His loving wife of 37 years, Beverly, was the breadwinner much of the time, as an underpaid advertising writer for department stores. It took him six years of research and writing to complete Dune, and after all that struggle and sacrifice, 23 publishers rejected it in book form before it was finally accepted.

He was so independent that he refused to write for a particular market he wrote what he felt like writing. For years he had a hard time making a living, bouncing from job to job and from town to town. He did not graduate from college because he refused to take the required courses for a major he only wanted to study what interested him. His curiosity and independent spirit got him into trouble more than once when he was growing up, and caused him difficulties as an adult as well. If his classmates wanted to know the answer to something, such as about sexual functions or how to make a carbide cannon, they would invariably say, 'Let's ask Herbert. In grade school he was the acknowledged authority on everything.

A kid that small shouldn't be so smart.' Young Frank was not unlike Alia in Dune, a person having adult comprehension in a child's body.

On his eighth birthday, Frank stood on top of the breakfast table at his family home and announced, 'I wanna be a author.' His maternal grandfather, John McCarthy, said of the boy, 'It's frightening. Wells, Jules Verne, and the science fiction of Edgar Rice Burroughs. He loved Rover Boys adventures, as well as the stories of H.G. He carried around a Boy Scout pack with books in it, and he was always reading. It has been translated into dozens of languages and has sold almost 20 million copies.Īs a child growing up in Washington State, Frank Herbert was curious about everything. Today the novel is more popular than ever, with new readers continually discovering it and telling their friends to pick up a copy. His magnum opus is a reflection of this, a classic work that stands as one of the most complex, multi-layered novels ever written in any genre. He was a man of many facets, of countless passageways that ran through an intricate mind. Frank Herbert (1920-1986) created the most beloved novel in the annals of science fiction, Dune.

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