DUNE 7 BLOG

Wednesday, July 5, 2006

Frank Herbert at the Science Fiction Museum

Recently, I went to the Science Fiction Museum with Bill Ransom. We were videotaped for the Frank Herbert exhibit. They already have a nice display of memorabilia from his writing career, and this is being enlarged due to his induction into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. On tape, Bill and I told anecdotes about the life of the great author who inspired both of us, a man who was incredibly generous with his time. In fact, Bill and I were the only two "students" of Frank Herbert, since he took us under his wing and taught us many secrets of the writing craft. Bill collaborated on two novels in the "Pandora" series with Frank Herbert (THE JESUS INCIDENT and THE LAZARUS EFFECT, and completed a third following my father's death (THE ASCENSION FACTOR). I wrote Man of Two Worlds with Dad, which turned out to be his last published novel. Today I feel as if I am still writing with him, as Kevin J. Anderson and I continue to write novels and short stories in my father's incredible Dune universe.

Representatives of the Science Fiction Museum also visited me with a camera crew to film many of the Frank Herbert collectibles that I have. I showed them several signed books, as well as props from the 1984 movie "Dune" and from the two television miniseries "Frank Herbert's Dune" and "Frank Herbert's Children of Dune." I even showed them fantastic story boards and artwork from a Dune movie that was never filmed, back in the early 1970s. I also have the rolltop desk where Frank Herbert wrote his classic novel, but it may be too large for a museum exhibit. (See the photo section in Dreamer of Dune.) The museum has asked me to loan them the clapboard from the first Dune movie, which is marked "Scene 1, Take 1." We're working out the details now, and we hope to have it on display soon.

-- BH