Walter M. Miller Jr.

Walter Michael Miller Jr. was an American science fiction writer born on January 23, 1923, in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. He came of age in the years surrounding World War II, and his life joined technical training, military service, religious change, and the intense growth of mid-century science fiction. Educated at the University of Tennessee and the University of Texas, he worked as an engineer before becoming known for fiction that reached far beyond the short-story magazines where much of it first appeared.

During World War II, Miller served in the Army Air Forces as a radioman and tail gunner, flying more than fifty bombing missions over Italy. He took part in the bombing of the Benedictine Abbey at Monte Cassino, an experience that proved traumatic for him. Joe Haldeman later reported that Miller “had post-traumatic stress disorder for 30 years before it had a name.” After the war, Miller converted to Catholicism. He married Anna Louise Becker in 1945, and they had four children. In 1953, he lived with science-fiction writer Judith Merril.

Between 1951 and 1957, Miller published more than three dozen science fiction short stories. He won a Hugo Award in 1955 for “The Darfsteller,” and he also wrote scripts for the television show Captain Video in 1953. His short fiction from this period included the three linked novellas that became his best-known book: “A Canticle for Leibowitz” in 1955, “And the Light Is Risen” in 1956, and “The Last Canticle” in 1957, all published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

Late in the 1950s, Miller assembled those related novellas into A Canticle for Leibowitz, published in 1959 by J. B. Lippincott. The novel is post-apocalyptic and revolves around the canonisation of Saint Leibowitz. It became the only novel published during Miller’s lifetime and won the 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel. It is considered a masterpiece of the genre. The book was later adapted for radio by WHA Radio and NPR in 1981, and the BBC broadcast a radio adaptation of its first two parts in 1992.

After the success of A Canticle for Leibowitz, Miller stopped publishing new work, though collections of his earlier stories appeared in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. In later years he became a recluse, avoiding contact with nearly everyone, including family members; he never allowed his literary agent, Don Congdon, to meet him. According to Terry Bisson, Miller struggled with depression but had nearly completed a 600-page sequel to Canticle before his death. Miller took his own life with a firearm on January 9, 1996, shortly after his wife’s death.

The sequel, Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, was completed by Bisson at Miller’s request and published in 1997. Miller’s work continues to matter because it carries the marks of a man shaped by war, engineering, Catholic conversion, and long private struggle. His fiction did not require a large shelf of novels to leave a strong mark: one book, built from three stories, was enough to fix his name in science fiction history.