SMITH, CHRISTINA JEAN. What Disappears and What Remains

By collapsing time in inverse proportion to the rise of technological weaponry, Millercreates a feeling of the inevitable and ever-faster build up towards technological prowess andcollapse. The relatively innocent and technologically naïve inhabitants of Fiat Homo live aslow-paced life, one in which a journey from one geographical location to the next extractsthe actual price of its miles; there are no "self-moving carts" or "flying machines" to ease theburdens of travel and so the world is an enormously large place, one that is fractured intomany and various territories with as many systems of law and order. But by the time wereach Fiat Voluntas Tua, the world is moving at high speed. Continents of people are able tocommunicate with one another, disagree with one another and mount destructive attacks onone another. By compressing the timeline as the novel progresses, Miller mirrors the angstand "busyness" ("business" being a distinctly modern activity) that is the engine behind thesociety's demise. In each section, the main characters (Francis, Paulo and Zerchi) havesmaller and smaller allowances of time in which to grapple with the technology that ispresented to them in their era. Francis has the leisure of fifteen years to illuminate theLeibowitzian blueprint; Paulo gets a few weeks to absorb the importance of Kornhoer's arclamp before he dies from ulcers, while Zerchi has mere days to organize the QuoPeregrinatur crew's escape from the nuclear apocalypse (thus ensuring that the Order ofLeibowitz will continue on some new planet) before he is crushed under the weight of thefallen church.For Miller, technology collapses time, reduces it to claustrophobic proportions, fills itwith increasingly dangerous weapons and with little or no means of escape from these17