Dreamer of Dune

by Brian Herbert

  That fall I went away to Berkeley in the East Bay, renting a little room just off campus, on the second floor of a turn-of-the-century house. I was barely seventeen years old. Due to real estate expenditures, our family finances were tight, but I was used to that. I worked for part of my tuition and room and board at the school cafeteria and at a book store run by a lively old woman in her nineties who still drove a car. It was an interesting, historical time to be at the University of California at Berkeley, a campus of twenty-seven thousand students. The FreeSpeech Movement was germinating there, a movement that would spread to college campuses all across the country. I majored in Sociology.

  In addition to his picture editor duties, Dad wrote feature stories, some about the student unrest at Berkeley. The campus situation there reached such epidemic proportions of madness and chaos that Dad coined the name “Berserkley” for the university community. This had a certain ring to it, and soon the term came into common parlance around the Bay Area.

  Dad had two short stories published in the fall of 1964, “The Mary Celeste Move” (Analog, October) and “The Tactful Saboteur” (Galaxy, October). “Celeste” was a science fiction mystery, expertly drawn, in which a peculiar phenomenon of human behavior was investigated. “Saboteur” originally had a working title of “What Did He Really Mean by That?”, but Frederik Pohl of Galaxy renamed it “The Tactful Saboteur.” This was the second story to feature Jorj X. McKie, following “A Matter of Traces” in 1958. McKie would later appear in the novels Whipping Star (1970) and The Dosadi Experiment (1977). He was a humorous, gnomelike character, sometimes involved with making governmental agencies look foolish.

  Also in the fall of 1964, Dad completed his second science fiction ecology book, The Green Brain, a novel about insects that created a powerful artificial intelligence in reaction to human attempts to eradicate them. The story concept was an extrapolation of modern conditions on Earth, in which insects developed a resistance to insecticides, such as DDT. Amazing published a short story version (“Greenslaves”) in its March 1965 issue. Ace Books purchased the soft-cover rights to the novel, for publication in 1966.*

  Ecology was one of the recurring themes and subthemes of Frank Herbert stories. In a later novel, Direct Descent (1980), it would become a background detail. The central story thread concerned an ancient library, but mention was made of Sequoia gigantica trees (much loved by my father), trees said in the story to have only survived on a remote island of Earth.

  It was shortly after the sales of “Greenslaves” and The Green Brain that Chilton Books made the offer to publish Dune in hardcover. Suddenly the name Frank Herbert was starting to mean something in the publishing world.

  He completed a short story, “Do I Wake or Dream?”, about artificial intelligence. Galaxy picked up the serialization rights for their August 1965 issue. Dad wrote an expanded version entitled Destination: Void, and Berkley Publishing Group purchased the paperback rights to it, also for publication in 1966.

  Two more of his short stories were published in 1965, “Committee of the Whole” (Galaxy, April) and “The GM Effect” (Analog, June). In “Committee,” one of many Frank Herbert stories with a political theme, politicians are made to look foolish. For the author, oft-frustrated by the conundrums of politics, this story was cathartic. “GM” touched upon a recurring Frank Herbert theme as well, genetic engineering—and in this case, as in Dune, he dealt with the issue of genetic memories that might be housed in the cells of all humans. In “GM,” instead of a Bene Gesserit sisterhood bearing such memories, Dad explored the possibility of genetic imprints revealing unsavory information about some of the most heroic figures in history, including Abraham Lincoln and Jesus Christ.

  During the next decade, Dad would explore other aspects of genetic engineering. In the novel The Eyes of Heisenberg (1966) humans were genetically individualized through processes known only to a select group of rulers. Just a chosen few were permitted to have children in the traditional manner, and then under strict laboratory conditions. In the short story “Come to the Party” (1978), written with F. M. Busby, the writers dealt with the questions of long-dormant technical abilities revealed when ancient racial memories were brought to the surface. In The White Plague (1982), Dad wrote of the catastrophic consequences of uncontrolled genetic engineering, in which a terrible plague was unleashed intentionally upon the women of the world.

  Early in 1965, when Dad was forty-four, he quit his job at the Examiner in order to devote more energy to writing. In addition to Mom’s work for Plan Ahead, she freelanced, writing advertisements for a variety of department stores. Now both of my parents were free from the regimens of steady jobs. It was a good thing, too, because the commute from Marin County to San Francisco was getting crowded. Tens of thousands of people had recently moved to the Bay Area from all points of the globe.

  When he wasn’t writing, Dad began drawing up plans to remodel the Fairfax house. He wanted to expand the living room, enlarge the garage to accommodate two cars, and put on new exterior siding and interior paneling. A restless man who was never content with his surroundings, he was always looking ahead, always planning. His mind went in fifty directions at once.

  On the strength of the Dune serializations in Analog, Dad was invited to be guest of honor at the 1965 Westercon science fiction convention, held in Long Beach, California. In his speech, he spoke of the haiku from which Dune sprang, and to demonstrate the concept he went on to reduce War and Peace, Moby-Dick, The Grapes of Wrath and other long, classic novels to haiku or tanka form—entire novels in only seventeen or thirty-one syllables. This was an example of his remarkable, cultured sense of humor. He brought the house down with laughter and applause.

  My father was always impatient to achieve his plans. He had goals that were constantly eluding him. Now for the first time he could taste success, could feel it coming. But money was slow in arriving. He and Mom weren’t earning enough, and they still owed back taxes to the IRS.

  The Willits property had become an emotional and financial drain. The prior winter a storm had washed out the access road, requiring extensive bulldozer work. The property was more than a two-hour drive from Fairfax, too far away for a busy man to construct a home there part-time, especially with limited funds. Mom convinced Dad to sell it. Reluctantly, he agreed, and advertised it.

  Shortly after the Westercon convention, Dad went back to work at the Examiner, four to five days a week. Abashedly, he told friends it was only on a short-term emergency basis, at the request of the paper. In reality he and the paper needed each other.

  Chilton published Dune in August 1965. A thick hardcover with more than five hundred pages and a retail price of $5.95, it included a number of expanded passages, including stronger roles for some characters. A number of new epigrams were added as well, along with a glossary of terms and a map of the planet Dune, based upon my father’s drawing. Four appendixes were included, too, providing important background information on the ecology, religion, history and politics of the planet.

  For the book jacket, Chilton selected a John Schoenherr painting of Paul and Jessica crouching in a shadowy canyon. It was a dramatic scene with considerable sentimental appeal to my father. One day he would purchase the original art, along with other paintings by the same artist.

  The first printing of Dune was only 3,500 copies, a typical hardcover run for the time. Of that amount, 1,300 were misprinted and had to be discarded. As a result, only 2,200 copies reached bookstores. Because of this small first printing and other factors, a first edition of Dune has become more valuable than any book in science fiction history. The first edition has a blue cover, with white lettering.*

  Dad enlisted assistance from the DFPA advertising firm in Tacoma, and they did promotional work in the Pacific Northwest on the book, gratis. He arranged with a few local book stores to carry the book, and distributed twenty-five promotional copies to newspaper editors and columnists, as well as to radio and television commentators he kne
w in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle. This was all he had the time or resources to do.

  A month after publication, Chilton arranged to have a two-minute advertisement run on the “Inside Books” radio program, including an excerpt from the novel. This was broadcast to five hundred commercial and educational stations, and another one hundred seventy Veteran’s Administration Hospital stations. Chilton also mailed a few copies of Dune to reviewers around the country.

  All in all the book did not receive much promotion.

  Dune came to the attention of only a few reviewers, and those who cared to look at it wrote scathing commentaries. They hated the book, said it was too long and difficult to understand. Not surprisingly, my father became embittered against reviewers, referring to them privately as “poseurs” and “frustrated authors”—people who attempted to boost their own shaky egos by denigrating the works of others. He often said that the only valid critic was “time.” If his work endured, he said, the comments of critics meant nothing.

  From its eight-part serialization in Analog, which had a large circulation, science-fiction readers and writers were already quite familiar with the story and liked it. Arthur C. Clarke and Anne McCaffrey were among the first science fiction-fantasy writers to extol the virtues of the work. Clarke knew of nothing comparable to Dune, with the exception of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. An epic story with larger-than-life, Machiavellian characters, Dune would soon become the standard against which other works were compared. It would be called the greatest novel of imagination of all time.

  Science fiction writers voted Dune the 1965 Nebula Award for Best Novel, shared with Roger Zelazny’s…And Call Me Conrad. The award was in the shape of a rectangular piece of clear Plexiglas on a square black pedestal, with a swirling, glittering three-dimensional nebula over a beautiful fragment of white, silver and lavender quartz. It measured nine inches high by four inches square around the base, and weighed six pounds.

  Dad placed the award on the windowsill of his Fairfax study, so that it was visible against a backdrop of oak and bay trees that sloped down the hillside from the house. He described the award as a work of art, and with tongue in cheek suggested that there should be an “award for the award.” Other science fiction awards, he said, often resembled “glistening phallic symbols.”

  Cal Berkeley was astir with political activity. The world-famous Free Speech Movement wasn’t the only issue on campus. Most students were opposed to the war in Vietnam and the draft. They favored civil rights and women’s rights and the allied free choice issue of abortion. They turned in or burned draft cards, held sit-ins at draft boards, burned brassieres in public, and generally railed against anything that smacked of “the establishment.”

  Long-haired, bearded protesters were out every day on campus with signs and bullhorns. They set up tables on the paved “commons” between the Administration Building and the Associated Student Union Building, from which they distributed political literature. One day they commandeered a police car on campus and took over the Administration Building.

  Finding myself unable to identify with the protesters, I didn’t participate in the vibrant intellectual atmosphere of the school, though history and hindsight indicate that their free speech and anti-war causes were justified. I didn’t care for their methods. They taunted people trying to attend class and blocked entrances. They thrust flyers in front of us. The constant blare of their bullhorns outside class was a distraction from my studies.

  As far as I was concerned, the political activists were dirty, smelly hippies. To a large extent they wanted a free and easy life, without obligations or responsibilities. Free love, flower-children, uptight, out of sight, groovy, like wow, the New Left. So many new phrases and concepts entered the lexicon in those days. They were bohemians, real and mock, straight out of Kerouac’s On the Road. When they opposed something, they rarely offered alternatives.

  My negative opinions about the protesters of the day were formed, in no small part, by the fact that my father was a bohemian who wore a beard. He spent a lot of time in the North Beach area of San Francisco and often showed up in City Lights book store, operated by Kerouac’s friend, Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Ferlinghetti agreed to stock Dune, and featured it in a window display.

  When I was at Berkeley between 1964 and 1968, I was in the college drinking crowd, a binge drinker. Perhaps this explains why I heard very little mentioned about Dune or Frank Herbert.* Besides, Dune was slow to get going. Chilton would not go into a second hardcover printing until 1968, my last year at the university. Ace printed a relatively small number of paperback copies in 1966, and they too went into a second printing in 1968.

  Just before Christmas, 1966, Dad sold the Willits property. “We’ll buy another piece when we can afford it,” he said. By this he meant, of course, another piece on which he could have his farm.

  In 1966, science fiction readers voted Dune the Hugo Award as the best science fiction novel of the year. This award was a futuristic stainless steel rocket, fourteen inches tall, atop a maple base six inches square by four and a half inches high, with a total weight of four pounds. It was presented to my father at the World Science Fiction Convention in Cleveland, Ohio. He displayed it proudly on the windowsill of his Fairfax study next to the Nebula Award.

  A rumor made the rounds that Dune also won the International Fantasy Award, but this, like similar rumors about The Dragon in the Sea, was inaccurate. Dune was the first novel to win both the Nebula and Hugo awards.

  For years Dad kept copies of bad reviews, and as Dune became more successful, he retaliated by reading the remarks of critics at science fiction conventions and at writing conferences when he knew the authors of those pieces would be present. At one convention he confronted Harlan Ellison over an unfavorable review he had written years before on The Dragon in the Sea, disputing every point Ellison had made. These men, who had never met before, became fast friends.

  Though revenues remained small, Dune was earning a little more each year. “I feel a groundswell building,” my father said. He was more convinced than ever that he had an important literary property on his hands. He was being told by respected people that he had elevated the quality of science fiction and had written a new novel form, one with complex layers that reached beyond science fiction to the heady realm of “literature.”

  While Frank Herbert made many predictions that came true, including the eventual success of Dune, he was quite circumspect about those he made. When he spoke of the future, he drew a distinction between “the” future and “a” future. There were any number of possible futures that might occur, he said, not just one, not just “the” future that any one of us might foresee. And there were no rules concerning the process of prediction.

  To demonstrate the multiplicity of futures, which he said were as varied as the methods of developing a story, Dad often mentioned a 1970 Doubleday anthology he contributed to, Five Fates. This consisted of five stories written by different science fiction authors—Poul Anderson, Gordon Dickson, Harlan Ellison, Frank Herbert and Keith Laumer. The project creator, Ellison, wrote a first page, which he duplicated for each writer with instructions for them to go on from there independently, without consultation with the others. Five very different stories resulted from a common beginning, including Dad’s, which he entitled “Murder Will In.”

  In Dune, Paul Atreides felt a “Terrible Purpose” building within, a sensation that both frightened and excited him. He was meant to do something important, but what? The young man had prescience, but it provided him with only fragmentary views of the future and his place in it. He, like Frank Herbert, saw a multiplicity of possible futures.

  Three of Dad’s novels were published in 1966. In addition to The Green Brain (Ace Books) and Destination: Void (Berkley Books), Berkley also published The Eyes of Heisenberg, shortly after its serialization in Galaxy as “Heisenberg’s Eyes.”

  In June, Analog published the short story “Escape Feli
city,” and in August, “By the Book.” 1966 also saw publication of “The Primitives” (Galaxy, April), the solo effort that had originally been plotted as a Herbert-Vance-Anderson collaboration.

  The noted Ace editor and science-fiction writer Terry Carr was on the election committee that year for officers in SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America), which had several hundred members. He asked Dad if he might be interested in running for either president or secretary-treasurer, but Dad declined the offer, saying he was too busy. He felt an urgency to survive as a writer, to break free of the financial shackles of a regular job. This had been a stated goal since his eighth birthday, and he couldn’t divert from that course with volunteer activities.

  Dad shifted to feature writing for California Living magazine, a joint publication of the Examiner and the other large newspaper in town, the San Francisco Chronicle. It was a position he called a “fur-lined cocoon,” since his hours were flexible, permitting him time to write. After a few months he developed a schedule of working three long days a week on the magazine, one for doing interviews and feature writing, another for setting up photographs, and another for page makeup. Thus, he streamlined his schedule while drawing a full salary and still performing an excellent job for his employer.

  The British publisher Gollancz purchased the right to publish Dune in the United Kingdom in hardcover, and stipulated that they wanted the glossary of terms at the end of the book instead of the beginning. New English Library purchased United Kingdom paperback rights, and the Paris publisher Laffont came onboard for French language rights, so Dune was beginning to pick up an international audience.

  With the income from California Living and science fiction writing, money flowed into my parents’ household more plentifully. At my father’s insistence, he and Mom took out another real estate loan, purchasing an old farmhouse on ten acres near Cloverdale, ninety miles north of Fairfax. This property, slightly closer to Fairfax than Willits had been, was the new site of his dream farm.