Sandworms of Dune
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Monday, April 9, 2007

Sandworms Review Galleys

Tor Books is mailing out the bound galleys of SANDWORMS to book reviewers around the country, and they asked Brian and me to write an introductory letter. Most of you are aware of the information it contains, but we thought you might find the letter interesting.

-- KJA

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Dear Reviewer:

It's not often an author can honestly say that readers have been waiting decades for a particular novel. However, in the case of SANDWORMS OF DUNE, that statement is absolutely true.

Frank Herbert began his magnificent science fiction epic, the Dune Chronicles, with the book publication of DUNE in 1965. Though he originally had difficulty getting such a massive novel published, DUNE won both the Hugo and the Nebula Awards for best science fiction novel of the year and ultimately became a cult favorite. Today, DUNE stands as the best-selling science fiction novel of all time. By the time DUNE was made into a film by David Lynch in 1984, the novel was more popular than ever and hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Since then, it has been remade as a six-hour TV miniseries for the Sci-Fi Channel, and became the most-watched show in the history of the network.

Frank Herbert followed up the original novel with five sequels, the second of which (CHILDREN OF DUNE) became the first genre science fiction novel ever to hit the New York Times bestseller list. But the Dune Chronicles transcend science fiction and extend to a mainstream audience interested in ecology, politics, philosophy, religion, fanaticism, and economics. Herbert's last Dune novel, Chapterhouse: Dune (published in 1985 shortly before his untimely death) ends on a cliffhanger with the group of beloved characters trapped aboard a ship fleeing across uncharted space to escape from an unnamed Enemy which seeks to destroy the human race.

More than a decade after Frank Herbert's death, Brian and Kevin decided to carry on the saga of the Dune universe. As dedicated Dune fans ourselves, we very much wanted to know how the story ended, just as millions of fans did. In searching his papers, we discovered thousands of pages of notes for history, character backgrounds, unpublished chapters and early drafts -- and the outline for "Dune 7," Frank Herbert's intended grand climax to the chronicles.

Armed with this knowledge of how the breathtaking tale would end, we developed, wrote, and published much of the necessary backstory (in two internationally bestselling and award-winning trilogies, "Prelude to Dune" and "Legends of Dune"). Finally, with all the necessary seeds planted and with worldwide interest in Dune reawakened, we could turn to the story the fans had been wanting to read since 1985.

Because Frank Herbert's outline laid out such a vast story, we realized it could not be contained in a single novel. We broke the grand climax into two volumes, last year's bestseller HUNTERS OF DUNE and now SANDWORMS OF DUNE. Here, the answers to many long-standing questions are revealed, and the plot threads spanning fourteen novels and more than 15,000 years of imaginary history are drawn together.

While SANDWORMS will be the chronological grand finale to the chronicles, Frank Herbert's epic spans so many millennia that we have plenty of room to tell more stories set in the Dune universe. After completing nine ambitious and complex books in collaboration, we still greatly enjoy writing with each other. We are already hard at work on PAUL OF DUNE, the first in a new trilogy.

Brian Herbert
Kevin J. Anderson