motives, personality, and intellectual abilities are akin to those of an average first-grader, if the average first grader could control airplanes with his mind and transfer vast sums of money through online banking apps.  Unsurprisingly, the government isn't too happy about this, and so begins the quest to locate and contain Al, who has plans of his own, dragging in everyone from disgruntled scientists, surprisingly profound soldiers, and a self-declared genius who has decided to call himself The Voice of Reason.

Run Program is a comedy, though not of the wacky Hitchhicker's Guide variety.  To get a feel for Meyer's sense of humor, you can check out his webcomic Basic Instuctions.  There's a lot of observational humor, and a lot of that is workplace humor, which isn't for everyone.  Really, go check out some of his webcomics.  I think that'll be the best indication of whether or not you'll like the book. 

* On a side note, the idea of raising an AI from childhood seems to have been getting more popular within SF in the last decade (and was handled extraordinarily well in Ted Chiang's 2010 novella, The Life Cycle of Software Objects).  Meyer doesn't go deep into the theoretical or technical background on this, but is more focused on the immediate impact of a child with practically unlimited power, and the odd results of that situation.

Help Make a Movie!

My brother is a senior at NYU's film department, which means it's time for him to make a senior thesis.  The senior thesis, like an NYU film degree, is an expensive endeavor.  Hence, this humorous video requesting your support!

If this is the kind of film you'd like to see, or you just want to help out some aspiring filmmakers, click on the link below and send a few bucks their way.  (And leave a note saying you found out about it through me.  Intersibling politics are cutthroat.)

Review: Old Twentieth by Joe Haldeman (2005)

Joe Haldeman is best known for his fantastic SF novel The Forever War (1974) which won both the Hugo and Nebula for best novel.  He's and SFWA grandmaster, with five Nebulae and five Hugos (Hugii?) under his belt, the most recent for his 2004 novel Camouflage.   

Old Twentieth seems a synthesis of a few major speculative concepts. The first is a society that is practically immortal. You can set your age to stop advancing at any point you wish, and causes of death are limited to catastrophic injuries.  The second is an interstellar journey.  Eight-hundred volunteers in five ships embark on a thousand-year journey to a planet orbiting Beta-Hydrii.  The third is virtual reality, a fully immersive 'time machine' that will let you experience any year or situation within a safe construct.  The fourth is the rise of true artificial intelligence, in this case, that of the VR time machine, which may or may not be responsible when people begin to die while using it.  It's up to our protagonist/narrator, Jacob Brewer, a 200-something year old VR engineer to figure it out.  Before it's too late.    

Let me start with the positive.  There are numerous scenes from within the 'time machine,' depicting everything from a WWI battlefield, to a romantic encounter in Barcelona, to a day spent strolling through the NYC World's Fair.  These segments are fantastic and wonderfully written. Haldeman's writing is strong throughout, but really shines in these chapters.   

But as a whole, the novel was a letdown, especially compared with the quality of Haldeman's other works.  If you read the list of premises on thought it seemed like a bit too much, you might be right. Or rather, it was a bit much for the book's length.  None of the premises get dealt with in depth, and the book just shuttles through the plot.  For example:   

Immortality.  The novel gives the backstory that the Becker-Cendrek process was initially extremely expensive, leading to a massive civil war and culminating in the death of everyone not already immortalized.  The society that forms in the war's wake is pretty standard sci-fi futurism.  Population control via test-tube babies, cyber-ennui, etc.  The point being, beside some minor details, immortality isn't a significant factor in this culture.  They think of death the same way we do, it's just less frequent.  But in a society where the only cause of death is violent, couldn't death become obscene or taboo?  In a society where there is no death, might it be romanticized (I might draw some argument here, but the romanticizing of death in this society is no greater than it is in ours).   If the only cause of death is serious bodily damage, wouldn't a section of society become reclusive, the only thing standing between them and eternal life accident or malice?  Wouldn't there be a population of hedonists, with no need to worry about disease or health?  Would we have a society where individuals become so specialized communication becomes challenging, or would everyone be a Renaissance man, versed in science and the arts?  Instead of anything like the above, we get a pretty standard future-world, where people just happen to live a really-really-really long time.  

All in all, Old Twentieth was a fun read, but it bit off a lot more than it could chew. 

1987: The Tommyknockers by Stephen King

The Author:

Stephen King (1947-    ) was born in Portland, Maine.   His father abandoned the family when King was two, leaving his mother to raise King and his older brother.  King attended the University of Maine, earning a B.A. in English in 1970.  King and Tabitha Spruce had their first child in 1970, and married in 1971.  Their second child, Joseph Hillstrom King, was born in 1972.  (He, like his mother and father, is a writer.  He writes under the name Joe Hill.)  King taught high school and supplemented his wages by selling short stories to magazines. 

In 1973, he published his first novel, Carrie.  The first of his novels to make the annual top ten bestsellers list was The Dead Zone (1979).  Between 1980 and 2012, King appeared on the annual top ten list 34 times, in one case having three books on the same year's list. He has since written multiple non-fiction works, as well as serving as a columnist for entertainment weekly.  At current count, King has published twelve short story collections, two comic series, six books of non-fiction, fifty-six novels, seven novellas, ten screenplays, and a musical libretto.

The Book:

Length: 747 pages
Subject/Genre:  Alien invasion/sci-fi-horror

The Tommyknockers is one of the few books on the list that I'd already read.  Widely regarded as one of King's worst, The Tommykockers takes place in Haven, Maine, where Western novelist Bobbi Anderson discovers an alien spacecraft buried in the woods.  As she begins to excavate the wreck, the people in the town start changing, becoming more and more like the alien species that visited long ago.  They develop an amazing technical ingenuity, but don't necessarily understand the concepts behind their inventions.  As Bobbi says "As I say, we've never been very good understanders. We're not a race of super-Einsteins.  Thomas Edison in space would be closer, I think."  However, the townspeople become increasingly psychotic and dangerous.  Bobbi's friend, poet James Gardener (Gard), is immune to the the effects of the change because of a metal plate in his head, and it's up to him to stop the people of Haven, and the alien technology, from wreaking havoc on the Earth.

While complaining about a Stephen King book being long is like complaining about it being set in Maine, The Tommyknockers has the major problem of spending hundreds of pages shifting around minor characters, which gets very repetitive, very fast.  King's tendency to take common-place items and recontextualize them as terrifying consistently fails here.  For example:

"The Coke machine banked back.  It hung in the air for a moment, its front turning back and forth in small arcs that reminded Leandro of the sweeps of a radar dish.  The sun flashed off its glass door.  Leandro could see bottles of Coke and Fanta inside.

Suddenly it pointed at him -- and accelerated toward him.

Found me, Christ---

He got up and tried to hop to the car on his left foot.  The soda machine bore down on him, coin return hooting dismally."  

'coin return hooting dismally' is probably the least scary description I've ever read in a horror novel. The success of The Tommyknockers is a bit surprising considering it competed against two other King books, including Misery.

King's cocaine addiction and alcoholism throughout the 1980s is frequently brought up in discussions of The Tommyknockers.  King himself admits to barely remembering having written Cujo.  There is much to be said for The Tommyknockers as an allegory for King's addiction (this article from The Guardian is worth a look), but that doesn't make up for the overall shortcomings of the novel.   Nevertheless, The Tommyknockers was adapted into a truly awful two part miniseries starring Jimmy Smits (The West Wing, NYPD Blue) and Marg Helgenberger (CSI):

It's pretty much just three hours of all the worst aspects of a made-for-tv sci-fi B-movie.   

I can't really recommend this book for anybody.  If you're a Stephen King fan or looking to get into his books, this is not a good choice.  It's one of his longest and worst books.  

Bestsellers of 1987:

1. The Tommyknockers by Stephen King

2. Patriot Games by Tom Clancy

3. Kaleidoscope by Danielle Steel

4. Misery by Stephen King

5. Leaving Home by Garrison Keillor

6. Windmills of the Gods by Sidney Sheldon

7. Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow

8. Fine Things by Danielle Steel

9. Heaven and Hell by John Jakes

10. The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King

Also Published in 1987:

The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace

The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

Sources:

King, Stephen. The Tommyknockers. 1987. New York: Signet, 1988. Print.

1983: Return of the Jedi by James Kahn

The Author:

James Kahn (1947-        ), no relation to yours truly, was born in Chicago.  Initially, Kahn pursued a career in medicine.  He received his M.D. from the University of Chicago in 1974 and worked as a trauma specialist.  In 1975 he married Jill Littlewood, an illustrator.  His first publications were a collection of poems written with Jerome McGann, titled Nerves with Patterns (1978) and a mystery novel, Diagnosis: Murder (1978).  After this, he published his best known original work, the New World Trilogy. The first book, World Enough and Time, was published in 1980. The other two were Time's Dark Laughter (1982) and Timefall (1987).  Kahn was briefly a consultant on the set of Spielberg's E.T. He introduced himself to Spielberg personally when he noticed the director had a copy of World Enough and Time. This led to Kahn's writing the novelization of Spielberg's Poltergeist (1982), Return of the Jedi (1983), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), The Goonies (1985), and Poltergeist II (1986).  Since then, Kahn has mostly written for television, working on E/R, St. Elsewhere, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager, Xena, and soap operas like Melrose Place and All My Children.

The Book:

Length: 229 pages
Subject/Genre: Star Wars/Novelization

Whereas Kotzwinkle's E.T. filtered the movie through a different perspective, Kahn's Return of the Jedi is pretty much just a narrated version of the film.  Little bits of detail and character background are added in the book (e.g. a bit about Jabba the Hutt's past), but added details about Admiral Akbar don't really add much to the scene.  If nothing else, the novelization should allow for translation of non-English speaking characters, but this is only done to a limited extent.  Throughout the novel we get passages like the following:

"Boo-dEEp gaNOOng," whispered Artoo with concern.  

Likewise, Chewbacca is still only understood through Han's responses.  Jabba is given a bit more leeway with translation.  Also, there's a rousing speech by an Ewok convincing his people to fight.

Pictured: A being of dignity and grace

I'm having trouble reviewing this book because all it really is is a competent narration of the film.  The differences are negligible, generally taking the form of a paragraph or so of exposition on a character or location.  My advice is: watch the movie.

But of course, in 1983, that wasn't necessarily an option.  In my review of the novelization of E.T., I discussed the high prices of VCR's and the limited film catalog.  Return of the Jedi was not released on VHS until 1986.  Short of going finding a theater that was stills showing it, the only option to re-experience the story was to buy the book.  Which, obviously, a lot of people did.

Long story short, if I were to review the novel on the strength of its characters, plot, etc., I'd basically just be reviewing the film version.  There's nothing particularly noteworthy about Kahn's novelization, good or bad.  If you have a serious desire to watch Return of the Jedi, but for some reason are completely unable to, the novelization will fulfill said desire.  Otherwise, just watch the movie.

Bestselling novels of 1983:

1. Return of the Jedi by James Kahn

2. Poland by James Michener

3. Pet Sematary by Stephen King

4. The Little Drummer Girl by John le Carré

5. Christine by Stephen King

6. Changes by Danielle Steele

7. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

8. White Gold Wielder by Stephen Donaldson

9. Hollywood Wives by Jackie Collins

10. The Lonesome Gods by Louis L'Amour

Also published in 1983:

Shakespeare's Memory by Jorge Luis Borges

The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley

The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett (first of the Discworld series)

Shame by Salman Rushdie

Brighton Beach Memoirs by Neil Simon

"James Kahn." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Literature Resource Center. Web.

Kahn, James. Return of the Jedi. 1983. New York: Ballantine, 1995. Print.

1982: E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial by William Kotzwinkle

The Author:

William Kotzwinkle (1938-      ) was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania.  He dropped out of Penn State in 1957 and headed to New York where he worked as a short-order cook and later as an editor before publishing his first piece, a children's story titled The Fireman (1969).  A prolific author, he published eleven children's books and eight adult novels in 1970s, winning the O. Henry Prize in 1975 and the World Fantasy Award for Doctor Rat (1976).  In 1982, Steven Spielberg, impressed by Kotwinkle's novel about the Greenwich Village art scene (The Fan Man, 1974), asked Kotzwinkle to write the novelization of Melissa Mathison's screenplay for his upcoming film, E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial (1982).  This prompted a sequel, E.T., the Book of the Green Planet: A New Novel (1985).  (He also wrote the novelization of Superman III, which we as a society should just collectively forget.)  Since then, Kotzwinkle has remained prolific and eclectic, writing everything from a novel about a fading Hollywood star who slips into the consciousness of a WWII German black-marketeer (The Exile, 1987) to a series of children's books with the self-explanatory title, Walter, the Farting Dog.

The Book:

Length: 265 pages
Subject/Genre: Aliens/Movie Novelization

While I think it's safe to assume everyone here has seen Steven Spielberg's E.T., a quick recap for anyone who's forgotten.  A spaceship lands in a forest and a bunch of aliens start collecting plant samples.  Government officials show up, causing the aliens to evacuate, except for one who gets left behind.  He finds his way into a suburb and befriends Elliott.  Elliott, along with his big brother and little sister, have to hide E.T. from their mom and the outside world while helping him build a device to send a signal to his shipmates.  E.T. and Elliott develop a somewhat telepathic connection, they both get sick, but recover.  The mom discovers E.T. as do the government agents.  But they escape and E.T.'s ship comes back for him and he flies off into the cosmos.  Roll credits.  

Kotzwinkle's novelization is actually highly-regarded as a stand-alone piece of Sci-fi. One thing that the novel does that the film couldn't do is tell much of the story through E.T.'s perspective.  In addition to learning a lot about E.T.'s background (he's 10 million years old, for example), we find out he can communicate with plants and animals (and cheese apparently).  This does lead to interesting questions about the ethics of eating a salad when all its components are sentient.  

The novel, like the film, starts with the ship's landing.  In this version, E.T., we discover, is a bit of a daredevil, who decides to sneak into the suburb, something none of his species had done before. This is why he, specifically, gets left behind.  The novel then cuts to Elliott's household, where Elliott and his friends are playing Dungeons & Dragons while his mother, Mary, sits in the other room doing her best Jewish Mother impression:

"Have I raised my babies to be Dungeon Masters? For that, I work eight hours a day?"  

While the mother may have been a bit uptight in the movies, in the novel she comes across as uptight and extremely paranoid. After the family dog, Harvey, barks at E.T.'s passing, Mary, upstairs notes that:

"The animal was ridiculously suspicious of things that passed in the dark; it made her feel the neighborhood was filled with sex fiends."    

Guess how many times the words "pervert" or "sex fiend" show up in  a novelization of E.T.?  The answer is "a lot more than you'd expect."  After Elliott throws a ball into the toolshed, only to have something (i.e. E.T.) throw it back out at him, he comes back into the house, screaming about something hiding in the shed.

"She drew herself up, tossed her head bravely, and grabbed the flashlight.  If it was a sex fiend, she'd go out and, like a mother partridge, offer herself as a decoy.

She just hoped it was a halfway charming fiend."  

Putting aside any ornithological uncertainties I might have, what the heck?!  The mom consistently comes across as a twitching bundle of neuroses, insecurities, and delusions. The problem is, I keep expecting her to be a mom more in line with the movie, flawed, but not on the verge of a complete mental breakdown.  The other characters don't fare any better.  Here's our description of Elliott:

"All in all, a blossoming neurotic, a twerp. His path in life led nowhere, but if a place could be pointed to on a map of the soul, Elliott's destination was mediocrity, miserliness, and melancholy; the sort of person who falls under a train."    

It also recontextualizes some famous scenes.  One of the most memorable scenes in the movie is when Gertie (the little sister, played by a six-year-old Drew Barrymore) meets E.T. for the first time.  She screams which scares E.T. into screaming and slapstick. But what went through Mary's mind?

"'Oh, God...' She rose from the kitchen table.  What savage ritual was her family enacting now?  It sounded like they were pulling Gertie's pants down.  In twenty years, Gertie'd be trying to recollect it, on a psychiatrist's couch."  

SERIOUSLY?!  Why is this the first thing that comes into her mind?  She is pathologically determined to believe her kids are all drug-addled sexual deviants, and it's really freakin' weird.

But to be fair, she may have good reason to think this, considering Elliott's friends:

"He stared at Elliott, who, so far as he knew, had been like every other brother in the world, taking pleasure in playing with his sister only when the game was interesting--for example, tickling her until she nearly had a nervous breakdown, a game he often enjoyed with his own sister.  Or tying her to a tree and then tickling her.  Or crashing into the bathroom with four or five other guys while she was taking a bath, and then standing around laughing while she screamed.  Those were the right games.  But this?  Thoughtful drops of spittle ran of Greg's lower lip, onto his neon shirt."    

The tone of the novel is incredibly different from that of the movie.  As I mentioned earlier, the novel is largely through E.T.'s perspective, which, I think, kind of explains much of this tone shift.  The movie is about an average kid who finds an alien and has to help the alien get home.  The novel is a ten-million year old botanist from a technologically advanced society who finds himself stranded amidst a bunch of far inferior creatures (although, E.T. frequently comes across less as a genius and more as some kind of slapstick-savant).  The major conflict then becomes: How can E.T. get this fundamentally dysfunctional family to pull itself together and get him off this planet?  The tone is much less innocent and wondrous, although it frequently has moments of awe and depth.  

Strangely enough, I liked the novel because of it's relative darkness, that is, once I got past my initial confusion.  Once I stopped constantly comparing it to my memories of the film, I realized that it's a solid SF/F young adult novel.  

But how did a novelization, albeit of a very popular film, get to be the #1 bestseller of the year.  This is at least partially a case of technological limitations.  The first VCR's were released in 1970's, but were extremely expensive and very few films were available on VHS.   Even into the beginning of the 1980s, the future of the VCR was unclear.  VCR was competing with the technologically superior Betamax, and the important Sony vs. Universal case didn't reach the supreme court until 1984.  The fact is, in 1982, if you wanted to rewatch a movie you either had to shell out a lot of cash for a VHS or Betamax (and for copy of the film) or wait for it to air on TV.  Or you could buy the novelization. Novelizations filled a niche that really doesn't exist anymore.

 


While E.T. is still famous, Kotzwinkle's novelization had some notable consequences.  I personally believe (though can't prove), that the success and quality of his E.T. was responsible for Kahn's Return of the Jedi taking the top spot in 1983.  It also influenced the design of the (since replaced) E.T. ride at Universal Studios (this may seem like a useless tidbit, but anyone who grew up going to Universal Studios will have many fond memories of this).    

Kotzwinkle's E.T. is a strange and entertaining supplement to the film, with all the events filtered through a radically different perspective.

Bestsellers of 1982:

1. E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial by William Kotzwinkle
2. Space by James Michener
3. The Parsifal Mosaic by Robert Ludlum
4. Master of the Game by Sidney Sheldon
5. Mistral's Daughter by Judith Krantz
6. The Valley of Horses by Jean Auel
7. Different Seasons by Stephen King
8. North and South by John Jakes
9. 2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke
10. The Man from St. Petersburg by Ken Follett

Also published in 1982:

The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks
The BFG by Roald Dahl
Noises Off by Michael Frayn
Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally
Shoeless Joe by W. P. Kinsella
The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Sources:

Kotzwinkle, William. E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial. 1982. New York: Scribner, 2002. Print.

"William Kotzwinkle." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2004. Literature Resource 
     Center. Web.

Good Cover Art

I've previously written a couple posts making fun of terrible cover art (here and here).  While hilariously bad cover art is worth noting, we should also remember good cover art.  One of my favorite particular pieces of cover art was from the Dell paperback edition of Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night.

A bizarre cover that successfully incorporates a lot of detail from the book.  Unfortunately, the artist wasn't credited and for a long time I was unable to find out who it was.  It turned out though, that I had other books with his cover art.

The artist is Don Ivan Punchatz, and he's done some very clever, weird, and awesome covers:

Another 'necessary' sequel

A very necessary sequel

And my personal favorite:

A parody of Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson

"Blade Runner," "Blade Runner (a movie)," and "The Blade Runner"

I was in the library last week, when I came across a surprising title.  Blade Runner (a movie) by William S. Burroughs.  It turns out Blade Runner (a movie) has nothing to do with the movie Blade Runner, which is based on the Philip K. Dick novel, Do Androids Dream of Elecrtic Sheep?  No, Blade Runner (a movie) is based on the novel The Bladerunner, which has no connection to Blade Runner or its source material.   Perhaps some background will help.  

In 1968, Philip K. Dick published one of his most famous novels, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Fig. 1.1: Electric Sheep

In the novel, Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter, must 'retire' six escaped androids.  The biggest difference between the androids and humans is the androids' complete lack of empathy.  In a plotline that didn't make it into the film, the humans on the largely depopulated Earth all need to care for some kind of pet, to prove to their neighbors that they have empathy.  However, due to nuclear war, most species are extinct, and those that remain are incredibly expensive, prompting many, including Deckard, to own an electric animal, one that behaves exactly like, and appears identical to, a real animal. (Which leads to the question: if taking care of the animals is a matter of conformity/self-preservation, does empathy even apply, which leads to further questions about the possibly self-serving nature of empathy).  Deckard has an electric sheep. The term "blade runner" does not appear anywhere in the novel.

In 1974, Alan E. Nourse published a dystopian novel titled The Bladerunner.  The backstory: Medical science has managed to prolong life and allow people to live with previously fatal conditions.  A rapidly aging population that needs medical care, along with an aging government, increase taxes on the proportionally smaller youth demographic, which is itself producing less, until the economy is on the verge of collapsing (A strangely prescient premise).  The solution to the problem ends up being free healthcare for life, on the condition that the recipient be sterilized.  This leads to an underground medicine industry, with suppliers, doctors, and bladerunners, the latter act as go-betweens for the doctors, suppliers, and patients.  Although it gets a little bogged down with medical specifics and some of the exposition can be clunky (especially in the second part of the novel), it's a relevant, thought-provoking sci-fi novel.  

Well, in 1979, William S. Burroughs was commissioned to write a film treatment for The Bladerunner.  Although no film was made, the treatment was published as Blade Runner (a movie).  I'd recommend reading the novel before the Burroughs treatment.  The treatment, as it goes on, gets more and more disjointed and surreal, and bizarre imagery starts taking more and more precedence over coherence.  There are considerable differences between the film treatment and the novel.  There are more "throbbing phalluses" than in the source material.  A lot more. 

In 1982, Blade Runner, the famous sci-fi film starring Harrison Ford, was released.  One problem the filmmakers encountered was picking a good title.  Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was a) not catchy and b) nonsense, since there were no electric sheep in the film.  One of the screenwriters, Hampton Fancher, had a copy of Burroughs's treatment, and suggested the title Blade Runner for the film.  Ridley Scott bought the title rights for The Bladerunner and Blade Runner (a movie).       

So, if anyone ever decides to make a film adaptation of Alan E. Nourse's The Bladerunner, they're going to have to call it something else.  May I suggest Ubik?

Public TV Interview with Ray Bradbury

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller Jr.

I'm a big fan of classic sci-fi and post-apocalyptic stories.  So I finally got around to reading Miller's modern classic, A Canticle for Leibowitz.

I'm also a sucker for awesome cover designs

If you're unfamiliar with the premise, the story follows a monastic order over about two millenia following a civilization ending nuclear war.  Separated into three parts, taking place in the 26th, 32nd, and 38th century, respectively, the novel shows not only how society rebuilds itself, but how it makes sense of its past. 

Mythopoeisis is a subject of great interest for me, personally, and one that Miller handled very well.  Not only do we see how the lives and events within the monastic order of St. Leibowitz become mythologized, but we see how something as extreme as nuclear holocaust can be folded into religion:

"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 thou 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."   

As you could probably guess, religion plays a large role in the story.  Like I said, I'm interested in mythopoeisis, so the religious aspect works pretty well in that regard (incidentally, I've just started reading Isaac Asimov's Guide to the Bible, which seems to be an insightful look at much the same subject).       

If you're a fan of science fiction, post-apocalyptic stories, or just good original writing, I'd suggest picking up a copy.