
The success meant I could spend more time writing. They fleshed out more in the writing, but the essential story remained intact. Parts of Dune Messiah and Children of Dune were written before Dune was completed. Now the most common question people ask is: "What does this success mean to you?" By the time the first three Dune books were completed, there was little doubt that this was a popular work - one of the most popular in history, I am told, with some ten million copies sold worldwide. What I'm describing is the slow realization of success. I kept getting these telephone calls from people asking me if I were starting a cult. Something was happening out there, though.įor two years, I was swamped with bookstore and reader complaints that they could not get the book. More than twelve publishers had turned it down before publication. There wasn't room in my head to think about much else.įollowing the first publication, reports from the publishers were slow and, as it turned out, inaccurate. It was to be an ecological novel, then, with many overtones, as well as a story about people and their human concerns with human values, and I had to monitor each of these levels at every stage in the book. Potable water was to be an analog for oil and for water itself, a substance whose supply diminishes each day. It was to have an awareness drug in it and tell what could happen through dependence on such a substance. It was to be an examination of absolute prediction and its pitfalls. It was to penetrate the interlocked workings of politics and economics. It was to produce another view of a human-occupied planet as an energy machine. It was to be a story exploring the myth of the Messiah. Six years of research had preceded the day I sat down to put the story together, and the interweaving of the many plot layers I had planned required a degree of concentration I had never before experienced. there was no room in my mind for concerns about the book's success or failure. Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, and Chapterhouse: Dune followed, completing the saga that the Chicago Tribune would call "one of the monuments of modern science fiction." Herbert is also the author of some twenty other books, including The Jesus Incident, The Dosadi Experiment, and Destination: Void. But his true emergence as a writer of major stature did not occur until 1965, with the publication of Dune.
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He worked a wide variety of jobs - including TV cameraman, radio commentator, oyster diver, jungle survival instructor, lay analyst, creative writing teacher, reporter and editor of several West Coast newspapers - before becoming a full-time writer.In 1952, Herbert began publishing science fiction with "Looking for Something?" in Startling Stories.
