| Frank Herbert |
Frank Herbert at Octocon science fiction convention at the El Rancho Tropicana hotel in Santa Rosa, California, October 1978 |
| Born |
Franklin Patrick Herbert, Jr.
(1920-10-08)October 8, 1920
Tacoma, Washington |
| Died |
February 11, 1986(1986-02-11) (aged 65)
Madison, Wisconsin |
| Occupation |
Novelist |
| Nationality |
American |
| Period |
1945-1986 |
| Genres |
Science fiction |
| Literary movement |
New Wave |
|
Franklin Patrick Herbert, Jr. (October 8, 1920 – February 11, 1986)[2] was a critically acclaimed and commercially successful American science fiction author. Though also a short story author, he is best known for his novels,[3] most notably Dune and its five sequels. The Dune saga, set in the distant future and taking place over millennia, deals with themes such as human survival and evolution, ecology, and the intersection of religion, politics and power. Dune itself is the "best-selling science fiction novel of all time," and the series is widely considered to be among the classics in the genre.[4][5]
Frank Herbert was born on October 8, 1920, in Tacoma, Washington, to Frank Patrick Herbert Sr. and Eileen McCarthy Herbert. Due to a poor home environment, he ran away from home in 1938 to live with an aunt and uncle in Salem, Oregon.[6] There he enrolled in high school at Salem High School (now North Salem High School) where he graduated the next year.[6] In 1939 he lied about his age in order to get his first newspaper job at the Glendale Star.[2] Herbert then returned to Salem in 1940 where he worked for the Oregon Statesman newspaper (now Statesman Journal) in a variety of roles, including photographer.[6]
A hiatus occurred during his career when he served in the U.S. Navy's Seabees for six months as a photographer during World War II until he was given a medical discharge. He married Flora Parkinson in San Pedro, California in 1941. They had a daughter, Penny (b. February 16, 1942), but divorced in 1945.
After the war he attended the University of Washington, where he met Beverly Ann Stuart at a creative writing class in 1946. They were the only students in the class who had sold any work for publication; Herbert had sold two pulp adventure stories to magazines, the first to Esquire in 1945, and Stuart had sold a story to Modern Romance magazine. They married in Seattle, Washington on June 20, 1946. They had two sons, Brian Patrick Herbert (b. June 29, 1947, Seattle, Washington) and Bruce Calvin Herbert (b. June 26, 1951, Santa Rosa, California).
In 1952 Frank Herbert's first science fiction story, "Looking for Something," appeared in Startling Stories.
Frank Herbert did not graduate from college, according to his son Brian, because he wanted to study only what interested him and so did not complete the required courses. After leaving college he returned to journalism and worked at the Seattle Star and the Oregon Statesman; he was a writer and editor for the San Francisco Examiner's California Living magazine for a decade.
His career as a novelist began with the publication of The Dragon in the Sea in 1955, where he used the environment of a 21st century submarine as a means to explore sanity and madness. The book predicted worldwide conflicts over oil consumption and production. It was a critical success but not a major commercial one.
Florence, Oregon, with sand dunes that served as an inspiration for the
Dune saga
Herbert began researching Dune in 1959 and was able to devote himself wholeheartedly to his writing career because his wife returned to work full time as an advertising writer for department stores, becoming the main breadwinner during the 1960s. Herbert later related in an interview with Willis E. McNeilly that the novel originated when he was supposed to do a magazine article on sand dunes in the Oregon Dunes near Florence, Oregon, but he became too involved in it and ended up with far more raw material than needed for a single article. The article, entitled "They Stopped the Moving Sands," was never written, but it did serve as the seed for the ideas that led to Dune.
Dune took six years of research and writing to complete. Far longer than commercial science fiction of the time was supposed to run, "Dune World" and "Prophet of Dune" was serialized in Analog magazine in eight parts, in 1963 and 1965. It was then rejected by nearly twenty book publishers. One editor prophetically wrote back "I might be making the mistake of the decade, but..." before rejecting the manuscript.
Sterling E. Lanier, an editor of Chilton Book Company (known mainly for its auto-repair manuals) had read the Dune in Analog magazine and he wanted to publish serialized Dune in a single hardcover edition. Lanier offered a $7,500 advance plus future royalties for the right to publish Dune World and Prophet of Dune in hardcover.[7] Before the work appeared in book form, Herbert rewrote much of his text.[8] Dune was soon a critical success. It won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1965 and shared the Hugo Award in 1966 with ...And Call Me Conrad by Roger Zelazny. Dune was the first major ecological science fiction novel, embracing a multitude of sweeping, inter-related themes and multiple character viewpoints, a method that ran through all Herbert's mature work.
The book was not an instant bestseller. By 1968 Herbert had made $20,000 from it, far more than most science fiction novels of the time were generating, but not enough to let him take up full-time writing. However, the publication of Dune did open doors for him. He was the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's education writer from 1969 to 1972 and lecturer in general studies and interdisciplinary studies at the University of Washington (1970 – 1972). He worked in Vietnam and Pakistan as social and ecological consultant in 1972. In 1973 he was director-photographer of the television show The Tillers.
A man is a fool not to put everything he has, at any given moment, into what he is creating. You're there now doing the thing on paper. You're not killing the goose, you're just producing an egg. So I don't worry about inspiration, or anything like that. It's a matter of just sitting down and working. I have never had the problem of a writing block. I've heard about it. I've felt reluctant to write on some days, for whole weeks, or sometimes even longer. I'd much rather go fishing, for example, or go sharpen pencils, or go swimming, or what not. But, later, coming back and reading what I have produced, I am unable to detect the difference between what came easily and when I had to sit down and say, "Well, now it's writing time and now I'll write." There's no difference on paper between the two.
— Frank Herbert
By 1972, Herbert retired from newspaper writing and became a full-time fiction writer. During the 1970s and 1980s, Herbert enjoyed considerable commercial success as an author. He divided his time between homes in Hawaii and Washington's Olympic Peninsula; his home in Port Townsend[9] on the peninsula was intended to be an "ecological demonstration project".[10] During this time he wrote numerous books and pushed ecological and philosophical ideas. He continued his Dune saga, following it with Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, and God Emperor of Dune. Other highlights were The Dosadi Experiment, The Godmakers, The White Plague and the books he wrote in partnership with Bill Ransom: The Jesus Incident, The Lazarus Effect, and The Ascension Factor which were sequels to Destination: Void. He also helped launch the career of Terry Brooks with a very positive review of Brooks' first novel, The Sword of Shannara, in 1977.[11]
Herbert's change in fortune was shadowed by tragedy. In 1974, Beverly underwent an operation for cancer. She lived ten more years, but her health was adversely impacted by the surgery.[12] During this period, Herbert was the featured speaker at the Octocon II science fiction convention at the El Rancho Tropicana in Santa Rosa, California in October 1978; in 1979, he met anthropologist James Funaro with whom he conceived the Contact Conference. Beverly Herbert died on February 7, 1984, the same year that Heretics of Dune was published. In his afterword to 1985's Chapterhouse: Dune, Frank Herbert wrote a moving eulogy for his wife of 38 years.
1984 was a tumultuous year in Herbert's life. During this same year of his wife's death, his career took off with the release of David Lynch's film version of Dune. Despite high expectations, a big-budget production design and an A-list cast, the movie drew mostly poor reviews in the United States. However, despite a disappointing response in the USA, the film was a critical and commercial success in Europe and Japan.[13]
After Beverly's death, Herbert married Theresa Shackleford in 1985, the year he published Chapterhouse Dune, which tied up many of the saga's story threads. This would be Herbert's final single work (the anthology Eye was published that year, and Man of Two Worlds was published in 1986). He died of a massive pulmonary embolism while recovering from surgery for pancreatic cancer on February 11, 1986 in Madison, Wisconsin age 65. He was raised a Catholic but adopted Zen Buddhism as an adult.[14]
I think science fiction does help, and it points in very interesting directions. It points in relativistic directions. It says that we have the imagination for these other opportunities, these other choices. We tend to tie ourselves down to limited choices. We say, "Well, the only answer is...." or, "If you would just. . . ." Whatever follows these two statements narrows the choices right there. It gets the vision right down close to the ground so that you don't see anything happening outside. Humans tend not to see over a long range. Now we are required, in these generations, to have a longer range view of what we inflict on the world around us. This is where, I think, science fiction is helping. I don't think that the mere writing of such a book as Brave New World or 1984 prevents those things which are portrayed in those books from happening. But I do think they alert us to that possibility and make that possibility less likely. They make us aware that we may be going in that direction.
— Frank Herbert
Frank Herbert used his science fiction novels to explore complex[15] ideas involving philosophy, religion, psychology, politics and ecology, which have caused many of his readers to take an interest in these areas. The underlying thrust of his work was a fascination with the question of human survival and evolution. Herbert has attracted a sometimes fanatical fan base, many of whom have tried to read everything he wrote, fiction or non-fiction, and see Herbert as something of an authority on the subject matters of his books. Indeed such was the devotion of some of his readers that Herbert was at times asked if he was founding a cult,[16] something he was very much against.
There are a number of key themes in Herbert's work:
- A concern with leadership. He keenly explored the human tendency to slavishly follow charismatic leaders. He delved deeply into both the flaws and potentials of bureaucracy and government.[citation needed]
- Herbert was probably the first science fiction author to popularize ideas about ecology [17] and systems thinking. He stressed the need for humans to think both systematically and long term.[citation needed]
- The relationship between religion, politics and power.[citation needed]
- Human survival and evolution: Herbert writes of the Fremen, the Sardaukar, and the Dosadi, who are molded by their terrible living conditions into dangerous super races.[citation needed]
- Human possibilities and potential: Herbert offered Mentats, the Bene Gesserit and the Bene Tleilax as different visions of human potential.[citation needed]
- The nature of sanity and madness. Frank Herbert was interested in the work of Thomas Szasz and the anti-psychiatry movement. Often, Herbert poses the question, "What is sane?", and while there are clearly insane behaviors and psychopathies as evinced by characters (Piter De Vries for instance), it is often suggested that "normal" and "abnormal" are relative terms which humans are sometimes ill-equipped to apply to one another, especially on the basis of statistical regularity.[citation needed]
- The possible effects and consequences of consciousness-altering chemicals, such as the spice in the Dune saga.[citation needed]
- How language shapes thought. More specifically, Frank Herbert was influenced by Alfred Korzybski's General Semantics.
[18]
Frank Herbert carefully refrained from offering his readers formulaic answers to many of the questions he explored.
Dune and the Dune saga constitute one of the world's best-selling science fiction series and novels; Dune in particular has received widespread critical acclaim, winning the Nebula Award in 1965 and sharing the Hugo Award in 1966, and is frequently considered one of the best science fiction novels ever, if not the best.[19] According to contemporary Robert A. Heinlein, Herbert's opus was "powerful, convincing, and most ingenious."[citation needed]
Dune is considered a landmark novel for a number of reasons:
- Like Heinlein's 1961 Stranger in a Strange Land, Herbert's 1963 novella and 1965 novel, Dune, represented a move toward a more literary approach to the science fiction novel. Before this period, it was often said that all a science fiction novel needed to be successful was a great technological idea. Characterization and great story took a distant second place.[citation needed]
- Dune is a landmark of soft science fiction. Herbert deliberately suppressed technology in his Dune universe so he could address the future of humanity, rather than the future of humanity's technology. Dune considers the way humans and their institutions might change over time.[citation needed]
- Dune was the first major ecological science fiction novel. Frank Herbert was a great popularizer of scientific ideas; many of his fans credit Frank Herbert for introducing them to philosophy and psychology. In Dune he helped popularize the term ecology and some of the field's concepts, vividly imparting a sense of planetary awareness. Gerald Jonas explains in The New York Times Book Review: "So completely did Mr. Herbert work out the interactions of man and beast and geography and climate that Dune became the standard for a new sub-genre of 'ecological' science fiction." As popularity of Dune rose, Herbert embarked on a lecture tour of college campuses, explaining how the environmental concerns of Dune's inhabitants were analogous to our own.[citation needed]
- Dune is considered an epic example of literary world-building. The Library Journal reports that "Dune is to science fiction what The Lord of the Rings is to fantasy." (Arthur C. Clarke is quoted as making a similar statement on the back cover of a paper edition of Dune) Frank Herbert imagined every facet of his creation. He lovingly included glossaries, quotes, documents, and histories, to bring his universe alive to his readers. No science fiction novel before it had so vividly realized life on another world.[citation needed]
Herbert wrote more than twenty novels after Dune that are regarded as being of variable quality. Books like The Green Brain, The Santaroga Barrier seemed to hark back to the days before Dune, when a good technological idea was all that was needed to drive a sci-fi novel. And some fans of the Dune saga are critical of the follow-up novels as being subpar.[citation needed]
Herbert never again equalled the critical acclaim he received for Dune. Neither his sequels to Dune nor any of his other books won a Hugo or Nebula Award, although almost all of them were New York Times Best Sellers.[citation needed][20] Some felt that Children of Dune was almost too literary and too dark to get the recognition it may have deserved; others felt that The Dosadi Experiment lacked an epic quality that fans had come to expect.[citation needed]
Largely overlooked because of the concentration on Dune was Herbert's 1973 novel, Hellstrom's Hive, with its minutely worked-out depiction of a human society modeled on social insects, which could be counted a major utopia/dystopia.
Malcolm Edwards in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction wrote:
Much of Herbert's work makes difficult reading. His ideas were genuinely developed concepts, not merely decorative notions, but they were sometimes embodied in excessively complicated plots and articulated in prose which did not always match the level of thinking ... His best novels, however, were the work of a speculative intellect with few rivals in modern science fiction.[citation needed]
A film of the novel, Dune, was directed by David Lynch in 1984. Although panned by many fans and film critics, Frank Herbert was pleased with the movie.[21]
The Sci Fi Channel produced a commercially successful 2000 television miniseries called Frank Herbert's Dune. The Dune saga continued with a sequel miniseries in 2003 entitled Frank Herbert's Children of Dune, which combined the novels Dune Messiah and Children of Dune.
[edit] Continuation of the Dune series
In recent years, Frank Herbert's son Brian Herbert and author Kevin J. Anderson have added to the Dune universe, stating that they in part used notes left behind by Frank Herbert and discovered over a decade after his death. Brian Herbert and Anderson have written two prequel trilogies (Prelude to Dune and Legends of Dune) exploring the history of the Dune universe before the events within Dune, as well as two post-Chapterhouse Dune novels that complete the original series (Hunters of Dune and Sandworms of Dune) based on Frank Herbert's own Dune 7 outline.[22][23][24][25][26][27][28]
- ^ Herbert, Brian. (2003) Dreamer of Dune : The Biography of Frank Herbert. New York: Tor Books, 2003, (p. 24) ISBN 978-0-7653-0647-0
- ^ a b "Frank Herbert, author of sci-fi best sellers, dies". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. February 13, 1986. http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1129&dat=19860213&id=gQQOAAAAIBAJ&sjid=WG4DAAAAIBAJ&pg=6996,3769073. Retrieved July 27, 2009.
- ^ "During the next decade, he was an infrequent contributor to the sf magazines, producing fewer than 20 short stories (which nevertheless constituted a majority of his short fiction; he never made a significant impact with work below novel length). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Clute & Nicholls.
- ^ "SCI FI Channel Auction to Benefit Reading Is Fundamental". PNNonline.org (Internet Archive). March 18, 2003. Archived from the original on September 28, 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20070928005501/http://pnnonline.org/article.php?sid=4302. Retrieved September 28, 2007. "Since its debut in 1965, Frank Herbert's Dune has sold over 12 million copies worldwide, making it the best-selling science fiction novel of all time ... Frank Herbert's Dune saga is one of the greatest 20th Century contributions to literature."
- ^ Touponce, William F. (1988), Frank Herbert, Boston, Massachusetts: Twayne Publishers imprint, G. K. Hall & Co, pg. 119, ISBN 0-8057-7514-5. Locus ran a poll of readers on April 15, 1975 in which Dune "was voted the all-time best science-fiction novel...It has sold over ten million copies in numerous editions."
- ^ a b c Herbert, Brian. Chapter 2.
- ^ http://www.frankherbert.org/wormsblog/page051.html
- ^ http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/fherbert.htm
- ^ Frank Herbert: Science Fiction Author; A Plowboy Interview with Frank Herbert, science fiction's yellow journalist and a homesteading techno-peasant, Mother Earth News, May/June 1981, http://www.motherearthnews.com/Nature-Community/1981-05-01/Interview-With-A-Science-Fiction-Author.aspx, retrieved 2011-01-10
- ^ Touponce, William F. (1988), Frank Herbert, Boston, Massachusetts: Twayne Publishers imprint, G. K. Hall & Co, ISBN 0-8057-7514-5; PS3558.E63Z89 - Chronology
- ^ Shawn Speakman, Website History, Terrybrooks.net, http://www.terrybrooks.net/bio/website-history/, retrieved 2011-06-22
- ^ Herbert, Frank P. (1987), Chapterhouse: Dune, New York, New York: The Berkley Publishing Group, Ace Books, pg. 436, ISBN 0-441-10267-0. "It was typical of her that she wanted me to call the radiologist whose treatment in 1974 was the proximate cause of her death and thank him..."
- ^ Liukkonen P. (2008). "Frank (Patrick) Herbert (1920-1986)". Books and Writers. Pegasos. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/fherbert.htm. Retrieved 2009-04-28.
- ^ http://www.adherents.com/people/ph/Frank_Herbert.html
- ^ "With its blend (or sometimes clash) of complex intellectual discourse and Byzantine intrigue, Dune provided a template for FH's more significant later works. Sequels soon began to appear which carried on the arguments of the original in testingly various manners and with an intensity of discourse seldom encountered in the sf field. Dune Messiah (1969) elaborates the intrigue at the cost of other elements, but Children of Dune (1976) recaptures much of the strength of the original work and addresses another recurrent theme in FH's work - the evolution of Man, in this case into SUPERMAN;..." "Frank Herbert," The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.
- ^ Omni Magazine, June 1980
- ^ McNeilly, Willis E. "Herbert, Frank (Patrick)" in Gunn, James. The New Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. London, Viking, 1988. (pp.222-224) ISBN 0-670-81041-X . "Herbert felt strongly about many causes, particularly ecology..."
- ^ O'Reilly, Tim. Frank Herbert. New York, NY: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., Inc. ,1981. (pp.59-60) ISBN 0-8044-2666-X . "Much of the Bene Gesserit technology of consciousness is based on the insights of general semantics, a philosophy and training method developed in the 1930s by Alfred Korzybski. Herbert had studied general semantics in San Francisco at about the time he was writing Dune. (At one point, he worked as a ghostwriter for a nationally syndicated column by S. I. Hayakawa, one of the foremost proponents of general semantics.)"
- ^ "His dominant intellectual impulse was not to mystify or set himself up as a prophet, but the opposite – to turn what powers of analysis he had (and they were considerable) over to his audience. And this impulse is as manifest in Dune, which many people consider the all-time best science fiction novel, as it is in his computer book, Without Me You're Nothing. ppg 2, Touponce 1988
- ^ Speaking at the 2006 induction of Herbert in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Kevin J. Anderson stated that Children of Dune (1976) "was the first SF novel ever to hit the New York Times bestseller list." Dune 7 Blog: Wednesday, June 21, 2006: The Science Fiction Hall of Fame. By KJA. Dune: The Official Website. Retrieved 2011-07-17. KJA spoke and presented the award to son Brian Herbert.
- ^ Herbert, Frank (1985). "Introduction". Eye. ISBN 0-425-08398-5.
- ^ "Dune 7 blog: Conspiracy Theories." (December 16, 2005). DuneNovels.com (Internet Archive). Retrieved October 12, 2008. "Frank Herbert wrote a detailed outline for Dune 7 and he left extensive Dune 7 notes, as well as stored boxes of his descriptions, epigraphs, chapters, character backgrounds, historical notes — over a thousand pages worth."
- ^ Neuman, Clayton (August 17, 2009). "Winds of Dune Author Brian Herbert on Flipping the Myth of Jihad." AMCtv.com. Retrieved August 19, 2009. "I got a call from an estate attorney who asked me what I wanted to do with two safety deposit boxes of my dad's ... in them were the notes to Dune 7 -- it was a 30-page outline. So I went up in my attic and found another 1,000 pages of working notes."
- ^ "Before Dune, After Frank Herbert." Amazon.com. Retrieved November 12, 2008. "Brian was cleaning out his garage to make an office space and he found all these boxes that had "Dune Notes" on the side. And we used a lot of them for our House books."
- ^ "Interview with Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson." Arrakis.ru (2004). Retrieved November 12, 2008. "We had already started work on House Atreides ... After we already had our general outline written and the proposal sent to publishers, then we found the outlines and notes. (This necessitated some changes, of course.)"
- ^ Ascher, Ian (2004). "Kevin J. Anderson Interview." DigitalWebbing.com (Internet Archive). Retrieved July 3, 2007. "... we are ready to tackle the next major challenge — writing the grand climax of the saga that Frank Herbert left in his original notes sealed in a safe deposit box ... after we'd already decided what we wanted to write ... They opened up the safe deposit box and found inside the full and complete outline for Dune 7 ... Later, when Brian was cleaning out his garage, in the back he found ... over three thousand pages of Frank Herbert's other notes, background material, and character sketches."
- ^ Adams, John Joseph (August 9, 2006). "New Dune Books Resume Story." SciFi.com (Internet Archive). Retrieved December 19, 2007. "Anderson said that Frank Herbert's notes included a description of the story and a great deal of character background information. 'But having a roadmap of the U.S. and actually driving across the country are two different things,' he said. 'Brian and I had a lot to work with and a lot to expand...'"
- ^ Snider, John C. (August 2007). "Audiobook Review: Hunters of Dune by Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson." SciFiDimensions.com. Retrieved February 15, 2009.
- Allen, L. David. Cliffs Notes on Herbert's Dune & Other Works. Lincoln, NE: Cliffs Notes, 1975. ISBN 0-8220-1231-6
- Clarke, Jason. SparkNotes: Dune, Frank Herbert. New York: Spark Publishing, 2002. ISBN 1-58663-510-7
- Grazier, Kevin R. The Science of Dune. Dallas, TX: BenBella Books, 2008. ISBN 1-933771-28-3
- Herbert, Brian. Dreamer of Dune : The Biography of Frank Herbert. New York: Tor Books, 2003.
- Levack, Daniel JH; Willard, Mark. Dune Master: A Frank Herbert Bibliography. Westport, CT: Meckler, 1988. ISBN 0-88736-099-8
- McNelly, Dr. Willis E. (ed.) The Dune Encyclopedia. New York: Berkeley Publishing Group, 1984. ISBN 0-425-06813-7
- Miller, David M. Starmont Reader's Guide 5: Frank Herbert. Mercer Island, WA: Starmont, 1980. ISBN 0-916732-16-9
- O'Reilly, Timothy. Frank Herbert. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1980.
- O'Reilly, Timothy (ed.) The Maker of Dune. New York: Berkeley Publishing Group, 1987.
- Biography and criticism
- Bibliography and works
| Persondata |
| Name |
Herbert, Frank |
| Alternative names |
Herbert Jr., Frank; Herbert, Frank Patrick |
| Short description |
American author and journalist |
| Date of birth |
(1920-10-08)October 8, 1920 |
| Place of birth |
Tacoma, Washington |
| Date of death |
February 11, 1986(1986-02-11) |
| Place of death |
Madison, Wisconsin |
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