“He had never seen a "Fallout," and he hoped he'd never see one. A consistent description of the monster had not survived, but Francis had heard the legends.”
Ch 1
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), Fiat Homo
Context: He had never seen a "Fallout," and he hoped he'd never see one. A consistent description of the monster had not survived, but Francis had heard the legends. He crossed himself and backed away from the hole. Tradition told that the Beatus Leibowitz himself had encountered a Fallout, and had been possessed by it for many months before the exorcism which accompanied his Baptism drove the fiend away.
Brother Francis visualized a Fallout as half-salamander, because, according to tradition, the thing was born in the Flame Deluge, and as half-incubus who despoiled virgins in their sleep, for, were not the monsters of the world still called "children of the Fallout"? That the demon was capable of inflicting all the woes which descended upon Job was recorded fact, if not an article of creed.
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Walter M. Miller, Jr. 37
American fiction writer 1923–1996Related quotes
Ch 23
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), Fiat Lux
Introduction.
The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution (1950)
VIII, 19. Compare: "Tempest in a teapot" (proverb).
Deipnosophistae (2nd century)
Source: I Am Legend (1954), Ch. 3
Context: True, he thought, but no one ever got the chance to know it. Oh, they knew it was something, but it couldn’t be that — not that. That was imagination, that was superstition, there was no such thing as that.
And, before science had caught up with the legend, the legend had swallowed science and everything.
