Today we welcome Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson who are here to tell us about a newly published 700 page collection of Frank Herbert‘s stories. One commenter will win a hardback copy of this beautiful book which would make a great gift for any science fiction lover on your list. A Journey Into the Universes […]
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The Dragon in the Sea by Frank Herbert The East and the West rule the world, but the West is running out of oil. The West has been sending subtugs (specialized submarines) to smuggle oil from the East, but the last twenty missions have failed. It’s treachery! Security knows that the East has a lot […]
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Dune by Frank Herbert Paul Atreides is just fifteen years old, and small for his age besides, but he’s not to be dismissed. Paul is bright, well trained, and the heir of House Atreides. Paul’s father, Duke Leto, is an exceptional leader who commands the loyalty of his subjects with ease, thus earning him the […]
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Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013 documentary; actual movie never filmed) Watch trailer. It was inevitable that Dune captured the imaginations of film directors, but the scale and complexity of the story made the transition to film extremely difficult. Film rights were acquired in 1971 but little progress was made until 1974, when a French group acquired the […]
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Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert Frank Herbert’s 1965 Dune was an overwhelming success, winning awards and selling millions of copies. Little did readers know, however, that it was only the beginning of the Family Atreides saga. Picking up events roughly a decade after Paul’s ascension to Emperor, Dune Messiah is the story of his descent […]
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Children of Dune by Frank Herbert Based on the polar nature of the first two books in the DUNE series, Paul’s ascension in Dune and his descent in Dune Messiah, not much would seem left to be told in the House Atreides saga. Publishing Children of Dune in 1976, ten years after Dune, Frank Herbert […]
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God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert Given the coarse, operatic nature of Dune’s two sequels, I was reluctant to continue the series. I thought Leto II’s rise to power was an appropriate place to leave off in the cycle despite the three sequels Herbert penned. After reviewing Dune Messiah and Children of Dune, however, […]
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The Butlerian Jihad by Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson As one would expect, Dune prequel The Butlerian Jihad, by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, doesn’t match the original but it’s unfair of course to compare this work (the single book or the entire trilogy) to the original DUNE series, which well deserves its place […]
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The Machine Crusade by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson As everyone knows by now, this isn’t Dune. The first LEGENDS OF DUNE prequel, The Butlerian Jihad, wasn’t, nor will The Machine Crusade be. The problem isn’t that The Machine Crusade doesn’t match up well against Dune, it’s that it doesn’t match up well against […]
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The Battle of Corrin by Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson One steps into the LEGENDS OF DUNE series not expecting the achievement of Dune, an unfairly high standard, but a good read with maybe some flashes of Dune‘s complexity of character, plot, and philosophy. The first book of this trilogy, The Butlerian Jihad, failed in […]
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Sisterhood of Dune by Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson Sisterhood of Dune is the latest installment by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson in the add-ons to Frank Herbert’s classic DUNE series. To be honest, I gave up on the series after The Battle of Corrin — the third book in the opening LEGENDS OF […]
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The Green Brain by Frank Herbert The Green Brain is one of the novels that Frank Herbert published following the release of Dune. It was first published as a novelette under the title Greenslaves in Amazing Stories in 1965. Apparently the title is a reference to the English folk song Greensleeves. It was released as […]
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The Eyes of Heisenberg by Frank Herbert The Eyes of Heisenberg (1966) is set in a far future where humanity is ruled by a small group of biological immortals known as Optimen. They have lived for tens of thousands of years and regulated every aspect of life. Their life and health is preserved by carefully […]
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Destination: Void by Frank Herbert Destination: Void was first published in Galaxy under the title Do I Sleep or Wake in 1965 before the first version of the book appeared in 1966. It was revised and partially rewritten for the 1978 publication, released before Frank Herbert and Bill Ransom embarked on the DESTINATION: VOID trilogy […]
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The Jesus Incident by Frank Herbert & Bill Ransom In Herbert’s 1966 novel Destination: Void, a story about an experiment to create artificial intelligence, a crew was sent out to space with only two alternatives: succeed or die. In the late 1970s, Herbert returned to the Destination: Void universe with a new novel co-authored by […]
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The Lazarus Effect by Frank Herbert & Bill Ransom The Lazarus Effect (1983) is part of the PANDORA SEQUENCE that Frank Herbert wrote with Bill Ransom. The series has its origin in Herbert’s 1966 novel Destination: Void, of which he published a revised edition in 1978, prior to the release of The Jesus Incident (1979), his first collaboration with […]
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The Ascension Factor by Frank Herbert & Bill Ransom The Ascension Factor (1988) is the third book Frank Herbert wrote in collaboration with Bill Ransom and the fourth in THE PANDORA SEQUENCE, a series introduced in his novel Destination: Void (1966). It’s a series plagued with problems and tragedy. The Jesus Incident (1979), had to be extensively rewritten at […]
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The Santaroga Barrier by Frank Herbert A couple of years back Tor reissued four of Frank Herbert’s novels in absurdly cheap paperback format. For some of these titles it had been quite a while since they’d been in print and despite a poor quality of the paperbacks I snapped them up as soon as they […]
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The Heaven Makers by Frank Herbert The Chem are a race of aliens unknown to humankind. Because they’re immortal, they’re bored. So, for entertainment, they broadcast drama TV from Earth. Fraffin is one of the most successful producers of human drama. Authorities from his home planet suspect he may be manipulating events on Earth, which […]
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Whipping Star by Frank Herbert Whipping Star is one of Frank Herbert’s non-Dune books that Tor has been reprinting in recent years. This 1970 novel is the first full novel in the ConSentiency universe, which up to this point consisted of only two short stories. Both of them are contained in the collection Eye and […]
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The Dosadi Experiment by Frank Herbert The Dosadi Experiment is part of a series on Saboteur Extraordinary Jorj X. McKie consisting of two pieces of short fiction, A Matter of Traces (1958) and The Tactful Saboteur (1964), and two novels. The first novel is Whipping Star, which appeared in 1970. It was followed seven years later by this book. The books […]
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Soul Catcher by Frank Herbert Charles Hobuhet, an intelligent doctoral student in anthropology, is a Native American who holds a secret grudge against the Europeans who came to America, not only because of what they did to his race, but also because a group of them raped and killed his sister years ago. When Charles […]
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The Godmakers by Frank Herbert Frank Herbert’s The Godmakers is a novelized collection of four connected stories that first appeared in the pulp magazines between May 1958 and February 1960: “You Take the High Road” (Astounding Science Fiction, May 1958) “Missing link” (Astounding Science Fiction, February 1959) “Operation Haystack” (Astounding Science Fiction, 1959) “The Priests […]
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Direct Descent by Frank Herbert Direct Descent (1980) is by a fair margin the weakest novel by Frank Herbert I’ve read. In the far future the whole of Earth’s interior has been taken up by a gigantic library. Ships travel the known universe to collect information about just about everything and bring it back to […]
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Eye by Frank Herbert Eye is a short story collection by Frank Herbert and is one of his last works. Published in 1985, the same year his sixth Dune novel Chapterhouse: Dune was published, Eye covers most of his career. I guess you could consider this a “best of” volume. Herbert was not a prolific […]
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Dreamer of Dune by Brian Herbert In 2003 Tor released Dreamer of Dune, a biography of Frank Herbert (1920 – 1986) written by his son Brian Herbert, who has written a number of novels as well. The best known of these are the DUNE prequels and sequels written in collaboration with Kevin J. Anderson. Dreamer […]
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Dune directed by Denis Villeneuve It’s been many a year since I’ve read Frank Herbert’s Dune, so I can’t say with any authority where in the book Denis Villeneuve ends his film version, but I do feel comfortable saying it was too far. Because even at roughly 2 ½ hours, Dune the movie is too […]
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Our weekly exploration of free and inexpensive short fiction available on the internet. Here are a few stories we read this week that we wanted you to know about, including some nominees for the 2016 Nebula award. “A Militant Peace” by Tobias Buckell (2014, $2.62 at Audible) “No nation has ever seen an invasion force like this.”Tobias Buckell’s […]
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Hellstrom’s Hive — (1973) Publisher: America is a police state, and it is about to be threatened by the most hellish enemy in the world: insects. When the Agency discovered that Dr. Hellstrom’s Project 40 was a cover for a secret laboratory, a special team of agents was immediately dispatched to discover its true purpose and its weaknesses […]
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