Context
Frank Herbert was born in
Tacoma, Washington, in 1920.
After high school, he became a journalist and then served in the
United States Navy during World War II. He then studied at the University
of Washington and became a reporter and an editor for many West
Coast newspapers, as well as a speechwriter for politicians. In 1969,
Herbert became a full-time fiction writer, four years after the
publication of his science-fiction classic, Dune.
During the 1950s
and 1960s, Herbert
published many stories in science fiction magazines, often in serial
form. Unlike some of his fellow science-fiction writers, such as
Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, Herbert wrote stories that always
involved social issues such as ecology. Herbert conceived the idea
for Dune after studying a governmental project
designed to halt the spread of sand dunes along the Oregon coastline.
He imagined a world made entirely of sand and thus created the planet
Arrakis.
Although Dune was accepted and read by
the same circles who read Asimov and Clarke, Herbert's novel represented
a new kind of science fiction. Asimov's and Clarke's works were
original but stylistically plain—Asimov later claimed that in the
early days of science fiction, all one needed was a futuristic idea. Dune combined
the basics of science fiction's trademark futurism with strong literary and
social ambitions. The novel boasted an elaborate epic plot and intricately
developed characters with quasi-mystical powers such as telepathy
and precognition. It also featured a bold ecological message.
Dune proved that literary science-fiction
novels could be more than thinly veiled social satires, such as
George Orwell's 1984 or Anthony
Burgess's A Clockwork Orange. Like Tolkien's Lord
of the Rings trilogy, Dune presents us
with a self-contained world, complete with its own races, religions,
politics, and geography. Herbert introduces this new world and then
adds a fascinating and intricate story, with vivid characters and
scenes bolstered by an underlying ecological message. Dune has
become the central masterpiece of science fiction, just as The
Lord of the Rings is to the genre of modern fantasy.
