Dad reached agreement with the University of Washington to conduct a political science class, “Utopia/Dystopia,” for them as a visiting professor. The class, about utopian societies and myth structures, was tremendously popular, and he conducted it in the spring quarter of 1971 and the fall quarter of 1972. To explore what he called “the myth of the better life,” he used as textbooks his own novel The Santaroga Barrier and a number of classic utopian novels, including Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, and other works.
At the beginning of each class he asked the students to define “human.” After receiving a variety of medical and anthropological answers, he offered his own psychological definition: “It means ‘just like me.’” He said people had difficulty relating to people who were different from their own psychological myths, and that this was a major contributor to misunderstandings between ethnic, religious and cultural groups. Each person was surrounded by countless myths he wasn’t even remotely aware of, involving the selection of clothing, food, homes, cars, political leaders, and all sorts of other pieces that went into the construction of human society and human psyches. In class, Professor Herbert discussed the reasons for such world views.
His professorship was more than a little ironic, since Dad had never graduated from college, and had in fact dropped out of this very university some twenty-five years earlier in a dispute over the courses the registrar wanted him to take for a major. Frank Herbert’s teaching methods, not surprisingly, were somewhat unorthodox.
Since everyone had different abilities, he said he didn’t feel grades were fair. He developed a variant of pass/fail, in which everyone who passed received an “A.” When a student asked if he could write one term paper for Utopia/Dystopia and for another class instead of separate papers, Dad told him to go ahead, as far as he was concerned.
My father also used what he called a “looped feedback system,” in which he did not stand in a power position at a podium higher than the level of the class, lecturing down to them. Instead he sat on the same level as everyone else and conducted discussions in the round like King Arthur, where no one occupied a position of relative strength. His utopian, “leaderless” classroom was an idealistic state of affairs. In reality he was in total control at all times.
Frank Herbert told his university students that we live in a “light-switch society,” in which we flip a toggle and the light goes on, without any awareness of the mechanics producing the end result. To demonstrate his point, he invited an entire Utopia/Dystopia class to hike and camp with him in the Olympic National Forest northwest of Seattle, a rain forest. It was March, with a high likelihood of precipitation. He told them only that they would camp for two days in a rain forest, and that they would need survival gear and supplies. He didn’t specify exactly what they should bring, except a mention of warm clothing and sleeping bags, along with paper and pens for taking notes.
Incredibly, a young woman arrived in a fur coat, toting a leather suitcase! At the trailhead, Dad used his knot-tying expertise (from many years spent sailing in his youth) to rig up a rope sling so that she could carry the suitcase on her back. Most of the students had never been in the woods before, and brought along an odd assortment of heavy equipment. They had cast-iron skillets, china plates, cans of chili and bottles of soda pop.
At my father’s brisk pace, they hiked several miles to an area called the Flats. Dad dug a drainage trench around his own pup tent to keep rain water away from it, but seeing blue sky and no rain, most of the students didn’t bother. Within hours a deluge came down, and many of the students spent a miserable night. Early the next morning, as everyone gathered around a campfire, Frank Herbert told them, “We’re the only survivors of a nuclear war and this is where we’re going to live.”
They discussed which technologies might continue—how people would eat, clothe themselves, build shelters, and travel. What sorts of social groups would form? And he spoke of new utopias unimagined by his students, utopias known to Native Americans and other “primitive” peoples. He taught them methods of finding food in the woods, how red ants could be mashed and spread on crackers or bread for sweet topping, or eaten straight. He said they were even sweeter if the heads were cut off. With a pocket knife, he obtained grub worms from the undersides of logs, which he said, like leeches, could be mashed up for high protein stews. When one of the students asked how leeches were caught, Dad said, “There’s a pond up ahead. I’ll show you.” He rolled his trousers up and waded into the water. When he came out, leeches were clinging to his calves. He laughed and knocked them free.
In 1971 Dad began organizing files he had been building for several years on a third book in the Dune series, a novel he planned to name Arrakis. It would be the completion of a trilogy he had envisioned when Dune was written a decade earlier. In response to the desires of his fans and editors, this book would carry a stronger ecological theme than the previous book in the series, Dune Messiah.
For several months he had also been negotiating with Bantam Books to write a novel based upon the Oscar-winning documentary film The Hellstrom Chronicles, but didn’t want to start it without a written agreement. When he finally had the contract, he only had a short time to complete the book before leaving for Europe on a scheduled trip.
He set Arrakis aside and in seven weeks completed an 85,000-word novel, which he entitled Hellstrom’s Hive. Bantam was very pleased with it, and scheduled publication for 1973. Prior to publication in book form it was serialized as “Project 40” (Galaxy, November 1972 through March 1973). When the French edition was published by Editions Robert Laffont in 1978, it won the Prix Apollo award, considered the most coveted science fiction award in Europe.
In Hellstrom’s Hive, Dad presented two conflicting world views (human versus insect) in such a way that half of his readers identified with human society and half with the social structure found among humans living secretly in a massive underground hive. In doing this he used the technique of “utopia/dystopia” that had been explored in the classes he taught at the University of Washington. It was also employed in his 1968 novel, The Santaroga Barrier, in which the world views of an insular California town and outside society were compared.
The mythology of the hero, so central to Dune and its sequels, is written from a different angle in this story. Dr. Hellstrom, the key individual in the hive, can be viewed as hero or villain, depending upon which world view the reader finds most compelling.
After returning from Europe in the summer of 1971, Dad tried to resume work on Arrakis, hoping to complete it by the following spring. After only a few days he experienced problems with plotting, and set the manuscript aside, intending to look at it again in a few weeks with fresh eyes.
But other projects soon filled his time, diverting him from this schedule. He signed a number of contracts for books, articles, and short stories, including contributions to anthologies. One of these projects was with G. P. Putnam’s Sons for the novelization of a Frank Herbert short story that had been published in 1960, “The Priests of Psi.” Dad set to work on the novel, and it became The God Makers, published in hardcover in 1972.
In the summer of 1972, with funding from the Lincoln Foundation, Dad and his friend Roy Prosterman visited Pakistan, India, Bengal, Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam to study land reform, overpopulation and ecology problems. My mother accompanied them, at considerable danger because of the ongoing war in Vietnam.
The Dune movie project had been stalled for a while, as Arthur P. Jacobs was too involved in producing sequels to Planet of the Apes, as well as a musical version of Tom Sawyer. There were rumors that he might not proceed with Dune, and his option was about to expire.
While my parents were in Pakistan, however, good news arrived from Dad’s film agent in Hollywood, Ned Brown. Mr. Jacobs, through his production company Apjac International in Beverly Hills, was exercising his option, and was contracting with David Lean (of “Lawrence of Arabia”) to direct. Robert Bolt woul
d write the screenplay. Filming would begin in 1974, with story boarding, set design and other preparatory work beginning right away.
Dad was elated, for he felt Jacobs and Lean, with science fiction and desert movie experience, respectively, would do a fine job of translating his novel into film. This was no small task, in view of the length of the book, the complexity of the characters, and the layers of ecology, philosophy, psychology, history, mythology, religion, and politics it contained.
My mother kept a journal on this trip, the first time she had done so in almost two decades. It was a simple account, with brief daily entries made on binder paper. In one entry she described a romantic side trip that she took with my father to Hong Kong, where they celebrated their twenty-sixth wedding anniversary.
In the early 1970s Frank Herbert sold a number of short stories: “Seed Stock” (Analog, April 1970), “Murder Will In” (Five Fates anthology, 1971), and “Death of a City,” (Future City anthology, 1973). Two collections of his short stories and articles were published at that time: The Worlds of Frank Herbert (Ace Books, 1971) and The Book of Frank Herbert (Daw Books, 1973). Three previously unpublished short stories appeared in The Book of Frank Herbert: “Gambling Device,” “Passage for Piano,” and “Encounter in a Lonely Place.” A complex non-fiction article, “Listening to the Left Hand,” appeared first in The Book of Frank Herbert and later in the December 1973 issue of Harper’s magazine.
Just as Soul Catcher addressed a theme found in Dune, the clash between primitive and Western cultures, Dad found new avenues to explore other themes found in Dune and its sequels. In Whipping Star (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1970), the dangers to human freedom caused by big government were described satirically, offsetting the seriousness of anti-government themes found in the Dune series, particularly in the sequels. In this setting he promoted one of his earlier short story characters, Jorj X. McKie of the Bureau of Sabotage, to the status of protagonist in a novel.
Religion, a subtheme of Dune and its sequels, was also the theme of his 1972 novel, The God Makers. In this story, a human god was created by the mentally induced “psi-forces” of worshipers. Dad liked to refer to The God Makers as a “semi-caricature” describing how religions and myths developed.
In the early 1970s, a Seattle film company, Gardner-Marlow-Maes, purchased the rights to Soul Catcher. The project failed, primarily because my father insisted upon maintaining his controversial ending, in which the Indian protagonist kills the innocent white child.
While the Soul Catcher film project was still alive, Gardner-Marlow-Maes produced a film about the Blue Angels precision flying team. In conjunction with that production (which was a film festival winner), Dad wrote Threshold: The Blue Angels Experience (Ballantine Books, 1973). This involved the writing of an introduction and script narrative, used in the film and book, to accompany photographs of the planes and the men who flew them. In the script narrative, comprising some seventy-eight pages, much of it was similar to caption writing he had done in the 1960s as picture editor for the San Francisco Examiner. Dad was fascinated with the hero mythology of the pilots, the symbiosis of man and machinery, and the way men, with all of their frailties, responded to high-pressure situations. All were themes found elsewhere in my father’s writing.
He wrote Threshold in three days.
Around this time, while Dad was working on Arrakis, he and Bruce found it impossible to live together any longer, and, according to Bruce, Dad kicked him out of the house. My father didn’t remember it that way, asserting instead that “Bruce needed to test his wings,” and made the move on his own. The relationship between father and “Number Two Son,” while tenuous, was not severed entirely. My brother remained close to his mother, and for her sake went to visit his parents regularly.
Unbeknownst to me or to my parents, Bruce was living in a “drug house” with people who injected themselves with amphetamines. The favored drugs were little pills called “criss-crosses” that looked like aspirins with crosses on them. Also known as “CCs” or “beans,” they were ground into powder on a spoon with the end of another spoon or a pocket knife. A little distilled water was mixed with the powder on the spoon, then cotton was laid on top and liquid was drawn through the cotton with a syringe. The mixture was, in turn, injected by the addict. My brother didn’t take criss-crosses that way, because he hated needles and didn’t want track marks on his arms. Instead he “dropped” the pills, swallowing up to thirty-five a day. Eventually Bruce moved out of the drug house and returned to the San Francisco Bay Area.
By now my younger brother wasn’t dating girls anymore. In the new relationships he was forming, he was becoming a gay man, expressing feelings that had previously been latent or which had surfaced and been suppressed. Thus he was entering two worlds that were at once dangerous and socially unacceptable—those of hallucinogenic drugs and homosexuality. I had no idea these metamorphoses were occurring in him.
In part it was a reaction to our macho father, who spoke of homosexuality as if it were an immature, unseemly activity. I recall him saying to me that “repressed homosexual energy” could be employed for killing purposes by armies. In God Emperor of Dune and Heretics of Dune he described homosexual, lesbian and adolescent forces at work in armies. And, in an unpublished version of his epic poem, “Carthage,” Frank Herbert wrote:
Homosexuals,
Bureaucrats
And bullyboys
Increase before
Each fall into darkness.
All the while Mom, unaware of Bruce’s sexual inclination, or turning her head away so as not to see the indications, was longing for a baby boy Herbert to carry on the family name. Thus far Jan and I had two daughters. Penny bore three sons, David, Byron and Robert Merritt, but through marriage had lost the Herbert name. My mother hoped Bruce would marry soon, to improve the odds.
Chapter 20
Xanadu
IN DUNE, Frank Herbert wrote, “Polish comes from the cities; wisdom from the desert.” In his view, the rural and desert lifestyles bore certain similarities, and were superior to circumstances found in urban centers.
Shortly after Christmas 1972, Dad and Mom moved again—this time north, to the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State, near the northwest corner of the “lower-48” United States. They purchased a house and farm on six wooded acres on the outskirts of the mill town of Port Townsend, Washington, population five thousand. Employing bargaining skills learned when we lived in Mexican villages in the 1950s, Dad dickered the price down by several thousand dollars.
There was a symmetry to my father’s life. In his childhood some of his fondest memories had been spent living on a small subsistence farm in Washington State. He never forgot the experience and always longed for a return to it, to his roots. This man of letters could be urbane and sophisticated, desiring the comforts of the good life. But he was not truly happy unless he was living in the country, with a rural base of operations. City life, with its crowds and noise and pollution, did not suit him.
On the National Historic Register, Port Townsend had many turn-of-the-century Victorian homes, giving it architectural similarities with San Francisco—an area my parents missed for its beauty. Like San Francisco this was also a port, but on a smaller scale and in a much different setting, situated as it was between the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound. It had a small airport, Jefferson County International Airport—the subject of much amusement among locals for the name. It was dubbed “international” only because of regular small plane flights in and out of nearby Canada, necessitating a U.S. customs facility at the airport.
With six acres, Dad had room for the farming he wanted to do and for certain ecological demonstration projects he had in mind. Above all, he needed an isolated, quiet location where he could write without interruption. The phenomenal success of Dune had been bringing people out of the woodwork looking for Frank Herbert, and too many of them had his address and telephone number when he lived in Seattle.
Da
d loved to ride his bicycle, and frequently ran errands on it around Port Townsend. The sight of a burly, bearded author leaning down over the handlebars of a Schwinn ten-speed became a familiar sight to locals. He and Mom fit in well and made many friends on all rungs of the social scale.
Their new house, comprising five thousand square feet, was a three-level cedar A-frame with two bedroom wings, located at the end of a rough, one-third-mile-long gravel road, just off a paved country road. In reality this was just inside the city limits, but it was a pastoral setting, with numerous farms and ranches nearby.
In the fall, each side of the gravel road and the nearby woods were full of edible mushrooms—primarily shaggy manes (coprinus comatus) and meadow mushrooms (agaricus campestris). Every time we visited during mushroom season my father organized family mushroom hunts, and we would go traipsing through the woods with him, filling plastic bags with delicacies. On such treks he quoted Latin names for the fungi he saw, edible and inedible, along with more commonly known references. He examined each plant closely to be certain it wasn’t poisonous, often slicing it open with a pocket knife before throwing it away or tossing it in one of our bags. Back at the house, after we cleaned the mushrooms, Mom or Dad would slice them and sauté them in butter as a side dish, or would pour them over T-bone steaks or filet mignon.
It was always warm and cozy inside their home, a welcome shelter from cool Northwest weather. A heavy sliding glass door led from the front porch into the main level of the house, onto a Zen-like floor of black and white squares that extended into the kitchen. The kitchen was to the right of the entry, separated from the entry by a black countertop eating area with stools pulled up to it. Copper pans and utensils hung from beamed ceilings in the kitchen. Large white globes hung from the peak of the high-pitched ceiling—light fixtures that ran from the entry straight into an expansive, red-carpeted living room.
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