Frank Herbert
1 book analyzed
Biography
Frank Herbert (1920–1986) was a journalist, ecologist, and science fiction writer from Tacoma, Washington. He spent years researching an article about U.S. Department of Agriculture efforts to stabilize Oregon's sand dunes using poverty grass and European beach grass — an ecological project to arrest the dunes' movement. The article was never published, but the research became Dune. Herbert was also deeply interested in ecology, Zen Buddhism, Sufism, and the psychological mechanisms of charisma — particularly how people surrender judgment to charismatic leaders. He spent six years writing Dune; it was rejected by twenty-three publishers before Chilton Books (a car repair manual publisher) accepted it. It won the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 1966.