I very much enjoyed Brian's insights into his Father's life and his writing career. The good, the bad and the ugly were all handled with love and respect. Losing him at such a young age was such a tragedy for the science fiction world. Brian's writing style is truly gifted and surely shows that it can be inherited.

How could I not be swept away by the Evergreen state imagery and the fact Group Health saved both of their lives?!?

Sometimes I think it’s a mistake to read a biography of an author you really like because sometimes it happens that the man behind the fantastic stories is not a very nice person. That’s what I discovered when I read this biography of one of my favorite science fiction writers, Frank Herbert. The book has all the wonderful details regarding how and when Herbert’s great novels and stories came out and how success affected him and his family. If it were just that, I would have loved everything in it. Unfortunately, it also tells us a lot about the dark side of Frank Herbert. He spent a considerable amount of effort hiding from his ex-wife so she couldn’t collect child support payments from him. He was an overly strong (the word abusive comes to mind) disciplinarian of his children. He was an obsessively reckless driver routinely terrifying and risking the lives of his passengers. (In fact, the famous jump the bridge scene in The Santaroga Barrier appears to have been based on his decision to do exactly that with his wife and friend in his vehicle). He got friend Jack Vance to co-sign a car loan and then purposely didn’t make the payments so he could focus his money on other bills—stiffing Vance for years until he finally made enough to pay him back. In short, Frank Herbert wasn’t a nice man, even though apparently he had a gift for making people like him. And I find that sad, not that it changes how I feel about his stories.

As a biography, this is a pretty fine endeavor, but Brian Herbert also spends more than a small portion of it talking about his own life and his own writing career. To a certain extent, this is fine as he is Frank Herbert’s son and it shows his father’s influence, but often it seemed gratuitous to me. On the other hand, Brian Herbert is pretty honest with his own feelings toward his dad and how they changed for the better after he became an adult. Perhaps the nicest part of the biography is the picture he paints of his mother, Frank’s second wife, and a loving and dedicated spouse. If you enjoy Frank Herbert’s books, you’ll probably want to read this tribute, but be aware, Herbert is a complex man with a dark side.

I just finished this biography written by Brian Herbert and......wow...I really disliked it. Let's just say I have personal reasons for reading this book. This account read like a 13-year old's diary - shoving snippets here and there - oddly mashed, incomplete and a lot of times out of place. The constant tug of pity-me/praise-me irritated me the whole way through and made it apparent that Brian has unresolved daddy issues. Cry me a river....

What strikes me most about this book is how Brian wrote in regard to his younger brother Bruce. The "number 2 son" (an unnecessary, self propelling label - I mean really, Brian?) was barely mentioned and mostly coupled with his "unfortunate homosexuality" that Brian and his whole family "wished he wasn't". This made Brian almost seem no better than a bigot - with lines like "Brian and his gay lover arrived" or "experimenting in homosexual practices because my father didn't give him enough attention". Are you kidding me? Maybe Brian turned to drugs, because he couldn't come to terms with his homosexuality - which NEWS FLASH, isn't a choice. This book was published in 2003, not 1973. Herbert did not even mention that Bruce died from AIDS, alone, in 1993. My heart goes out to him and the unfortunate family situation that he was born into.

Ultimately, this book did try and portray the fantastic life of an amazing author, but was overpowered by obvious misgivings felt by Brian. I guess I could not expect any more than this from a man who has made his living by coat-tailing off the legacy started by his father.

There is a lot of detail here about Frank Herbert's life - I mean, a lot of tiny family details...so a real peek into his daily life. What is lacking is insight into the inspiration behind Frank Herbert. This is a well-written 2-D account of FH.... yet it shows that Brian Herbert doesn't - or didn't - really know what was going on inside his own father...

Primero lo bueno: Brian Herbert logra plasmar cosas muy interesantes de la vida de su padre en este libro. Detalles que a uno como fan de la obra de este gran escritor le encanta leer. El trabajo de investigación periodística y de registro es amplio y muy bueno, incluso en ocasiones se excede un poco en detalles que normalmente no vienen al caso en una biografía, pero es una bonita experiencia conocer la parte humana de un personaje tan importante para la literatura a nivel mundial.

Lo malo: Brian no es un buen escritor. Lo sabíamos por su trabajo escribiendo secuelas y trabajos adicionales a la saga de Dune que escribió su padre, pero esta obra también lo demuestra en cuestiones de estilo, de edición de texto y hasta en cierta coherencia y fluidez de la lectura. Desgraciadamente también se siente en esta obra el deseo de incluirse a sí mismo en la historia de su padre, como tratando de ganarse un poco el respeto que a través de los años se le ha negado como escritor por valor propio.

A sincere, heartfelt portrayal of the author of Dune by his son, this biography would have rated four or maybe even five stars if not for some writing/editing problems.
Brian Herbert gives a candid account of his difficult but ultimately loving relationship with his father. Brian does not avoid issues such as Frank's difficult temperament with his children, or his rejection of his gay son Bruce. The creation of the Dune series is given great attention.
The book, however, lacks tighter editing. Some anecdotes are unnecessary and often give the narrative a fragmented feeling. Brian reintroduces people over and over again, and retells episodes he's already explained. I would also have liked to know more about the aftermath of Frank's passing away - what became of Bruce, for instance. And just how extensive were the notes left by Frank and developed by Brian with Kevin Anderson Jr for the first sequels they wrote to Frank's series.
But at the heart of this biography, the loving relationship between Frank and Beverly Herbert shines through, and makes this a compelling read.

All sons should be able to know their fathers as well. I’m so glad to have been able to read this book. I have been a fan of Frank Herbert’s writing for many years since I was first introduced to Dune, but knew very little about him or his life. I had assumed that he had gone the academic route as had other great epic authors like Tolkien and CS Lewis. It is with some degree of incredulity that I read the unfolding life of Frank Herbert and his uncompromising nature, his vagabond life and his thirst for life.

I’ve also developed a much stronger appreciation of Brian Herbert who worked a regular job most of his adulthood until his mother’s illness and he’s forced to take more of a hand in their affairs. It is interesting who he became because of his love of family. I will definitely read more Brian Herbert. The Butlerian Jihad was a little gruesome for me, but am interested in how he handles other Dune stories as well as his own fiction.

This is not only a great biography of a man whose life should be remembered and celebrated. It is also a wonderful story of family, of those tensions that break family apart and of reconciliation and above all a boy who grows up to be a man in order to understand and forgive his father.

Had it been titled, My Father and Me, or somehow indicated that it was as much about son Brian as Frank Herbert, then perhaps three stars.

The following originally posted at http://postdefiance.com/son-of-tacoma..., written by Erik Hanberg.

He wrote one of the bestselling science fiction novels ever. He won both the Nebula and the Hugo Awards – the two most prestigious awards in science fiction. NASA has officially approved the naming of geographic features on Saturn’s moon Titan after words coined by him.

He’s from Tacoma, but no one here seems to know it.

The man is Frank Herbert, and he is the author of the science fiction classic Dune, as well as five sequels set in the world that book imagined.

Frank Herbert was born in Tacoma on October 8, 1920 – his mother’s 19th birthday. His binge-drinking father rarely held a steady job. At the time of Frank’s birth, his father operated a bus line between Tacoma and Aberdeen. Among other jobs, he later sold cars, managed a dance hall, and worked for the Washington State Patrol.

Frank Herbert had the kind of childhood that would cause statewide news alerts today, filled with tales that sound more like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn rather than anyone’s actual experiences.

At the age of nine he rowed from Burley on the Kitsap Peninsula to the San Juan Islands alone, often hitching rides with tugboats by holding on to their hulls.

In his youth, he went hunting (alone) and brought back game for his family to eat.

At 14, he swam across the Tacoma Narrows (there was no bridge until 1940).

Shortly thereafter, he and a friend sailed nearly 2,000 miles round-trip to the fjords of British Columbia.

In Brian Herbert’s biography of his father, Dreamer of Dune (which provided many of the details in this article) he writes that on the Puget Sound, “Frank Herbert developed a deep respect for the natural rhythms of nature. The ecology message, so prevalent in much of his writing, is one of his most important legacies.”

Frank Herbert loved the Puget Sound, and anytime he traveled or moved away for a job, he always returned, calling the Sound his “Tara,” a reference to Scarlett’s refuge in Gone With the Wind.

Herbert’s feats weren’t all in the natural world, however. At 12, he read the complete works of Shakespeare, and gobbled up Marcel Proust and Herman Melville. Like many avid readers, he tried his own hand at writing, and at 14 he was given his first typewriter.

“One day my father went for advice to a writer living in Tacoma who had sold a couple novels and several short stories,” writes Brian Herbert. “The response: ‘Work like hell, kid.’”

Herbert took this counsel to heart. His writing career included work as a journalist, a political speechwriter for a US Senator from Oregon, and as a short story writer before he was finally able to devote himself to writing his novels full time.

When reviewing the life of Frank Herbert, one gets the impression that he was trying to live in every part of Tacoma and do all things quintessentially Tacoman. At various points, he lived on Day Island, in Dash Point, Browns Point, and on the Eastside. He attended Stewart Middle School and Lincoln High School. He wrote for the Tacoma Ledger and the Tacoma Times. At age 21, he and his sweetheart fell in love in Salem, Oregon, where they were then living. On a whim, they drove to Tacoma to get married, because he thought it would be meaningful to have the ceremony in his hometown.

In 1955, Herbert had a budding family in Tacoma and needed a car for them. Being short on funds, as writers often are, he found a sweet deal on a used car: $300 for a funeral home hearse. He enjoyed wearing his darkest suit, impersonating a funeral director, and pulling his hearse up next to carloads of teenagers. Herbert would leave them sobered, giving them a dark scowl and intoning a significant “Drive carefully,” and then peel rubber as he drove away.

The origins of the novel Dune came to Herbert while visiting the sand dunes of Florence, Oregon. But the idea of a world destroyed by environmental catastrophe and the environmental theme at the heart of Dune, draw directly from Herbert’s life in Tacoma.

Brian Herbert reveals the connection to Tacoma in Dreamer of Dune:

In a conversation with Dad, [his lifetime friend] Howie told me he said angrily, “They’re gonna turn this whole planet into a wasteland, just like North Africa.”

“Yeah,” Frank Herbert responded. “Like a big dune.”

By the time Dad said this, the elements of his story were coming together. He had in mind a messianic leader in a world covered entirely with sand. Ecology would be a central theme of the story, emphasizing the delicate balance of nature …

Dad was a daily witness to conditions in Tacoma, which in the 1950s was known as one of the nation’s most polluted cities, largely due to a huge smelter whose stack was visible from all over the city, a stack that belched filth into the sky. The air was “so thick you could chew it,” my father liked to quip. The increasing pollution he saw all around him, in the city of his birth, contributed to his resolve that something had to be done to save the Earth. This became, perhaps, the most important message of Dune [emphasis added].

In other words, Tacoma’s pollution was so bad, primarily due to the ASARCO smelter, that it inspired Herbert’s message of conservation. It may not be a legacy that Tacomans want, but it is a legacy nonetheless.

The growing environmental awareness of the 1960s, of which Dune was very much a part, led to environmental reforms and regulations to put a stop to the most egregious assaults on the environment. ASARCO shut down its smelter, and on January 17, 1993 – exactly 20 years ago this week – its stack was demolished.

Just as the iconic stack is gone without a trace (save for remnants of its toxic plume), it seems all memory of Frank Herbert has disappeared from Tacoma as well. How could a Tacoma artist with his fame, literary significance, and quirks of character have so little recognition in his hometown?

Thea Foss has a waterway. Murray Morgan and Dale Chihuly both have bridges. Where is the Frank Herbert Bridge or Frank Herbert Park? Dune Boulevard? The Frank Herbert Center for the Literary Arts?

The tourism slogan we currently use to promote Tacoma is “Where Art and Nature Meet.” That describes Frank Herbert to a T.

It’s time to embrace the boy who swam the Narrows, who fished on Tacoma’s beaches, and who grew up to be one of the most influential science fiction authors of all time.

Erik Hanberg is a Commissioner on the Metro Parks Tacoma Board, elected in 2011. He is also the author of The Saints Go Dying and The Marinara Murders and will be publishing his first science fiction novel in 2013.

Very interesting read from the insight of Frank Herbert's son Brian who has continued writing within the Dune universe with his writing collaborator Kevin J. Anderson. It really shows the type of person Frank Herbert was and why he wrote the type of science fiction that he did. The man was really ahead of his time in the things that he predicted through his science fiction writing. Highly recommended if you are a fan of the Dune universe.

While Dreamer of Dune is certainly an imperfect biography, it nonetheless makes for a compelling read for any fan of Frank Herbert's writing. Weighing in at over 500 pages with a fair amount of repetition (and some blatantly incorrect factual statements), this book could definitely have used more critical editing prior to publication. There must be at least 50 pages of small incidents that don't contribute to the overall narrative, and could easily have been trimmed from this bulky work.

In spite of those shortcomings, Brian Herbert manages to deliver a heartfelt family biography, for in truth this book is as much about Brian and Beverly Herbert (Frank's second wife) as it is about the "Dreamer of Dune". If the reader is willing to accept the book on those terms, it is a fast read, full of strongly felt emotions and the author's attempt to understand his mercurial father. That very quest makes Dreamer of Dune more interesting than a standard biography written by an outside party, and if the intimacy of the content is sometimes overwrought, it is nonetheless genuinely expressed and highly readable.