Dune_ House Atreides - Brian Herbert [295]
In early May 1997, when I finally met Kevin J. Anderson and his wife, the author Rebecca Moesta, new story ideas fairly exploded from our minds. In a frenzy the three of us either scribbled them down or recorded them on tape. From these notes, scenes began to unfold, but still we wondered and debated where Dad had been going with the series.
In the last two books, HERETICS OF DUNE and CHAPTERHOUSE: DUNE, he had introduced a new threat—the reviled Honored Matres—who proceeded to lay waste to much of the galaxy. By the end of CHAPTERHOUSE, the characters had been driven into a corner, utterly beaten . . . and then the reader learned that the Honored Matres themselves were running from an even greater mysterious threat . . . a peril that was drawing close to the protagonists of the story, most of whom were Bene Gesserit Reverend Mothers.
A scant two weeks after our meeting, I received a telephone call from an estate lawyer who had handled matters involving my mother and father. He informed me that two safety-deposit boxes belonging to Frank Herbert had turned up in a suburb of Seattle, boxes that none of us knew existed. I made an appointment to meet with the bank authorities, and in an increasing air of excitement the safety-deposit boxes were opened. Inside were papers and old-style floppy computer disks that included comprehensive notes from an unpublished DUNE 7—the long-awaited sequel to CHAPTERHOUSE: DUNE! Now Kevin and I knew for certain where Frank Herbert had been headed, and we could weave the events of our prequel into a future grand finale for the series.
We turned with new enthusiasm to the task of putting together a book proposal that could be shown to publishers. That summer I had a trip to Europe scheduled, an anniversary celebration that my wife Jan and I had been planning for a long time. I took along a new laptop computer and a featherweight printer, and Kevin and I exchanged FedEx packages all summer long. By the time I returned at the end of the summer, we had a massive 141-page trilogy proposal—the largest that either of us had ever seen. My allied DUNE CONCORDANCE project, the encyclopedia of all the marvelous treasures of the Dune universe, was a little over half-completed, with months of intensive work remaining before it would be finished.
As we waited to see if a publisher would be interested, I remembered the many writing sessions I had enjoyed with my father, and my early novels in the 1980s that had received his loving, attentive suggestions for improvement. Everything I had learned from him—and more—would be needed for this huge prequel project.
—Brian Herbert
I never met Frank Herbert, but I knew him well through the words he wrote. I read DUNE when I was ten years old, and reread it several times over the years; then I read and enjoyed all of the sequels. GOD-EMPEROR OF DUNE, hot off the presses, was the very first hardcover novel I ever purchased (I was a freshman in college). Then I worked my way through every single one of his other novels, diligently checking off the titles on the “Other Books By” page in each new novel. THE GREEN BRAIN, HELLSTROM’S HIVE, THE SANTAROGA BARRIER, THE EYES OF HEISENBERG, DESTINATION: VOID, THE JESUS INCIDENT, and more and more and more.
To me, Frank Herbert was the pinnacle of what science fiction could be—thought-provoking, ambitious, epic in scope, well-researched, and entertaining—all in the same book. Other science fiction novels succeed in one or more of these areas, but DUNE did it all. By the time I was five years old, I had decided I wanted to be a writer. By the time I was twelve, I knew I wanted to write books like the ones Frank Herbert wrote.
Throughout college, I published a handful of short stories, then began to write my first novel, RESURRECTION, INC., a complex tale set in a future world where the dead are