Dreamer of Dune (26 page)

Frank Herbert told them that for every new car placed on the road, a hundred new trees would have to be planted to make up for the oxygen consumed by the vehicle. Then he discussed a personal pledge he had taken to drive his present car into the ground and never buy another one with an internal combustion engine. He qualified the pledge now and added that he wouldn't buy such a vehicle until government and industry took drastic steps to clean up the air. Dad said he had once driven a Packard powered by a Dobel steam engine in Santa Rosa, and he was intrigued by another steam engine built in Ohio. Such power plants could burn a variety of combustibles with an efficient system of external combustion that left no unconsumed hydrocarbons.

“The Packard has five hundred thousand miles on it,” he said, with anger rising in his voice. “Detroit is wedded to planned obsolescence, to bringing out new styles each year. It's no wonder they aren't interested in steam power.”

Upon hearing this, a man and a woman stood up and took the pledge. Word about the incident spread around Los Angeles, and converts began joining a new cause.

In April 1970, Dad was one of the principal speakers at Earth Day ceremonies, held in Philadelphia.
^*
He told a crowd of thirty thousand people: “I refuse to be put in the position of telling my grandchildren, ‘Sorry, there's no more world for you. We used it up.'” He asked the attendees to begin a love affair with Planet Earth, and they applauded wildly.

Frank Herbert spoke of his internal combustion engine pledge and asked if anyone in the audience would join him. Enthusiastic cheers rang out. All thirty thousand stood to repeat what became known as “The Frank Herbert Pledge.”

Book sales accelerated.

Certainly my father, being a former political publicist and married as he was to an advertising copywriter, understood the basics of promotion. But he wasn't being phony or hypocritical. Innately honest, he believed wholeheartedly in the causes he espoused, and his audiences knew it.

In conjunction with Earth Day, Dad wrote entries for and edited
New World or No World
, a book about the importance of protecting the environment. Published in paperback in 1970 by Ace Books, it included entries by Senator Edmund Muskie and Secretary of the Interior Walter J. Hickel. The book also contained transcripts of interviews by Hugh Downs of NBC's
Today Show,
in which he spoke with environmental experts such as Margaret Mead, Rene Dubos, Paul Ehrlich, Barry Commoner and Ralph Nader.

Unlike many authors who could not speak in public, Frank Herbert was a natural at the podium. Universities all over the country invited him to lecture and conduct writing conferences. His beard was an entree to college campuses—distinguishing him from establishment types who could not be trusted. He smiled often, was at ease and funny on stage. When he built up a head of steam about abusive political practices or the lack of environmental planning, he was absolutely captivating, as fascinating in person as he was in print.

After his performances, students mobbed around him. He received telephone calls from people who seemed to be on drugs, telling him they had been reading
Dune
aloud to acid-rock music. In an interview conducted by Bill Ransom, Dad said a stoned fan woke him at 3:00
A.M
. and exclaimed, “I just had to call and tell ya, man, what a trip!”

Of course Dad intended his book to be lyrical, but not in the sense he was discovering. Too many unsolicited telephone calls were coming in day and night, taking precious time from his writing and disturbing his serenity. My parents changed to an unlisted telephone number under my mother's initials, “B. A. Herbert,” so that their many personal friends could still contact them.

A drug element in
Dune
, along with its ecological messages, made the book particularly attractive to college students in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Melange, the spice drug guarded by the great and ancient sandworm Shai-Hulud, was the most precious commodity in the universe described in
Dune
.

University intellectuals had been among the first to embrace
Dune
, and such connections were a continuing source of comfort for my father. With his long history of rejections from publishers, a number of political campaign failures and his inability to deal with the labyrinthine passageways of bureaucracies, he had not always been on the inside during his life.

The status he had earned in Mexico for a brief time in the 1950s, where he had been an unofficial farm adviser to villagers, had been an exception. Now through hard work and perseverance he had earned a much higher standing. He was the talk of the younger generation on campuses from coast to coast. With this group he was developing a strong base of support—a platform from which he could fight for his political beliefs, particularly environmental protection and the control of abusive political power.

Despite the accolades he was receiving on campuses, he was discovering, to his dismay, that most book stores still were not carrying his novels. This was proving to be very embarrassing to him, as well as financially unrewarding.

Dad and his literary agent complained to Chilton, publisher of the hardcover edition of
Dune
. But the publisher pointed its finger at bookstores, saying book vendors were more interested in newer titles, not in a book first published five years before.

W
ITH THE
growing popularity of
Dune
, several book editors were soliciting new Frank Herbert stories. One was Norbert Slepyan, trade editor of Charles Scribner's Sons in New York City. Dad was working on an important book at the time, a story he said had been stirring inside him since his childhood—about a modern-day clash between American Indian and white cultures. Back in 1968, he had tried, unsuccessfully, to obtain a government grant to write the book. Now Slepyan expressed interest, and Dad agreed to show it to him first.

To research this story, Dad immersed himself in the Indian cultures of several of the Northwest Salish tribes, picking up where he had left off in his youth. As a boy some four decades before, he had spent a lot of time with an outcast Hoh Indian who was living alone on an island near his home. The outcast had taught him many of the ways of the Indians—how they survived in the wild, what their customs were, how they felt about white society.

In 1969 and 1970, my father visited a number of Pacific Northwest Indian tribes. In the process he recorded legends told by the elders as well as chants and songs that were used to call spirits or to make women fall in love with men. There were power songs about the feats and abilities of braves, and love songs about the gentler side of Native American life. One love song in particular, called “How She Looks When She Walks,” was beautiful. Known as a “walking rhythm song,” Dad memorized portions of it and sang it for my mother.
^*

On this occasion and others, Dad would look upon her with a gentle glow in his eyes, almost misting over from the tenderness he felt. And when she gazed back, it was with her eyes bright and full of pride. She had always looked upon him in this way…long before he became famous.

Despite the demands of his writing and the lack of attention he paid to his children when we were growing up, he was constant in his devotion to her. Each wedding anniversary he presented her with a bouquet of red roses, one rose for every year of their marriage, with a handwritten, endearing message.

In the fall of 1970, he completed a 65,000-word novel entitled
The Soul Catcher
but delayed sending it out. This was not unusual, because sometimes he liked to let a story sit for a month or so and then get back to it with fresh eyes.

One evening he attended a seminar conducted by Native Americans, at which they expressed their anger toward white society in a way that deeply disturbed him. For the first time in his life Frank Herbert became fully aware of the extent of Indian outrage. Oh, he had expressed Indian anger in
The Soul Catcher
, but intellectually, as if he were a “great white expert” talking about the problems of another culture without ever having experienced them personally, without ever having lived them.

He'd always told himself that the experiences he'd had with Indians as a child, and later through his friend Howie Hansen and others, provided him with a unique insight into the condition of Native Americans, enabling him to write accurately about what it meant to be one. But a sinking sensation told him the book he had labored over for the better part of a year was hogwash, written from the wrong point of view. He faced an ethical decision.

After further consultation with Howie, he burned the manuscript and then started over from scratch. In the rewritten version he removed the definite article from the title, making it
Soul Catcher
. He wrote of a university-educated Indian living in white society who seeks revenge for the rape-murder of his sister by white men. This scenario was based upon an actual event, in which a Native American woman was raped and beaten by white men near Port Angeles, Washington. Afterward the victim's brother sexually mutilated the attackers, preventing them from committing the same crime again.

In his fictionalized version, Frank Herbert has the university-educated Indian kidnap the young son of a high U.S. government official, taking the boy deep into the woods. The two become friends, leading the reader to think the boy will be spared. But the story takes a startling direction, and in the end the Indian kills the boy anyway. In Dad's view it was the murder of an innocent, a killing that should never have been necessary. But it
was
necessary, he said, because it had happened so many times to Indian innocents. This hard truth, he insisted, really made the story.

Soul Catcher
became a variation on one of the key
Dune
themes, of Western man inflicting himself upon his environment, failing to live in harmony with it. In
Dune
, the consequence of Western man inflicting himself on the planet was a world denuded of its soils, left in an inhospitable desert state. And the Fremen natives of the planet, once its masters, now lived in hiding, having been driven for cover by Western-like conquerors.

Similarly, in
Soul Catcher
Frank Herbert asked the question, “What is the consequence of Western man imposing himself upon a primitive culture?” Instead of Fremen primitives, this time he was talking about real, not imagined people, the American Indians.

He saw these natives as noble creatures, superior to white men in countless ways. For the most part they lived in harmony with their environment, while white men did not. Tribal beaches, once unspoiled, were fouled by the plastic containers and other garbage of outside civilization. Indian languages and stories had been lost, subdued by an oppressive culture that did not tolerate old ways, different ways.

American Indians, like the Fremen people of planet Dune, were part of their environment, one with it. As part of the environment, my father believed, Indians and their cultures should be preserved.

Dad finished
Soul Catcher
in late February 1971. Slepyan liked the book and wanted to publish it but was overridden by Scribner's management. He said it might have been different if Dad could promise him the as-yet uncompleted third
Dune
book, but the author was noncommittal on that. He didn't tell Slepyan so, but he wanted the Berkley Putnam Group to take over the entire
Dune
series, so that it could be promoted more efficiently.

Subsequently John Dodds, executive vice-president of G. P. Putnam's Sons, made an offer on
Soul Catcher
, to publish it the following year in hardcover. The offer was accepted.

The manuscript was only 214 typed pages, fifty-three thousand words, and Dodds wanted to promote the story as a “major novel.” He asked Frank Herbert to expand as many scenes as he could, and recommended an alternate title,
The Omen Tree
, since
Soul Catcher
sounded too much like science fiction to him.

Within a few days, Dad lengthened the story as much as he could, getting it up to 243 pages of manuscript, around sixty thousand words. He held his ground on the title, however, insisting that it was an action title with Indian connotations, and that it didn't sound at all like science fiction to him. Dodds went along with this.

Soul Catcher
was published in hardcover in April 1972, the same month Jan and I had our second baby daughter, Kim. Early reviews on the novel were excellent, including one from a writer my father admired, Dee Brown, author of
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
. In appreciation, Dad sent a signed copy of the book to him, with thanks. Some Native Americans told Dad the ending was perfect, that he had written it the way an Indian would have.

Others disagreed. One of the naysayers was my father's best friend Howie Hansen, the Quileute Indian who had given him the seeds of the story during the many years of their relationship. Howie felt strongly that Katsuk should not have killed the boy, that this was not the way of the Pacific Northwest Indians my father was depicting. He said Katsuk would have performed a ceremony at the end in which he might have danced and frightened the boy with the knife, but he then would have turned the knife on himself instead. Howie said he tried to convince Dad to change the ending and other aspects of the story, including an incorrect depiction of the Indian spirit world, but Dad wouldn't bend.
^*

Even with its controversial ending, the book was nominated for the National Book Award. It did not win.

Back in December 1970, Chilton went into a small third printing of
Dune
, an additional three thousand copies. In the five years after publication, 6,500 hardcover copies had been sold. The book was short of being a national hardcover bestseller, but sales were increasing each month—an anomaly for a five-year-old book.

On the paperback side with Ace Books, sales of
Dune
were exploding, and in the early 1970s the book became their top-selling science fiction title of all time.

Dad and his agent were developing a good relationship with Berkley Books, the paperback publisher of a number of Frank Herbert titles, including
Destination: Void, The Eyes of Heisenberg, The Santaroga Barrier
and
Dune Messiah
. At the first opportunity Dad and Lurton wanted to make arrangements for Berkley and their allied hardcover publisher, Putnam, to pick up
Dune
…and eventually this was accomplished.

Newsweek
and
Time
ran flattering stories on Frank Herbert and his desert saga.
Dune
became the subject of numerous Ph.D. theses, in multiple languages. It was made a textbook in such classes as English, writing, psychology, philosophy, comparative religion, earth studies—even architecture and human living space analysis. Book stores in college towns sold
Dune
out so fast that they couldn't keep it on the shelves. Customers, including professors needing textbooks for their classes, put their names on waiting lists. Readers formed
Dune
discussion groups, in which they read sections and got together regularly to go over the material in depth.

Since there were only 2,200 first edition copies of the hardcover
Dune
, it began to have value in the rare book market. Copies were being stolen from libraries all over the United States.

Sales increased on all of Dad's old titles, including his first novel,
The Dragon in the Sea
, and publishers reprinted to keep up with demand. Foreign publishers began competing for Frank Herbert titles, and his books were printed in Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Japan and the Netherlands. Reports even came in that
Dune
was printed without authorization in Urdu (a Pakistani language) and in the languages of a number of Communist countries, although we never saw copies. The Science Fiction Book Club also picked up the title.

In the summer of 1971, the Apollo 15 astronauts David Scott, James Irwin and Alfred Worden unofficially named one of the craters on the moon “Dune.” A NASA press release said this was “for the classic science fiction novel by Frank Herbert and for the dune-like structure on the southeast rim of the crater.” It was near the Hadley Appendine landing site.

Movie mogul Arthur P. Jacobs, producer of
Planet of the Apes
and its sequels, purchased an option to film
Dune
. The advance was not large, but Dad was slated to receive a substantial amount if Jacobs exercised his option. Jacobs, who projected a fifteen-million-dollar budget, planned to begin filming after completing the
Apes
films.

Early in 1971, Dad had made enough money from
Dune
to quit the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
. He did this with the intent of devoting more of his energies to writing and speaking engagements, as well as to publicity work for the World Without War Council, a group he'd become involved with in the Earth Day activities and in the preparation work for
New World or No World
.

Dad reached agreement with the University of Washington to conduct a political science class, “Utopia/Dystopia,” for them as a visiting professor. The class, about utopian societies and myth structures, was tremendously popular, and he conducted it in the spring quarter of 1971 and the fall quarter of 1972. To explore what he called “the myth of the better life,” he used as textbooks his own novel
The Santaroga Barrier
and a number of classic utopian novels, including Aldous Huxley's
Brave New World
, Sir Thomas More's
Utopia
, and other works.

At the beginning of each class he asked the students to define “human.” After receiving a variety of medical and anthropological answers, he offered his own psychological definition: “It means ‘just like me.'” He said people had difficulty relating to people who were different from their own psychological myths, and that this was a major contributor to misunderstandings between ethnic, religious and cultural groups. Each person was surrounded by countless myths he wasn't even remotely aware of, involving the selection of clothing, food, homes, cars, political leaders, and all sorts of other pieces that went into the construction of human society and human psyches. In class, Professor Herbert discussed the reasons for such world views.

His professorship was more than a little ironic, since Dad had never graduated from college, and had in fact dropped out of this very university some twenty-five years earlier in a dispute over the courses the registrar wanted him to take for a major. Frank Herbert's teaching methods, not surprisingly, were somewhat unorthodox.

Since everyone had different abilities, he said he didn't feel grades were fair. He developed a variant of pass/fail, in which everyone who passed received an “A.” When a student asked if he could write one term paper for Utopia/Dystopia and for another class instead of separate papers, Dad told him to go ahead, as far as he was concerned.

My father also used what he called a “looped feedback system,” in which he did not stand in a power position at a podium higher than the level of the class, lecturing down to them. Instead he sat on the same level as everyone else and conducted discussions in the round like King Arthur, where no one occupied a position of relative strength. His utopian, “leaderless” classroom was an idealistic state of affairs. In reality he was in total control at all times.