Herbert, Frank, 1920-1986

Franklin Patrick Herbert Jr. (October 8, 1920 – February 11, 1986) was an American science fiction author best known for the 1965 novel Dune and its five sequels. Though he became famous for his novels, he also wrote short stories and worked as a newspaper journalist, photographer, book reviewer, ecological consultant, and lecturer.

Frank Herbert was born in 1920 in Tacoma, Washington. Because of a poor home environment, largely due to the Great Depression, he ran away from home in 1938 to live with an aunt and uncle in Salem, Oregon. He enrolled in high school at Salem High School (now North Salem High School), where he graduated the next year. In 1939, he lied about his age to get his first newspaper job at the Glendale Star. Herbert then returned to Salem in 1940 where he worked for the Oregon Statesman newspaper (now Statesman Journal) in a variety of positions, including photographer.

Herbert served in the U.S. Navy's Seabees for six months as a photographer during World War II, then he was given a medical discharge. After the war, Herbert attended the University of Washington, never graduating from the university. He wanted to study only what interested him and so did not complete the required curriculum. Herbert returned to journalism and worked at the Seattle Star and the Oregon Statesman. He was a writer and editor for the San Francisco Examiner's California Living magazine for a decade.

Herbert began researching Dune in 1959. The Dune saga, set in the distant future, and taking place over millennia, explores complex themes, such as the long-term survival of the human species, human evolution, planetary science and ecology, and the intersection of religion, politics, economics and power in a future where humanity has long since developed interstellar travel and settled many thousands of worlds. Dune is the best-selling science fiction novel of all time, and the whole series is widely considered to be among the classics of the genre.

Herbert's best novels were the work of a speculative intellect with few rivals in modern science fiction.

Selected Bibliography: Dune (1965), The Green Brain (1966), Destination: Void (1966), Dune Messiah (1969), Hellstrom's Hive (1973), The Jesus Incident (with Bill Ransom) (1979), Children of Dune (1976), God Emperor of Dune (1981), The White Plague (1982), The Lazarus Effect (with Bill Ransom) (1983), Heretics of Dune (1984), Chapterhouse: Dune (1985), Man of Two Worlds (with Brian Herbert) (1986), and The Ascension Factor (with Bill Ransom) (1988).