Herbert, Frank

(US, 1920–86)

Best known for The Dune Chronicles, Frank Herbert has had a varied career, working as a journalist, photographer, lecturer, and consultant on social and ecological issues. He has written seventeen novels beside the six in the Dune series (including one, Man of Two Worlds, 1987, with his son, Brian), and several short stories, and has edited collections of fiction and non-fiction. The book to begin with is the famous Dune (1965), a book considered by many to be the most influential in its genre, and ‘the most completely realized other world in the history of science fiction’. Set 2,500 years in the future, when the known universe is controlled by two powers, the Imperium and the Great Houses, Dune concerns the battle to control a desert planet, and its invaluable resource, ‘melange’. There have been five sequels, a film, and many imitations.

Isaac Asimov, Ursula Le Guin.

See SCIENCE FICTION  IP