Frank Herbert

Frank Herbert is one of the best writers that I have ever known. He lived in and around Tacoma, Washington and Hawaii. His life consisted of many jobs, but the promenent ones were the journalistic, ecology, and writing ones. He wrote the Dune Chronicles and a series of other great books. Unfortunately, his notes are being taken up by Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert to butcher into a new series of Dune books.

This man was a writer! My favorite author of all time, bar none. To the best of my knowledge, this is the list of his publications:

• The Dragon in the Sea (or Under Pressure)
• The Eyes of Heisenberg
• The Green Brain
• The Heaven Makers
• The Santaroga Barrier
• Whipping Star
• The God Makers
• Soul Catcher
• Hellstrom's Hive
• The Dosadi Experiment
• The White Plague
• The Heaven Makers

What I call the Ship Series:

• Destination: Void
• The Jesus Incident
• The Lazarus Effect
• The Ascension Factor

DUNE:

• Dune
• Dune Messiah
• Children of Dune
• God Emperor of Dune
• Heretics of Dune
• Chapterhouse: Dune

Short Story Collections:

• The Worlds of Frank Herbert
• The Book of Frank Herbert
• The Best of Frank Herbert
• Direct Descent
• Eye

I have read all the above, I have not read:

• The Blue Angels
• Threshold

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My thanks to Dhericean for pointing out that Hellstrom's Hive was originally published as a serial with the title of "Project 40".

It is unfair to say that because Herbert portrayed one gay character negatively that he was homophobic. This is from "God Emperor of Dune:" "It's perfectly normal for adolescent females and males to have feelings of physical attraction to their own sex...it's part of our heritage... I will tell you this only once. Homosexuals have been among the best warriors in our history, the berserkers of last resort. They were among our best priests and priestesses. Celibacy was no accident in religions. It is also no accident that adolescents make the best soldiers." This was in the context of one character (Moneo Atreides) addressing another (ghola-Duncan Idaho) who was 3500 years behind in evolution, and had a problem with seeing two women kiss. So it's no mystery which viewpoint Herbert thought was more advanced. And this was in a book published in 1981, before the aspects of history it touched on were well known, so you could say that on this, as on many other issues, he was ahead of his time.

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The preceding is the original text of this writeup, my first ever, and is a response to Anacreon's writeup. What follows is an attempt to provide a more complete biography.

Science fiction is mainstream. Everything else is kind of an attendant time-bound piece of science fiction.

In 1980, Frank and Beverly moved to Maui. In 1984, Ann died, and Herbert wrote for her a moving eulogy that was included in the introduction to Chapterhouse: Dune. In 1985 he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and underwent experimental treatment at the University of Wisconsin. He died on February 11, 1986, at the age of 65.