A Solid Foundation

I haven’t been able to read much of my book yet, because I’ve been very busy for the past couple of weeks, but so far I really like the book. It begins far in the future in a post-nuclear-apocalyptic desert. The main character is a monk from an order of monks who live nearby, but when the story begins he is out in the desert with a vow of silence for lent. He stumbles upon a fallout shelter where he discovers documents from the before the apocalypse or “simplification” as the book calls it. Even more fantastically the documents are written by the person, whom the order believe to be a saint, Isaac Edward Leibowitz. After he waits for lent to end and talks to the main priest he is heralded back to the order with his documents.

While reading about the book I learned that it has 3-time intervals “Fiat Homo,” “Fiat Lux,” and “Fiat Voluntas Tua,” meaning "let there be man," let there be light," and "let your will be done." Each of these sections occurs 600 years after the last with the order of monks changing because of their technology and power in each. This reminds me of books like Dune or The Foundation series, which both cover incredible amounts of time in their first main few books and only expand outward in new series set in the same universe. This is the first time that I have seen large timescales employed on such a small scale (if you can reasonably say that Earth is a small scale).

Interestingly from what I understand it also emulates The Foundation series in that there is one organization with far more knowledge than their surroundings and they use that knowledge to gain power over their surroundings. Even more similarly at one point in The Foundation novels, the foundation uses a so-called “Church of Science,” in order to keep themselves safe from their galactic neighbors. All these similarities make it seem to me like I’m reading a smaller scale book from the Foundation series, which overall is just fine with me.