Dreamer of Dune: The Biography of Frank Herbert

Front Cover
Macmillan, Apr 19, 2003 - Biography & Autobiography - 576 pages
Everyone knows Frank Herbert's Dune.

This amazing and complex epic, combining politics, religion, human evolution, and ecology, has captured the imagination of generations of readers. One of the most popular science fiction novels ever written, it has become a worldwide phenomenon, winning awards, selling millions of copies around the world. In the prophetic year of 1984, Dune was made into a motion picture directed by David Lynch, and it has recently been produced as a three-part miniseries on the Sci-Fi Channel. Though he is best remembered for Dune, Frank Herbert was the author of more than twenty books at the time of his tragic death in 1986, including such classic novels as The Green Brain, The Santaroga Barrier, The White Plague and Dosadi Experiment.

Brian Herbert, Frank Herbert's eldest son, tells the provocative story of his father's extraordinary life in this honest and loving chronicle. He has also brought to light all the events in Herbert's life that would find their way into speculative fiction's greatest epic.

From his early years in Tacoma, Washington, and his education at the University of Washington, Seattle, and in the Navy, through the years of trying his hand as a TV cameraman, radio commentator, reporter, and editor of several West Coast newspaper, to the difficult years of poverty while struggling to become a published writer, Herbert worked long and hard before finding success after the publication of Dune in 1965. Brian Herbert writes about these years with a truthful intensity that brings every facet of his father's brilliant, and sometimes troubled, genius to full light.

Insightful and provocative, containing family photos never published anywhere, this absorbing biography offers Brian Herbert's unique personal perspective on one of the most enigmatic and creative talents of our time. Dreamer of Dune is a 2004 Hugo Award Nominee for Best Related Work.
 

Contents

Acknowledgments 71
11
PEARL OF GREAT PRICE
13
Adventures in Darkest Africa
15
The Spanish Castle
28
Cub Reporter
38
But Hes So Blond
53
The White Witch
63
The Jungian Connection
69
Old Dreams New Dreams
300
The Apprenticeship of Number One Son
308
We Used to Visit Them All the Time
315
KAWALOA
325
First Class
327
Some Things My Father Did Well
338
Kawaloa by the Sea
350
Brave Heart
358

The Newsman and Captain Video
78
The South Seas Dream
87
The Family Car
103
Easy Pie
123
They Stopped the Moving Sands
133
A Writer in Search of His Voice
149
Zen and the Working Class
160
The Worlds of Dune
171
Number Two Son
195
Honors
203
Tara
216
XANADU
227
A New Relationship
229
The Story That Had to Be Written
239
Xanadu
252
A New Struggle
261
Children of Dune
275
Caretakers of the Earth
283
Miracles
288
Ill Take Your Worries If You Take Mine
367
The White Plague Is Taking Off
378
Her Warrior Spirit
384
My Mothers Plan
403
There Are Flowers Everywhere
416
The Race to Finish Kawaloa
419
A Woman of Grace
433
Her Plan Revealed
441
Live Your Life
451
This Is for Bev
464
Bridge Over Troubled Water
475
HoHum Another Day in Paradise
491
And a Snowy Good Morning to You
499
How Bare the Pathway Down This Mountain
515
Epilogue
529
Sources and Bibliography
537
Index
563
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2003)

Brian Herbert, the author of numerous novels and short stories, has been critically acclaimed by leading reviewers in the United States and around the world. The eldest son of science fiction superstar Frank Herbert, he, with Kevin J. Anderson, is the author of "Hellhole" and continues his father's beloved Dune series with books including "The Winds of Dune," "House Atreides," "Sandworms of Dune," among other bestsellers. Herbert graduated from high school at age 16, and then attended U.C. Berkeley, where he earned a B.A. in Sociology. Besides an author, Herbert has been an editor, business manager, board game inventor, creative consultant for television and collectible card games, insurance agent, award-winning encyclopedia salesman, waiter, busboy, maid and a printer. He and his wife once owned a double-decker London bus, which they converted into an unusual gift shop. Herbert and his wife, Jan, have three daughters. They live in Washington state.

Bibliographic information