 Initial response to the novel was mixed , but it drew responses from newspapers and magazines normally inattentive to science fiction . A Canticle for Leibowitz was reviewed in such notable publications as Time , The New Yorker , the New York Times Book Review , and The Spectator . While The New Yorker was negative – calling Miller a " dull , ashy writer guilty of heavy @-@ weight irony " – The Spectator 's was mixed . Also unimpressed , Time said , " Miller proves himself chillingly effective at communicating a kind of post @-@ human lunar landscape of disaster , " but dubbed it intellectually lightweight . The New York Times Book Review , however , was solid in its praise – Martin Levin hailed A Canticle for Leibowitz as an " ingenious fantasy " . The Chicago Tribune gave the book unusual exposure outside the genre in a front page review in the Chicago Tribune Magazine of Books , reviewer Edmund Fuller calling the book " an extraordinary novel " . Genre reviewer Floyd C. Gale praised its " many passages of remarkable power . " A decade later , Time re @-@ characterized its opinion of the book , calling it " an extraordinary novel even by literary standards , [ which ] has flourished by word of mouth for a dozen years . " 
