User Guide

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FRANK HERBERT - DUNE MESSIAH
“Adapt or die that’s the first rule of life.”
Born in Tacoma, Washington in 1920 and educated at the University Of Washington in Seattle Frank Herbert
enjoyed a varied career before becoming a full - time author which included professional photography, oyster
diving, jungle survival instruction, journalism (he held a senior position on a San Francisco newspaper) and
news commentary.
Herbert took up science - fiction in mid - life and began publishing stories in various publications which
catered for the genre, beginning in 1952 with a piece entitled ‘Looking For Something’. Over the next ten years
he was an occasional contributor to sci-fi magazines, publishing his first novel ‘The Dragon And The Sea’ a
perceptive tale of nuclear submarines, which like the best sci-fi predicted several strands of development.
It was a short novel, ‘Dune World’, in 1964 which brought him greater attention. To this he added ‘The Prophet
Of Dune’ before he amalgamated the two into what we now know as ‘Dune’ in 1965 in the process winning
two of science fiction’s most prestigious accolades the Hugo and the first ever Nebula.
Following its success Herbert wrote five sequels to the extraordinary social and religious eco-structure he
created with Dune: ‘Dune Messiah’ (which continued the story of Paul Atreides with catastrophic
consequences, ‘Children Of Dune’ which follows the fates of his sister Alia and two children Ghanima and Leto.
These were joined in the ’80s by ‘God Emperor Of Dune’, ‘Heretics Of Dune’ and ‘Chapter House Dune’ which
leapt millennia into the future from the original arrival of Paul.
Frank Herbert died in February 1986 aged 65, but that has done nothing to slow sales in his work. To date
Dune has seen a print run of 3,000,000 copies world-wide and, 27 years since its publication it’s still regarded
as one of the most effective attempts in science fiction to create a convincing alien environment - author
Arthur C Clarke compared it to Tolkien’s ‘Lord Of The Rings’ in its scope - in which the planet and its eco-system
is genuinely credible and supportive of the broad socio-economic infrastructure. The ideas have resurfaced in
countless books, films and comics ever since - not to mention computer games. Dune is the first interactive
entertainment game to embrace Frank Herbert’s achievements in this field.
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