1999: Afterword from Dune: House Atreides

[Hunchback Jack]

1999: Afterword from Dune: House Atreides
Brian Herbert



For more than a decade there had been rumors that I would write another novel set in my father's Dune universe, a sequel to the sixth book in the series, Chapterhouse: Dune. I had published a number of acclaimed science fiction novels, but wasn't sure I wanted to tackle something so immense, so daunting. After all, Dune is a magnum opus that stands as one of the most complex, multi-layered novels ever written. A modern-day version of the myth of the dragon's treasure, Dune is a tale of great sandworms guarding a precious treasure of melange, the geriatric spice. The story is a magnificent pearl with layers of luster running deep beneath its surface, all the way to its core.

At the time of my father's untimely death in 1986, he was beginning to think about a novel that carried the working title "Dune 7," a project he had sold to Berkley Books, but on which there were no known notes or outlines. Dad and I had spoken in general terms about collaborating on a DUNE novel one day in the future, but we'd set no date, had established no specific details or direction. It would be sometime after he completed Dune 7 and other projects.

In ensuing years, I thought about my late father's uncompleted series, especially after I concluded a five-year project writing Dreamer of Dune, a biography of this complex, enigmatic man'a biography which required that I analyze the origins and themes of the Dune series. After long consideration, it seemed to me that it would be fascinating to write a book based upon the events he had described so tantalizingly in the Appendix to Dune, a new novel in which I would go back 10,000 years to the time of the Butlerian Jihad, the legendary Great Revolt against thinking machines. That had been a mythical time in a mythical universe, a time when most of the Great Schools had been formed, including the Bene Gesserit, the Mentats and the Swordmasters.

Upon learning of my interest, prominent writers approached me with offers of collaboration. But in tossing ideas around with them I couldn't visualize the project coming to fruition. They were excellent writers, but in combination with them I didn't feel the necessary synergy for such a monumental task. So I kept turning to other projects, avoiding the big one. Besides, while Dad had sprinkled many provocative loose ends in the fifth and sixth books of the series, he had written an afterword for Chapterhouse: Dune that was a marvelous dedication to my late mother, Beverly Herbert--his wife of nearly four decades. They had been a writing team in which she edited his work and acted as a sounding board for his overflow of ideas. So with both of them gone, it seemed a fitting conclusion to leave the project untouched.

The trouble is, a fellow named Ed Kramer kept after me. An accomplished editor and sponsor of science fiction/fantasy conventions, he wanted to put together an anthology of short stories set in the Dune universe stories by different, well-known authors. He convinced me that it would be an interesting, significant, project, and we talked about co-editing it. All the details weren't finalized, since the project had a number of complexities, both legal and artistic. In the midst of this, Ed told me had received a letter from bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson, who had been invited to contribute to the proposed anthology. He suggested what he called a "shot in the dark," asking about the possibility of working at novel length, preferably on a sequel to Chapterhouse: Dune.

Kevin's enthusiasm for the Dune universe fairly jumped off the pages of his letter. Still, I delayed answering him for around a month, not certain how to respond. Despite his proven skills, I was hesitant. This was a big decision. By now I knew I wanted to be involved closely in the project, and that I needed to participate to such a degree in order to ensure the production of a novel of integrity, one that would be faithful to the original series. Along with J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and a handful of other works, Dune stood as one of the greatest creative achievements of all time, and arguably the greatest example of science fiction world-building in the history of literature. For the sake of my father's legacy, I couldn't select the wrong person. I read everything I could get my hands on that Kevin had written, and did more checking on him. It soon became clear to me that he was a brilliant writer, and that his reputation was sterling. I decided to give him a telephone call.

We hit it off immediately, both on a personal and professional level. Aside from the fact that I genuinely liked him, I felt an energy between us, a remarkable flow of ideas that would benefit the series. After obtaining the concurrence of my family, Kevin and I decided to write a prequel--but not one set in the ancient times, long before Dune. Instead we would go to events only 30 or 40 years before the beginning of Dune, to the love story of Paul's parents, to the Planetologist Pardot Kynes being dispatched to Arrakis, to the reasons for the terrible, destructive enmity between House Atreides and House Harkonnen, and much more. Our concept quickly grew to three books, a trilogy.

Before writing a detailed outline, we set to work rereading all six Dune books my father had written, and I took it upon myself to begin assembling a massive Dune Concordance--an encyclopedia of all the characters, places and wonders of the Dune universe. Of primary concern to us, we needed to determine where Dad had been heading with the conclusion of the series. It was clear that he was building up to something momentous in Dune 7, and without intending to do so he had left us with a mystery. There were no known notes or other clues, only my memory that Dad had been using a yellow highlighter on paperback copies of Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse: Dune shortly before his death--books that no one could locate after he was gone.

In early May 1997, when I finally met Kevin J. Anderson and his wife, the author Rebecca Moesta, new story ideas fairly exploded from our minds. In a frenzy the three of us either scribbled them down or recorded them on tape. From these notes, scenes began to unfold, but still we wondered and debated where Dad had been going with the series.

In the last two books, Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse: Dune, he had introduced a new threat--the reviled Honored Matres--who proceeded to lay waste to much of the galaxy. By the end of Chapterhouse, the characters had been driven into a corner, utterly beaten -- and then the reader learned that the Honored Matres themselves were running from an even greater mysterious threat -- a peril that was drawing close to the protagonists of the story, most of whom were Bene Gesserit Reverend Mothers.

A scant two weeks after our meeting, I received a telephone call from an estate lawyer who had handled matters involving my mother and father. He informed me that two safety deposit boxes belonging to Frank Herbert had turned up in a suburb of Seattle, boxes that none of us knew existed. I made an appointment to meet with the bank authorities, and in an increasing air of excitement the safety deposit boxes were opened. Inside were papers and old-style floppy computer disks that included comprehensive notes for an unpublished "Dune 7"--the long-awaited sequel to Chapterhouse: Dune! Now Kevin and I knew for certain where Frank Herbert had been headed, and we could weave the events of our prequels into a future grand finale for the series.

We turned with new enthusiasm to the task of putting together a book proposal that could be shown to publishers. That summer I had a trip to Europe scheduled, an anniversary celebration that my wife, Jan, and I had been planning for a long time. I took along a new laptop computer and a featherweight printer, and Kevin and I exchanged FedEx packages all summer long. By the time I returned at the end of the summer, we had a massive 141-page trilogy proposal--the largest that either of us had ever seen. My allied Dune Concordance project, the encyclopedia of all the marvelous treasures of the Dune universe, was a little over half completed, with months of intensive work remaining before it would be finished. As we waited to see if a publisher would be interested, I remembered the many writing sessions I had enjoyed with my father, and my early novels in the 1980s that had received his loving, attentive suggestions for improvement. Everything I had learned from him--and more--would be needed for this huge prequels project, which we were entitling Prelude to Dune.

-- Brian Herbert

[SandRider]

Thanks, Jack, for this and for transcribing the Brick interview ...
drop by the sietch later for big cookie ...

I'd not read this ... nine or ten years ago, whenever it was,
I don't think I read more that 20 pages of House Atreides ...
(as I've stated before) ... saw it was dumbed-down "Young Adult"
StarWars-type stuff ... so I never got to the end ... and didn't
give these two clowns another thought until I saw both the "Dune 7"
books in paperback ... I hadn't even known they were doing that,
I think I remember seeing some of the other books over the years,
and thinking "yeah, they be pimpin' Dune ..", based solely on the
cover art ...

so, some random thoughts :

I had published a number of acclaimed science fiction novels ...

okay ...
according to The Internet Speculative Fiction Database
(http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Brian_Herbert)
these are the "published science fiction novels" of Brian Herbert :

Sidney's Comet (1983)
The Garbage Chronicles (1985)
Sudanna, Sudanna (1985)
Man of Two Worlds (1986) with Frank Herbert
Prisoners of Arionn (1987)
The Race for God (1990)
Memorymakers (1991) with Marie Landis
Blood on the Sun (1996) with Marie Landis

which ones were "acclaimed" and by whom ?
anybody ?

a time when most of the Great Schools had been formed, including the Bene Gesserit, the Mentats and the Swordmasters.

wow. so Bobo doesn't understand what "Great Schools" meant, either...
well, since Spanky's never actually read the books (despite what
Brian says a bit later) and Merritt would never contradict either of them,
I guess this answers the "WTF are they thinking ?" in regards to the "Great
Schools" Series ... or the standalone "Sistahs O' Dune", because Spanky's
never called it a series, or a trilogy, or ... wait, what ?

Dune stood as one of the greatest creative achievements of all time, and arguably the greatest example of science fiction world-building in the history of literature. For the sake of my father's legacy, I couldn't select the wrong person

now, see? goddamnit, this is the stuff that makes me think that Brian atleast
almost understands what's going on ... but, fuck me with a pointed stick:

I read everything I could get my hands on that Kevin had written, and did more checking on him. It soon became clear to me that he was a brilliant writer, and that his reputation was sterling. I decided to give him a telephone call.

he's retarded.
that boy's retarded.
there's just ain't no other explanation for it...

when I finally met Kevin J. Anderson and his wife, the author Rebecca Moesta, new story ideas fairly exploded from our minds. In a frenzy the three of us either scribbled them down or recorded them on tape.

bombshell. (for me anyway, remember, I've not read this before)
Jabecca has to carry atleast some (if not a third) of the blame for the
idiocy of the storylines ...not that Spanky would ever admit it, unless
he was drunk-twitting, but I'll bet a Confederate Five Dollar Bill that
she's still in on the "Brainstorming" ... and her "editing" could easily
be massive re-writing ....

I wonder if Ed Kramer has committed suicide yet ... poor, unwitting bastard,
he's the Dr. Yueh of this sad saga of the HLP ... yeah, and it's far from over ...
so Keith only sorta padded his part of the story about the "shot in the dark"
letter .. it wasn't to Brian, but this schmuck trying to rope in "science fiction"
writers for this Dune project ... and Keith saw his opening ...

somebody needs to find me Brian's story of the "other" notes, the ones the Ghost
of Beverly led him to ... I thought it was in the intro or an afterword to either
Sandworms or Hunters ... I actually just went into the library and dug the two
paperbacks out I had bought while standing in line at the HEB some three years
ago, which started all this internet Jihad bullshit for me ... but no, there's
just an intro to Sandworms that is so PAINFULLY obviously written by Spanky ...
(like those "us" and "we" blahgs he used to post on dunenovels before he abandoned
that sinking ship) ... and Spanky just glosses over the finding of the "other" notes ...
In storage we also discovered additional notes and papers ...



BTW, my grocery-store impulse-buy paperback copy of Hunters of Dune
has the corner of page 51 turned down ... that's where I said "wait, what?"
and went online to understand the "based directly on Frank Herbert's final
outline" blurb on the back cover ... which is the only reason I bought
those two books that day ... oh, for the Lost Days of Innocence ...


huh. I may just read these things ...
all the other McDune has no basis in reality, but these are the ones
they've so obviously lied about ... I'm looking at the "based
directly on Frank" line again ...

page 51 is the re-retelling of the Lampadas horde ... not sure why that
would make me quit there, maybe it was something really stupid right before ...


huh. remember when I said that one of my favorite leisure activities in the 70s
was to get really stoned and open up Dune or Messiah to a random page and read no
more than a paragraph, sometimes one sentence, and sit the book on my chest and
trip out on what Frank said for about an hour ? sure can't do that with these
two books ...



nah.
think I'll go out to the campsite and build up a fire
and toss these fucking abominations in it ...

[TheDukester]

For the sake of my father's legacy, I couldn't select the wrong person.

So what does he do ... ?

Selects absolutely the wrong person.

There could not possibly have been a worse choice for a co-author than Kevin J. Anderfuck. It's literally impossible. He wouldn't have been in the top 800 choices for anyone with a functioning brain. A Rent-A-Hack™ writer of six-weeks-to-the-presses media tie-in crapfests? Seriously, WTF, Brian?

SR called it. Brian Herbert is, essentially, functionally retarded.

It explains so much.

[SandRider]

okay ...y'all follow me on this one, Imma gonna take ya out into the deep mesquite ...


so Ed Kramer is responsible for putting Keith in front of Brian,
the only point there is that it shows Keith's casual bending of the truth
over the years, in his telling of the story that leaves out Kramer's
(independent) solicitation of several writers to do an anthology
of (independent) Dune short stories ... Keith sends Kramer the
letter about "Dune7", which is not the project Kramer was working on ...
(and, from what Brian says here, not the project he wanted to
work on either; Brian wants to do the Before Times stories ...)

(for the purpose of this demonstration, I'll skate over my doubts about Keith's
interest in "completing" the "cliffhanger" from Chapterhouse (as opposed to just
wanting to get Brian to turn the Dune name into a "brand franchise", like StarWars,
and make easy money))

So Ed Kramer is partially to blame for :
1) asking Keith to be involved in anything ... maybe he didn't really know who
Keith was, didn't understand the ego ... maybe Ed did know who Keith
was, and A) didn't care about how poor a writer Keith is, saw only the book-
selling name, already attached to a built-in low-brow cheap&easy fanbase or
B) Ed Kramer is retarded, too, and really thinks Keith is the shining star in the SF
universe ...

and 2) sending the "shot in the dark" letter on to Brian; again, either A or B,
Ed Kramer is a money-grubbing book-selling pimp with no morals or standards, or
he's retarded ...

After that .... well, Brian's retarded, and fell in love with tehKJA ....

I've been skimming around here in the basement of T(A)U,
looking over these interviews ... there is some inconsistency about
the physicality of the "outline" - in 2001, Keith is talking about a "complete
outline" for Dune7 and over 3000 pages of "working notes", which I'm
assuming he meant the boxes in Brian's "storage" ... in 2006, Brian tells
Scott Brick it's just a "three-page, er, maybe two-and-a-half page outline",
a "general concept" .... in the same interview, Keith calls it a "roadmap" and
"clues" ...

a year ago, Brian told the amc website:
"I got a call from an estate attorney who asked me what I wanted to do with two safety deposit boxes of my dad's. I didn't know they existed. So we went down there, and in them were the notes to Dune 7 -- it was a 30-page outline. So I went up in my attic and found another 1,000 pages of working notes."
(viewtopic.php?f=621&t=1295&p=19930)

in August 2007, Keith told the x-fire scifi week kids that the safety deposit box
contained "the outline and disks for Dune7" .... (which brings up another point that's
bothered me from the start - WTF was on those five & a quarter floppy disks ? And who
had an old 486 or whatever to retrieve the data? assume the disks were made in 85 or
86, and let's assume they weren't damaged, what if Frank had made them using a
proprietary system like the Brother wordprocessors of the day ?)

and all that's off my main point - (told ya, we done goin' deep in woods, here ...)

these points should be posted in the DUNE7 Notes section here, and I was going to
do that later, when I got to this posting, and a few loose ideas that had been
bouncing around for a few weeks came together ...

(and if someone wants to start that "he said, she said" quoting in the Dune7 Notes
section, I'd appreciate it .. I think I've lost interest in documenting how many times
they changed the story, but it would be interesting to see it laid out chronologically,
to see if there's some kind of pattern, or if a reasonable explanation could be had...
besides Keith's an asshole & Brian's retarded ...)(Brian's said "attic" a few times,
Keith told Amazon "the garage", yada-yada, it's just details ...3000 pages of
"working notes", 1000, 1300, 1500, who cares? we can't see them ever, anyway ...)

okay, so Ed Kramer, right ? the missing link (for me) in understanding the
inconsistencies in the When Spanky Met Bobo saga ...

the missing link here is this estate lawyer ...

last week D Pope mentioned in passing that it seemed that Frank "had gone out
of his way to hide the outline" from Brian ...

way up there somewhere, Brian says:

At the time of my father's untimely death in 1986, he was beginning to think about a novel that carried the working title "Dune 7," a project he had sold to Berkley Books, but on which there were no known notes or outlines. Dad and I had spoken in general terms about collaborating on a DUNE novel one day in the future, but we'd set no date, had established no specific details or direction. It would be sometime after he completed Dune 7 and other projects.

Frank had committed to Berkley for Dune 7 --- Brian says "sold", but in any
case, Frank certainly would have received an advance ... probably a BIG one ...

Frank, trying to be nice to "Number One Son" who appeared to have finally sobered
(and grown) up, said that he would certainly enjoy working with Brian on a Dune
"project", maybe some of the ideas he'd discussed with McNelly about the pre-Guild
times, the Butlerian Jihad, what have you ... maybe Frank, having read some of
Brian's "fiction" had more a coloring book in mind, but still, this Father-Son Pinewood
Derby of Dune was doable .... after Dune7 got done and in the barn, and he
could call all the "Dune Saga" "finished", since some folks didn't like the way he'd
left it in Chapterhouse ... (and money; don't forget the money, and cf the Spinrad
comments - they offered Frank more money than a sane man could refuse; and like
the publishing pimps of today, those people knew anything with "Dune" on the cover
would sell ... Frank was a cash cow for them, too ...)

then Frank got sick ...

while dying was a possibility, as an old guy, I'll tell you: dying is always a possibility ...
but you also always plan on living thru whatever it is ...

so here's what Frank knows :
he's contractually obligated for Dune7.
he's sick, and may not be able to work on the novel for some time.
Beverly is dead, and while Theresa might be a good woman and all, he's not going
to trust her with much, and Brian ... well, Brian's retarded... everybody knows it, so ...

he also knows he might die.
if Frank dies, and, in the words of Brian Herbert "there were no known notes or outlines",
then the Dune Saga is over at Chapterhouse ... which would have been fine with Frank;
if, in fact, Frank Herbert worried about that kind of thing at all, which I'm personally]
inclined to doubt .... you have to be a vain, shallow idiot (think tehKJA) to worry about
your personal legacy - you might want to safeguard your life's work to the extent
you can, and make arrangements for your surviving family, but in the end, you're gonna
be dead, and who gives a shit ?

I change my will every two months or so; in the past I've had wills drawn up that leave all
the ranch land to my kids, to their kids alone, to the mexicans (right now, I think my
foreman and his daughter get fucking everything, but I ain't rightly sure.)

and don't care. after I'm dead .... well, I'm dead.

so here's what I think -

before going to Wisconsin for treatment, he collected up the primary material
for Dune 7 - there might have been a huge amount of material, crammed onto
the floppies in plain text format (remember, this is 1986); if so, that would indicate
to me that Frank fully intended to beat the cancer and write Dune7 himself ...he
wasn't a techno-ignorant man, he knew the limitations of those floppies - hold one
up to a CRT and it's wiped ...

there may have been just some loose ideas or, more likely, some image files, graphs,
maps, charts, etc ... not knowing what kind of files were on the discs and what
kind of machine Frank was using at the time limits speculation here ...

it might have been as Brian has described - an actual "outline", a short list of ideas,
characters, plot points ... however, if it was this brief, I'm not sure that Frank
would worry about safeguarding these notes ... I'm inclined now to think they may
have been extensive ...

....my technique is to collect material. I collect file folders of material. A character idea interests me, and I put that in a folder appropriately labeled.

Vertex Interview: Frank Herbert by Paul Turner
October 1973 : Volume 1, Issue 4

The way I accumulated data is I start building file folders and before long I saw that I had far to much for an article and far too much for a story, for a short story. So, I didn’t know really what I had but I had an enormous amount of data and avenues shooting off at all angles to gather more.

California State College, Fullerton
Interviewer : Professor Willis E. McNelly (WM)
Interviewees: Frank Herbert (FH), Beverly Herbert (BH)
Subject: "Dune" and "Dune Messiah"
Date of Tape : 3 February 1969
Date of Transcription : February-April 1970

with an uncertain future, Frank Herbert collected the Dune7 notes/outline,
of whatever content, apparently destroyed the rest (Brian's not mentioned
Dune7 material in the X-pages of "working notes" from the other novels
(which may or may not have been from the Dune Novels) found in the
attic/garage) and put this material in two (?)(two? really? paper in one,
floppies in the other?) safety deposit boxes and turned over the keys to ...

this estate lawyer.
or the firm handling the estate.
whatever.

so ...

obviously, obviously Frank left no instructions with the law firm about these keys ...

maybe he really, really didn't think he was going to die, but knew he'd be bedridden
and undergoing extensive treatment for some time, and didn't want this (valuable)
material (that he had already been paid for) to be pawed over by his retarded son
and all the heathen grandchildren ... (I may be projecting my own experiences here -
when I went in for the spinal fusion two years ago, I locked up a bunch of shit
and didn't tell anybody about it ...)

maybe he thought that if he did die, he didn't want the retarded son or some
publishing pimp getting some asshat hack to "finish" his story for him ...

maybe instructions were left that were lost - the keys don't turn up for ten years ...
maybe those instructions said to destroy the material, and give Berkeley back the
advance ... maybe they said to turn the material over to someone Frank trusted,
Ransom or whoever, to finish Dune7 according to his notes to fulfill the contract ...

but .... maybe no instructions were left at all ... which brings me to my point ...

(y'all still there ? we can see some daylight now ...)

these keys were obviously lost (unless Frank left instructions to wait until
Brian proved he was going to stay sober, and showed an ability to deal with
the material - in that case the lawyer who made the call could've been retarded,
too, like poor ol' Ed Kramer...)

more likely tho, some change of the guard at the law firm upturned the overlooked
or misplaced keys ... and with no instructions either way, the estate lawyers call
the executor of the estate ... (here's where I need Omph Law Degree to weigh in)

because I want to know who this lawyer was - what was actually in the box(es)
is another matter - I want to know where these fucking keys came from ... I want
to know what (if any) instructions Frank left the lawyers about these keys ... I want
to know what kind of fucktarded law firm misplaces safety deposit box keys for ten
years ... esp. from a client who was a famous, important figure of American Literature ...

because, you know, this whole thing could be a lie ...

[Sev]

I've been meaning to have a chronological bash at the Dune 7 notes, and this archive will be a huge help. Going through Keith's Dune blogs from 2005 at the moment, must be a glutton for punishment...

[SandChigger]

Good god, man, even I wouldn't have the stamina for that.

[Hunchback Jack]

I'm guessing that if the safety deposit box is real, it didn't just happen to turn up. I think BH, his agent, or whoever were trying to track down any random Dune material left by Frank, in preparation for the new Dune work - the anthology, the KJA-partnered prequels, or KJA-initiated Dune 7.

If FH had left any instructions, I assume they'd long been forgotten. The deposit box hadn't shown up previously because the estate's executor (Bobo) hadn't made a detailed search for old Dune stuff, as he wasn't interested in continuing Dune.

A small point: KJA only refered to the outline as a "roadmap" and as "clues" after Bobo had already described it that way. If KJA had his druthers, the Dune 7 outline would be 100 pages or more, with a handwritten instruction by Frank asking that Dune 7 be finished by an award-winning franchise writer who can climb mountains and is the biggest Dune fan EVAR.

HBJ

[SandChigger]

So there may be even more lies to the thing than we've previously suspected. Wonderful.

[SandRider]

the "boxes" didn't turn up, it was the keys to those boxes ...

somewhere around here Keith says "they" didn't know what was in the
boxes, coulda be diamonds or something, in that semi-joking manner he
has that always reveals a little more of his twisted, dipshit side than is
prudent ...

[lotek]

I read everything I could get my hands on that Kevin had written, and did more checking on him. It soon became clear to me that he was a brilliant writer, and that his reputation was sterling. I decided to give him a telephone call.

Now this can't be true...
And what checking did he do?

I doubt he gave a call so the star wars fan association(or whatever they're called)to check if KJA had a good record for consistency for example...

That guy is scared of computers(or is it planes? or both?)which incidentally might explain the campy robot villains they came up with, so there is little chance he would have done his checking where the real fanbase is active(on the internet, where he would have found at least a few angry reactions.

Is it safe to assume that background checking he did most likely involved sales and deadlines?
I think it is considering the results...

ps: I am truly baffled by the choice made, not to mention the reasons for it.
Only two possibilities come to my mind
1) Brian honestly didn't realize who he was dealing with
2) he (and the HLP) knew full well what Keith was capable of and still let him in
Well there is a 3) but it is quite scary: they just didn't care and went for the one who asked the loudest...

[D Pope]

I've been meaning to have a chronological bash at the Dune 7 notes, and this archive will be a huge help. Going through Keith's Dune blogs from 2005 at the moment, must be a glutton for punishment...

Did you find anything?