Frank Herbert

by Timothy O'Reilly

Book by O'Reilly, Tim

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History

216 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1981

Reviews

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first book I ever wrote. See http://tim.oreilly.com/herbert/ for the full text.

[Jim Razinha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came across a quote attributed to Frank Herbert and I tried to find the source to validate it before sharing - I don't like to consciously perpetuate misinformation. The research led me to this book, which I'm surprised I hadn't read yet. Well, not too surprised...I have read a lot of other books since its publication, quite a few from O'Reilly's publishing house. A large part of this is devoted to analysis of Herbert's most famous work, Dune, of course, but O'Reilly also looks at his first novel and others with similar depth of analysis. O'Reilly says in his Preface,

To my mind, the most fundamental judgment to be made about a novel is not as a work of art built to abstract standards, but as an act of communication. What does it say to the reader? How does it touch him?
[...]
One criticism that I have made of Herbert throughout this book is that he walks a narrow line between entertainment and didacticism. In his best work, such as Dune, the story itself is the message; the concepts are so completely a part of the imaginative world he has created that the issue of didacticism never arises. Ideas are there to be found by the thoughtful reader, but one never stumbles over them.

No stumbling on my part, at least with that novel.

Of course, he hits on one of my criticisms of non-fiction writers:

One word about the mechanics of this book: notes for all references follow the end of the text and are identified by page number and a few words from the relevant passage. No superscript numbers appear in the text. This format is intended to enhance the readability of this study while retaining the full critical apparatus.

I detest that, and find it a weak intellect that finds small superscripts indicating a reference disrupting to readability. Not that O'Reilly's intellect is weak...clearly it is not, but that is laziness, and sometimes deliberate laziness. Rant off.

On science fiction as an informative, rather than predictive medium, Herbert says: "if I'd been born in my grandfather's time, I'd have made my grandfather's mistakes. There's no doubt of it. I just don't want to make my grandfather's mistakes today." and O'Reilly quotes Samuel Delaney: "Science fiction is the only area of literature outside poetry that is symbolistic in its basic conception. Its stated aim is to represent the world without reproducing it."

On Herbert's science fiction, O'Reilly said

One such demand--providing an opportunity for his readers to engage their consciousness--is the building up of images from the unusual cues Herbert supplies. In the Dune trilogy certain kinds of scenes--confrontations, love, tragedy--are invariably accompanied by the same background images, colors, or smells. For instance, whenever dangerous confrontations occur, the color yellow is present. Herbert says, "By the time you're well into the book, if you tell them that there was a yellow overcast to the sky, they're sitting there waiting for something bad to happen. 'There is also consistent attention to who sees things. Point of view is always deliberate. "I treat the reader's eye as a camera," Herbert says. There may be a generalized view of a scene, which is followed more and more by a concentration on the area in which the action is going to happen.

That quote I was trying to source? Per O'Reilly, "Herbert has said that the function of science fiction is not always to predict the future but sometimes to prevent it."

His comment on the work of Huxley and Orwell can equally well be applied to his own: "Neither Brave New World nor 1984 will prevent our becoming a planet under Big Brother's thumb, but they make it a bit less likely. We've been sensitized to the possibility."

We learn in this a little of Herbert's life. On his one year at the University of Washington: "I wasn't interested in a degree. I was always interested in writing. I looked on schools, especially the higher levels, as a kind of cafeteria line."

We learn of Herbert's (and O'Reilly's) fascination with, even deification of, psychology. From Under Pressure:

"Ramsey . . . allowed himself an inward chuckle at the thought of the two commodores guarding Dr. Richmond Oberhausen, director of BuPsych. Obe could reduce them to quivering jelly with ten words."

Mind you, the novel was published in 1952...mind control silliness abounded in the spy literature. And in the military, it seems.

Dune has psychological currents, as well as ecological and political and

Recalling the origins of Dune, Herbert says: It began with a concept: to do a long novel about the messianic convulsions which periodically inflict themselves on human societies. I had this idea that superheros were disastrous for humans.

Herbet used that theme in many of his novels. And there are many parallels of history and culture that readers of Dune will no doubt notice, some obvious (Arabic), some less (twelfth century Hashishins):

For instance, [Herbert] describes the use of Arabic derivations for the Fremen language primarily as a means of focusing the reader's imagination:
If you want to give the reader the solid impression that he is not here and now, but that something of here and now has been carried to that faraway place and time, what better way to say to our culture that this is so than to give him the language of that place.. . . That oral tool--it has its own inertial forces; it's mind- shaping as well as used by mind.

In Dune, there are allusions to something called the "Butlerian Jihad". O'Reilly thinks the original idea for that came from a fear of computers "in our own culture":

In an article written for the San Francisco Examiner in 1968 (admittedly a number of years after Dune), Herbert imagined a look back in time from 2068 and prophesied a similar revolt in our own immediate future: Prominent in 2068 history books is the account of the violence at the turn of the century when people revolted against computer control. Computer stored data (growing out of the old National Data Center) had been used to harass and persecute those whose views didn't conform with those of the majority. In the bloody revolt, most computers were destroyed, their data erased.

O'Reilly no doubt knew of the 1970 film, "Colossus: The Forbin Project", when he wrote this, and there were the later Terminator and Matrix films, uncounted novels all capitalizing on that as a fear. Herbert "solved" it by codifying it in a distance past of his novel.

On the ecology of Dune and the lesson it teaches, O'Reilly says, "Ecology deals not with isolated effects, but with systems." His italics. Look how many in leadership positions today do not understand climate change and cite weather as reasons to dismiss.

On some of the politics of Dune sometimes lost to readers, O'Reilly says that the charisma and loyalty embodied by the Atreides code are tools of statecraft just as the the fear and propaganda of the Harkonnens. Herbert describes:

You gain insights into the moral base upon which Paul makes his own decisions. All of this is couched in a form which makes Paul and his people admirable. I am their advocate. But don't lose sight of the fact that House Atreides acts with the same arrogance toward "common folk" as do their enemies. I am showing you the superhero syndrome and your own participation in it. The arrogant are, in part, created by the meek.

I think that word choice misguided and a product of Herbert's time. The arrogant may be empowered by the meek, but I think they create themselves.

Now, O'Reilly spent some time with Herbert on his Bene Gesserit. He says "Much of the Bene Gesserit technology of consciousness is based on the insights of general semantics, a philosophy and training method developed in the 1930s by Alfred Korzybski," noting that Herbert studied general semantics about the time he was writing Dune. O'Reilly says

Korzybski's argument was that people confuse words with the things they represent, and that as long as they do so they are trapped by the assumptions and old "semantic reactions" of their language. [And that...] We violate what Korzybski called the "consciousness of abstracting" every time we say "This is a rose," rather than "This is called a rose."

Herbert and Korzybski was a disappointing revelation (Robert Anton Wilson was another adherent, though a giant in his own mind, couldn't hold a candle to Herbert's writing.) I'll refer the reader to Martin Gardner's Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science for more, but Gardner had this to say of Korzybski's "Bible of general semantics", Science and sanity:

It is a poorly organized, verbose, philosophically naive, repetitious mish-mash of sound ideas borrowed from abler scientists and philosophers, mixed with neologisms, confused ideas, unconscious metaphysics, and highly dubious speculations about neurology and psychiatric therapy.

Garner said the Count (Korzybski) used the word "semantics" so broadly that it became meaningless. Herbert (and it seems O'Reilly) bought into a crank whose semi-pseudoscience had already began fading on his death in 1950.

On a (not labeled as such) transcendental theme in Dune, O'Reilly observes

By the end of the novel, Paul is irresistible. Courageous in the face of great odds, skilled in ways that science-fiction readers dream of, mystically wise, and buttressed by myths thousands of years old, he is eminently believable both as a messiah and as a hero. The question remains, however: If Paul were intended to demonstrate the error of faith in messiahs and superheroes, why was he rendered SO effective as both?

O'Reilly points to Dune Messiah and Children of Dune for the remainder of "the message".

One note from the analysis of the novel Destination: Void (prequel to the eventual Pandora Cycle trilogy), a character has solved a computer problem (essential to the theme of the book) that traditional logic had failed to solve up to that point.

Herbert's respect for improvisation reflects his country upbringing, with its emphasis on self-reliance in the use of technology. He still sees technological pragmatism as one of the most important things about America. In a public appearance, he reported a conversation with an engineer in Pakistan. The Pakistani described the difference between American and Soviet engineers in charge of foreign-aid projects: The Soviet would stand back and supervise the operation from a distance, while the American would roll up his sleeves and show them how it was done.

I'm an engineer that likes to "roll up his sleeves", though I much prefer to coach than show.

The first book I bought for myself was Dune Messiah, at a school book fair in 1972. My parents gave me a dollar and Dune was $1.45, I think, while Dune Messiah was $0.95. No surprise, though short, without the context of Dune it was quite confusing to his 11 year old.

"Dune Messiah was the hardest book of the three to write," Herbert says. "It had to be short, because it had to point forward and back. It had to begin turning the whole process over."

I have more notes on Children of Dune but I'll stop here with this

Herbert himself says, "The only consistency I demand of my story is that it be internally consistent."

Internal consistency is important to me, as a reader, as well.

I lost interest in Herbert's later works. I've never finished his original Dune series - never got through Heretics of Dune. I grew and he diminished, beginning with Children of Dune, but Dune and Dune Messiah I've never outgrown. Maybe I've yet to grow into them.

Good biography of the author of my favorite science fiction novel.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book gave me the opportunity to view the first three dune books and Frank Herbert's philosophy in another light. The references to his other works motivated me to read other works from Herbert that I did not consider before.

My own understanding and opinion of Dune now feels a bit coloured by the conclusions from this book and i wished that I had fleshed them out before.

I don't read many books about other books and this was nice

[Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Comprehensive overview of Herbert's life and work up til around 1981, including the original Dune Trilogy and other books. O'Reilly is somewhat in awe of Herbert's philosophies and storytelling, but does a good job of explaining why. Indispensible for fans.

[John Dahle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tim - a true visionary - where would we be without George.

[Toons · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating exploration of the Dune series. Genuinely enhanced my reading of the book.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

An analysis of FH and his novels. This book has spoilers about FHs novels.