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Interview with Frank Herbert and His Wife Beverly Herbert (1969)
- pugworthy 5y agoFor a lot more background on his time on the Oregon coast at Florence (mentioned at start of interview), check out this Oregon Public Broadcasting story... https://www.opb.org/article/2021/10/23/florence-oregon-movies-dune-frank-herbert-science-fiction-novels/ https://www.opb.org/article/2021/10/23/florence-oregon-movie...
- Inhibit 5y agoRecorded in '69 and typed up in '97? Seems like there might be a story there as well!
- loonster 5y agoAnd two random Dune items on HN front page. Is this just clever gorilla marketing for the new movie / series coming out? (TBH, I love Dune enough that I don't care. I just find it suspicious.)
- toast0 5y agoI don't suspect guerrila marketting here, but more people interested are finding or remembering things and posting them because it's topical. Guerilla marketting for Dune would be the reports of worms in the local park's new sandpit. Sadly, park department shut that down by replacing the sand with tan bark. :(
- Forge36 5y agoBy complete chance I started rereading the books. Currently on the 5th. It lined up well with that movie being announced. Having watched the movie: it's nailed the opening. Part two has me excited
- hadlock 5y agoAll of northern california is stuck inside with the first real rain we've had since ~April, catching up on indoor projects
- dotancohen 5y agoWhen I saw the two Dune items, I thought that Frank Herbert had died. It turns out that he did die. In 1986.
- nicoburns 5y agoI suspect Dune is loved by a large chunk of the HN demographic. In fact, IIRC I first heard of Dune in an Ask HN thread “what books do you recommend?” where it was one of the most recommended books.
- sdrothrock 5y agoRecorded in February 1969, typed in February-April, 1970, so not that much of a gap. "Sent to Turkey in 1997" seems more like a publication date in Turkey than anything, given the site itself.
- eternalban 5y agoThis interview is, among other very interesting threads of various ideas, like a capsule course in writing fiction from a master. It is well worth reading as it is not simply about the story, but rather how he put together a story, constructed layers and characters, and something like sketching out the mechanics of the dynamic between author, text, and readers: FH: You see, and so we turn the whole thing whirling backward through the story. There was another thing there, in the pacing of the story, very slow at the beginning. It’s a coital rhythm all the way through the story. WM: It’s a what? FH: Coital rhythm. WM: OK. FH: Very slow pace, increasing all the way through, and when you get to the ending of it, I chopped it at a non breaking point, so that the person reading the story skids out of the story, trailing bits of it with him. On this I know I was successful, because people come to me and say they want more and… It's a great read. Of course issues of power, structures of power, "the voice", and all things Dune are there as well.
- canjobear 5y agoApparently one of Frank Herbert's many obscure inspirations was the book "The Sexual Cycle of Human Warfare" by N.I.M. Walter which argues that war is like a civilizational-level collective orgasm.
- Theizestooke 5y agoThanks for the tip. Unfortunately hard to find a copy I just found out.
- ZeroGravitas 5y agoThis is the kind of thing I find Archive.org and openlibrary invaluable for. In this case a quick search didn't reveal it, but Google books has a scanned copy which you can use snippet view on so I wouldn't be surprised if there's a copy somewhere on archive.org edit: hackernews regular gwern appears to have a digital copy of the book.
- Theizestooke 5y ago
- canjobear 5y agoThe interviewer is the guy who put together the Dune Encyclopedia---my preferred source of backstory for the series, much more interesting than the Frank Herbert stuff imo.
- nsonha 5y agoWhat makes Dune and Foundation scifi and not just feudalism in space? The Foundation TV show bores me to death and when I look up their summaries online, they both seem to be about lessons of past civilizations more than the future. A galactic emprire? The last time someone tried to pull this conquering stuff was almost 100 years ago and it was doomed from the start.
- namdnay 5y agoWell, Foundation at least was clearly written by someone who had just read Gibbon
- skrebbel 5y agoSave you a right click: Edward Gibbon was an 18th century English historian who wrote a series of books called "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" . Parent suggests that said book was Asimov's inspiration for the fall of the Galactic Empire at the beginning of the Foundation series.
- SideburnsOfDoom 5y agoDune is "feudalism in Space", and Foundation is "The decline and fall of the Roman Empire, in space". Although, I don't really agree that they're "just" that. > they both seem to be about lessons of past civilizations more than the future Sure, writers are going to learn from the past and write about current concerns. Even Sci-Fi does that. Dune has "this one drug is the most valuable thing in the galaxy ... and we mine it in the desert" - it's very 1960s.
- pjc50 5y ago> "this one drug is the most valuable thing in the galaxy ... and we mine it in the desert" - it's very 1960s. Collection of hardline religious insurgents in desert defeat superpower? Very 2021. (the inspiration is clear, e.g. Fedaykin => https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedayeen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedayeen )
- musesum 5y agoaudio of interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhw5vdH3rlo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhw5vdH3rlo