Road to Dune

by Herbert, Brian; Anderson, Kevin J. ; Herbert, Frank

On March 11,1966, Donald Stanley from the San Francisco Examiner reported:

  Tonight the [SFWA] meets in Los Angeles. The conventioneers will watch a couple of pilot films by director Gene Roddenberry from next season’s CBS series, “Star Trek.” The main business, however, will be the presentation of the first SFWA awards in science fiction.

  Winner of the prize for best novel is Frank Herbert, a former picture editor at The Examiner who left last year to devote full time to writing.

  The bearded Herbert used to come prowling into our book department asking for “anything you have on dry climate ecology.”

  Most visitors want Burdick or O’Hara ; Herbert lusted after the desert. T. E. Lawrence, the Koran, Mojave botanicals, all were grist for his arid mill.

  Late last year Chilton published the reason for all this sand-etched activity. “Dune” is the name of the novel that took Herbert some half dozen years of researching and writing and which the SFWA jury has chosen for its first award.

  In April, Frank Herbert wrote from his study in Fairfax, California, to Damon Knight, who lived in Milford, Pennsylvania: “The Nebula sits on my windowsill now against a background of oaks and bays which are just getting their spring foliage. Please tell Kate [Damon’s wife, Kate Wilhelm] (and Mrs. Jim Blish) that there should be an award for the award. Thank God! Someone has at last broken away from the glistening phallic symbols with arms reaching toward heaven. This is a work of art.”

  (“The glistening phallic symbols” was a reference to the Hugo Award—which Frank would also receive later that year for Dune.)

  EARLY IN 1967, sales of Dune began to pick up, and Chilton went back to press for an additional printing. Frank Herbert wrote to his agent: “Book stores in this area can’t keep Dune in stock—selling out and reordering at a delightful pace. Hope this is a national thing.” Indications were good, because by January of 1968 Ace Books went back to press for an additional 25,000 copies of the paperback, too.

  By early 1968, Frank Herbert was hard at work on a sequel to Dune but was having some difficulty with the title, first choosing Fool Saint and then (The) Messiah, before settling on Dune Messiah. He also considered and discarded the cryptic title C Oracle, representing a coracle floating on a sea of time.

  John W. Campbell received a copy of the sequel that summer, and he didn’t like it at all. In a scathing letter, he wrote: “Paul commits acts of absolute folly—which you seek to explain on the basis of His Vision Requires It … Paul winds up as a God That Failed—he winds up, in Fremen terms, which he accepts as a useless-to-the-tribe cripple abandoned in the desert … In outline, it sounds like an Epic Tragedy, but when you start thinking back on it, it works out to ‘Paul was a damn fool, and surely no demi-god; he loused up himself, his loved ones, and the whole galaxy!’”

  Frank Herbert began his major revisions to the manuscript. Some of the alternate or deleted chapters and scenes are included later in The Road to Dune.

  A month later, Frank completed rewrites and sent them to his agent, who reported back: “I think you did a good job on the revision of the Dune sequel. It reads better now than it did before, though it still is not the masterpiece that Dune is. I think Campbell will like it now. He has a copy.”

  But Campbell still didn’t like it at all. In a reversal of the experience with Dune, at a time when book publishers were vying for the right to publish Dune Messiah in hardcover and paperback, the magazine editor took the opposite stance, and refused to serialize it in Analog. He wrote:

  Herbert’s revision of “The Messiah” still didn’t satisfy me … In this one, it’s Paul, our central character, who is a helpless pawn manipulated against his will, by a cruel, destructive fate … .

  The reactions of science-fictioneers, however, over the last few decades have persistently and quite explicitly been that they want heroes—not anti-heroes. They want stories of strong men who exert themselves, inspire others, and make a monkey’s uncle out of malign fates!

  His list of complaints included the following:

  … Item: If Paul can’t “see” where other oracles have muddied the waters of Time—then neither can they “see” where he is working. Because what he does, responding to his vision of the future, alters that future to indeterminacy—the future is unstabilized; it is not determinate.

  … Item: a Hero leader who cuts and runs from the Climactic Battle is not a Messiah—even though, or particularly if, his side actually wins. Neither is he a martyr, nor a Victim of Fate.

  Campbell didn’t understand and perhaps Frank Herbert didn’t explain adequately at the time that his intention was to write an anti-hero book, in order to warn about the dangers of following a charismatic hero. As Brian explained in Dreamer of Dune:

  Dune, the first novel in what would ultimately become a series, contained hints of the direction (Frank Herbert) intended to take with his superhero, Paul Muad’Dib, clues that many readers overlooked. It was a dark direction. When planetologist Liet-Kynes lay dying in the desert, he remembered these words of his father, spoken years before and relegated to the back reaches of memory : “No more terrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a Hero.” And at the end of an appendix it was written that the planet had been “afflicted by a Hero.” … The author felt that heroes made mistakes … mistakes that were amplified by the numbers of people who followed those heroes slavishly …

  Among the dangerous leaders of human history, my father sometimes mentioned General George S. Patton, because of his charismatic qualities—but more often his example was President John F. Kennedy. Around Kennedy a myth of kingship formed, and of Camelot. His followers did not question him, and would have gone with him virtually anywhere. This danger seems obvious to us now in the case of such men as Adolf Hitler, who led his nation to ruination. It is less obvious, however, with men who are not deranged or evil in and of themselves. Such a man was Paul Muad’Dib, whose danger lay in the myth structure around him. (pp. 191-192)

  Despite Campbell’s rejection, Dune Messiah was picked up by Galaxy magazine, and would run in five installments, in the July-November 1969 issues. It was also picked up in hardcover by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, and in paperback by Berkley Books. With sales and accolades on the upswing, an ebullient Frank Herbert wrote to his agent: “Dune is hot right now. A sequel is sure to capitalize on that fact. It’s required reading in several college lit and psych classes and is referred to on campuses as a ‘great underground book.’ Are all the publishers in New York asleep at the switch?”

  He was not yet earning enough money from his writing to entirely quit working as a newspaperman, but things were heading in the right direction. In a couple of years, Dune and Dune Messiah would become phenomenal bestsellers and Frank Herbert would be lecturing on college campuses all over the United States. Dune would be picked up by the environmental movement for its desert ecology theme, and well-known movie producers would begin knocking on his door.

  UNPUBLISHED SCENES AND CHAPTERS

  INTRODUCTION

  While poring over early drafts of the Dune and Dune Messiah manuscripts, we discovered alternate endings, additional scenes, and chapters that had been eliminated from the final published works.

  Prior to its 1965 hardcover publication, Dune was serialized in Analog, but each segment was limited by the magazine’s length restrictions. The editor, John W. Campbell, Jr., worked closely with Frank Herbert to trim scenes and chapters, making them fit into the number of pages that Campbell wanted.

  The following chapters were cut in this fashion and then never restored when the novel was published in book form. In one passage here, Frank Herbert mentions that spice has been used for only about a century, but in later versions, he expands the time frame to span many thousands of years. Many details are inconsistent with the published versions, and these scenes should be considered drafts, not “canon.”

  These are interesting and enlightening additions to the stories and are available here for the fir
st time. The context should be clear to anyone familiar with the early novels.

  Some of the chapters from Dune Messiah are a radical departure from what was published as the final version, and some of the alternate endings are spectacular and shocking.

  Deleted Scenes and Chapters from Dune

  PAUL & REVEREND MOTHER MOHIAM

  (Several short scenes from the opening of Dune)

  On the inner wall beneath the window was a loose stone that could be pulled out to reveal a hiding place for the treasures of his boyhood—fishhooks, a roll of meta-twine, a rock shaped like a lizard, a colored picture of a space frigate left behind by a visitor from the mysterious Spacing Guild. Paul removed the stone and looked at the hidden end of it where he had carved with his cutterray: “Remember Paul Atreides, age 15, Anno 72 of Shaddam IV.”

  Slowly, Paul replaced the stone above his treasures and knew he would never remove it again. He returned to his bed, slipped under the covers. His emotion was sad excitement, and this puzzled him. He had been taught by his mother to study a puzzling emotion in the Bene Gesserit fashion. Paul looked within himself and saw that the finality of his goodbyes carried the sadness. The excitement came from the adventure and strangeness that lay ahead.

  PAUL SLIPPED OUT of bed in his shorts, began dressing. “Is she your mother?” he asked.

  “That’s a fool’s question, Paul,” Jessica said. She turned. “Reverend Mother is merely a title. I never knew my mother. Few Bene Gesserits of the schools ever do; you know that.”

  Paul put on his jacket, buttoned it. “Shall I wear a shield?”

  Jessica stared at him. “A shield? Here in your home? What ever put that idea into …”

  “Why’re you afraid?” he demanded.

  A wry smile tugged one corner of her mouth. “I trained you too well. I …” She took a deep breath. “I don’t like this move to Arrakis. You know this decision was made over my every objection. But …” She shrugged. “We haven’t time to dally here.” She took his hand the way she had done when he was smaller, led him out into the hall toward her morning room.

  Paul sensed the oddness of her taking his hand, felt the perspiration in her palm and thought: She doesn’t lie very well, either. Not for a Bene Gesserit she doesn’t. It isn’t Arrakis that has her afraid.

  PAUL TURNED BACK to the Reverend Mother; thinking of the exposed idea within this test: Human or animal?

  “If you live as long as I have lived you will still remember your fear and your pain and your hate,” the old woman said. “Never deny it. That would be like denying part of yourself.”

  “Would you have killed me?” he asked.

  “Suppose you answer that for yourself, young human.”

  He studied the wrinkled face, the level eyes. “You would have done it,” he said.

  “Believe it,” she said. “Just as I would’ve killed your mother in her day. A human can kill what she … he loves. Given necessity enough. And there’s something always to remember, lad: A human recognizes orders of necessity that animals cannot even imagine.”

  “I don’t see this necessity,” he said.

  “You will,” she said. “You’re human, and you will.” She looked across at Jessica and their eyes locked. “And when you’ve brought your hate to a level you can manage, when you’ve absorbed it and understood it, here’s another thing for you to consider: Think of what it was truly that your mother has just done for you. Think of her waiting outside that door there, knowing full well what went on in here. Think of her with every instinct screaming at her to leap in here and protect you, yet she stood and waited. Think on that, young human. Think on it. There’s a human, indeed, your mother.”

  SOUNDS FROM THE assembly yard below the south windows interrupted. The old woman fell silent while Paul ran to the window and looked down.

  An assemblage of troop carriers was drawing up in review ranks below and Paul saw his father in full uniform striding out for inspection. Around the perimeter of the field, Paul made out the distorted air that spoke of shields activated there. The troops in the carrier wore the insignia of Hawat’s special corps, the infiltrators.

  “What is it?” the old woman asked.

  Paul returned to her. “My father the Duke is sending some of his men to Arrakis. They’re here to stand review.”

  “Men to Arrakis,” the old woman muttered. “When will we learn?” She took a deep breath. “But I was talking about the Great Revolt when men threw out the machines that enslaved them. You know about the Great Revolt, eh?”

  “‘Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man’s mind,’” Paul answered.

  “Right out of the Orange Catholic Bible,” she said. “Want to know the trouble with that? It leaves too much unspoken. It’s a sop to the counterfeit men among us, the ones who look human but aren’t. They look and talk like humans, but given the wrong pressures they expose themselves as animals. And the unfortunate thing is they think of themselves as human. Oh, yes! They think. But thinking isn’t enough to qualify you as human.”

  “You have to think within your thinking,” Paul said. “There’s no end to it.”

  She laughed aloud, a quick burst of sound full of warmth, and Paul heard his mother’s laughter joining it. “Bless you,” the old woman said. “You’ve a wonderful turn for language, lad, you fill it with meaning.”

  “TELL ME TRULY now, Paul, and remember I’m a Truth-sayer and can see truth. Tell me: Do you often dream a thing and have the dream happen exactly as you dreamed it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Often?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me about another time.”

  He looked up to the corner of the room. “I dreamed once that I stood in the rain outside and the castle door was locked and the dogs were barking in their cages and Gurney was beside me and Duncan Idaho and Duncan stumbled against me and bruised my arm. It didn’t hurt much, but Duncan was so very sorry. And that’s how it happened when I was ten.”

  “When did you dream this?”

  “Oh, a long time ago. Before I had a room by myself. It was when I was little and slept in a room with a nurse beside me.”

  “Tell me another time.” There was excitement in the old woman’s voice.

  SHE CLEARED HER throat. “Those of our numbers who have not attained the status of Reverend Mother know only so much of the search as we tell them. Now, I will tell you a bit more. A Reverend Mother can sense what is within her own bodily cells—every cell. We can peer into the cellular core of selfdom, but there we find …” She took a trembling breath. “This thing of which I spoke earlier. This emptiness which we cannot face. Fearful it is. The direction that is dark … the place where we cannot enter. Long ago, one of us fathomed that a male force is needed to peer into this place. Since then, each of us at attaining the Reverence has seen that this is true.”

  “What’s so important about it?” Paul asked, and his voice was sullen.

  “Let us imagine,” she said, “that you have a troop carrier with only half its motor. If you find the other half, you’ll have the complete unit needed to move your carrier.”

  “You still have to put them together and make them work,” Paul sneered. “May I go now?”

  “Don’t you want to hear what I can tell you about the Kwisatz Haderach?” Jessica smiled at the Reverend Mother.

  Paul said: “The men who’ve tried to … enter this place, are they the ones you say died?”

  “There’s a final hurdle they seem unable to leap,” the old woman said.

  His voice was not a child’s voice, but old and grim despite its treble pitch: “What hurdle?”

  “We can only give you a hint.”

  “Hint then.”

  “And be damned to me?” She smiled wryly. “Very well: That which submits rules.”

  “That’s a hint?”

  She nodded. “But submitting, you rule.”

  “Ruling and submitting are opposites,” he said.


  “Is the place between them empty?” she asked.

  “Ohhhh.” He stared at her. “That’s what my mother calls the tension-with-meaning. I’ll think about that.”

  “You do that.”

  “Why don’t you like me?” Paul asked. “Is it because I’m not a girl?”

  The Reverend Mother snapped a questioning look at Jessica.

  “I’ve not told him,” Jessica said.

  “That’s it, then,” Paul said. “Can a woman help it if her child’s a boy?”

  “Women have always controlled what sex their offspring will be,” the old woman said. “By acceptance or rejection of sperm. Even when they didn’t know the mechanism of it, they controlled it. There’s a kind of racial necessity in this, and men must submit to it.”

  He nodded. “By submitting, we rule.”

  “That’s part of it.”

  Jessica spoke from behind him: “Yet, humans must never submit to animals.”

  He glanced at his mother, back to the old woman.

  “CONCENTRATE ON YOUR training, lad, all of it,” said the old woman. “That’s your one chance to become a ruler.”

  “What about my father?” Paul demanded. “Are we just …”

  “Your mother warned him,” the old woman said. “Specifically against instructions, I might add, but that isn’t the first Bene Gesserit rule she ever broke.”

  Jessica looked away.

  The Reverend Mother plunged on without a glance at her. “You naturally love and respect your father. If there’s action you can take to guard him, you’ll want to take that action. But have you ever thought about your duty to the ones who came before your father?”