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Originally Posted by blueyedmule  Isn't it very much a historical view of the decline of the Roman Empire transposed into the future? Monasteries were the repository of academia during the so-called Dark Ages. Monks not only kept academic knowledge, but taught it and also explored it. They became our scientists, our linguists, our historians, our teachers.
I think Mr. Miller was a student of history in this respect, and though clever enough to project the past onto the future, he wasn't genius to invent something from whole cloth which had never happened before. |
This was a theme fairly common with sf writers of that generation -- Asimov used it in the Foundation stories (with strong modifications, of course), for instance..... Miller's take also comes from the fact he was converted to Catholicism, and took a very lapsarian view, including the idea that -- until we utterly wiped ourselves out -- we would continue repeating the same pattern of rise from ignorance to a high civilization, then making the same ghastly mistakes over and over, especially the more secular we became. Even though I strongly disagree with much of his premise, he did write a superb book on the theme, and one that can be read and enjoyed by anyone who enjoys good literature, whether or not it's science fiction....