Dreamer of Dune (65 page)

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The surname—Herbert—was not adopted until Otto's parents entered the United States. The original family name has been lost.

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This time they were using shovels. On other occasions, young Frank dug for geoducks—large, burrowing clams—with a crowbar, which he could use to get under the creature more quickly and pop it out of the sand.

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For years, and ultimately into adulthood my father was referred to as “Junior” (Frank Herbert, Jr.) by family members who knew both Franks—a moniker the younger loathed.

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Colonel Kenneth Rowntree, Sr., was a commanding officer of Fort Worden in Port Townsend, Washington, during World War II. He also wrote an artillery handbook that was used for years as a textbook at West Point.

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The comment was also reminiscent of the poetry of Ezra Pound, which my father read voraciously:
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass.

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This date is based upon the marriage certificate. In the dedication to
Chapterhouse: Dune
, the date was shown incorrectly as June 20, 1946.

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For years afterward, whenever Howie said to someone, “I was best man at Frank's wedding,” my father would quip, “He was the
second
best man. I was the best man!”

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They never completed the book or published any part of it.

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A decade later he would also meet the Zen master Alan Watts. Zen was an ideal adjunct to the Slatterys' studies of Freud and Jung, where unconscious behavior was emphasized. In analyzing patients, the Slatterys paid close attention to mannerisms, what came to be called “body language.” The Zen influence permeates the
Dune
novels.

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Maurine Neuberger was also one of the first politicians to oppose the tobacco industry, and became only the third woman elected to the U.S. Senate herself.

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The junk mail trick continued for a number of years after that, until one day Dad saw a royalty check in the fireplace with flames curling around it. He didn't get to it in time, and had to request reissuance of the check. In ensuing years he always cursed the arrival of junk mail.

^*
Campbell's 1938 story “Who Goes There?” had been turned into a film in 1951,
The Thing
. The film had one of the most campy promotional lines of all time: “A monster so horrible it doesn't even have a name…
The Thing
!” It was remade by John Carpenter in 1982.

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Charles F. Kettering, a General Motors research executive.

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The case of Joseph A. Daugherty, who stabbed his wife seven times and subsequently pled insanity, saying that this had to do with the seven sacraments of the Bible, and that Christ had put the knife in his hands to kill. Ralph Slattery was called as an expert witness, and testified that Daugherty was insane. The jury ruled otherwise, and convicted Daugherty of first-degree murder. He was executed at San Quentin in 1954.

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Grosero: rough and course.

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Refrescos: cold drinks.

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In ensuing years, my father would do more research, including a visit to an agricultural research station in Oregon that was studying the control of sand dunes, which are an extreme state of erosion. His understanding of the importance of grass and other plantings in inhibiting soil erosion would one day form an integral part of the ecology of
Dune
.

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Frank Herbert told me that he invented containerized shipping in
Dragon
, which was later made commercially successful by the Japanese. A number of other commercial ventures have been undertaken based upon this idea, including one by an English company, Dracon, utilizing subtugs that were very similar to the novel. Also, General Dynamics came out with a “submarine tanker,” a fully contained sub designed to transport oil from the arctic under the ice to ice-free ports in Greenland or Newfoundland. And Gianfranco Germani, an Italian, recently constructed giant bladders to transport fresh water from watersheds to parched regions of the earth.

^*
A rumor began to circulate in the 1960s that
The Dragon in the Sea
tied with William Golding's
Lord of the Flies
for the 1955 International Fantasy Award. This was inaccurate. For many years my parents even believed
Dragon
had shared the award, and it was reported incorrectly that Frank Herbert was the only writer ever to win all three major science fiction awards, the Nebula, the Hugo, and the International Fantasy Award.

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On her mother's side she was a Landis, descending from Swiss Mennonites. On her father's side she was a Stuart, said to be a descendant of Scottish royalty.

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A later version, written in 1965, also didn't sell. In the second version, there were not only web-footed mermen, but shark goddesses as well.

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The “boob tube” or “Cyclops,” as Dad called it at various times, arrived in our household amidst all sorts of dire warnings from him about how it would harm our bodies (by emitting X-rays within six feet of it) and our minds (through idiot programming and the devious, subliminal messages of advertisers). In
The Santaroga Barrier
(1968) he would make a scathing attack upon television, implying that people who watched too much of it had their mental faculties sucked away. In describing the town of Santaroga, which differed from normal American society, he wrote: “Dasein grew aware of an absence…about the houses he saw: No television flicker, no cathode living rooms, no walls washed to skim-milk gray by the omnipresent tube.”

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Two decades later, Frank Herbert would write in
Chapterhouse: Dune
: “Some precious stones could be identified by their impurities. Experts mapped impurities within the stones. A secret fingerprint. People were like that. You often knew them by their defects. The glittering surface told you too little. Good identification required you to look deep inside and see the impurities.
There
was the gem quality of a total being. What would Van Gogh have been without impurities?”

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John Campbell favored stories that dealt with ESP. In the
Dune
material, Paul could see sporadically into the future, while his sister, Alia, could see into the past.

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Remarkably, Frank Herbert had an even bigger story in mind, and in the writing of
Dune World, Muad'Dib
and
The Prophet
he wrote large sections of material for two
additional
books, making a total of five. In fact he did have the makings of a trilogy, but the form it would take was substantially different from his initial proposal. The first three books would be combined into one novel,
Dune
(1965), while the latter two would ultimately form portions of the novels
Dune Messiah
(1969) and
Children of Dune
(1976).

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In the sequel to
Dune, Dune Messiah
, Paul continues in the classic pattern of a hero, when: (h) for a time he reigns uneventfully, and (i) prescribes laws, but (j) later he loses favor and (k) he meets with a mysterious death and (l) his body is not buried.

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Stirling Lanier wrote the novels
Hero's Journey
and
Under Marswood.

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Because of work pressures, Jack and Poul couldn't get to the project, and a few years later Dad wrote it himself under the title “The Primitives.” (
Galaxy,
April 1966).

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There is a Creole French counterpart, “lagniappe,” sounding very similar since both are from a Latin root. What a wonderful concept this is. Imagine what the world would be like if everyone followed it in all their relationships!

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The “Greenslaves” title had historical significance in our family, since our reputed ancestor King Henry VIII was said to have composed the classic song “Greensleeves.”

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As noted by Levack and Willard in
Dune Master: A Frank Herbert Bibliography
, the first edition “States ‘First Edition' on the copyright page. No date on the title page…The fifth and later printings all state ‘First Edition' without further printing statements…”

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One evening I was hitchhiking near Carmel, California. A young couple in a Volkswagen bug gave me a ride. They asked me what my Dad did for a living, and I replied that he was a newspaperman and had also written a couple of science fiction books. “Oh?” the man said as he drove. “What has he written?” “Uh, a novel back in the nineteen fifties and another one more recently…
Dune
.” “
Dune?
” the man exclaimed, causing the car to veer as he looked back at me in the shadows of the rear seat. “That's a great book!” “It is?” I said. Then—unfortunately—I forgot about this incident until years later.

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This was the story that was based upon the sensational 1952 murder trial in Santa Rosa. It had been written and rewritten several times as we moved up and down the West Coast between the United States and Mexico, with the working titles
As Heaven Made Him
and
Storyship
.

^*
As discussed in Chapter Fourteen, there are strong Greek influences in
Dune
. This is continued in the sequel. When the Tleilaxu give the gift of a ghola to Paul it is something of a Trojan horse, for hidden in that gift is the means of Paul's destruction, an implanted obsession to kill him.

^*
The organizer of Earth Day was Ira Einhorn, a charismatic hippie guru who later became the international fugitive and convicted murderer known as “the Unicorn Killer.” Frank Herbert and Einhorn wrote a number of letters to each other.

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The Herbert family later placed all copies of these recordings into the custody of one of the tribes for spiritual safekeeping.

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In two years, Frank Herbert would meet the poet Bill Ransom, and they would collaborate to write a series of novels. Bill, who had extensive knowledge of Native American myths and customs, disagreed with Howie. “I think it's a gutsy ending,” Bill told me in an interview. He went on to say that Katsuk didn't follow the Quileute way throughout the story anyway, and had in fact become an abomination who was making a mess of Indian rituals. “It's a tough ending that Americans can't handle,” Bill said, “…it's not a Quileute ending but it's…proper…for what Frank set up. There is no other way out of the (story dilemma) except melodrama.”