The Herbert Papers

[Gunnar]

Hello true believers!

Some of you probably remember me. Nice to see you again!

I'm just dropping by to mention (brag) that I recently visited CalState Fullerton and had a look at the collection of Frank Herbert's papers in the Pollak University Library special collections. (Dr. McNelly had sent me copies of a small part of this material many years ago, but most of it was new to me.)

Here are the original manuscripts for Dune and other FH novels, straight from Herbert's hand and typewriter. There are 8 boxes of papers just devoted to Dune, and in my visit I only had time to look through three of them, relating mainly to the first part of the novel.

It was really interesting to see the edits between different drafts, with whole sections crossed out, and new lines scribbled between the lines or in the margins, and fairly unreal to be handling the actual papers where he first wrote the words of the book.

In addition to three nearly complete typewritten versions of the manuscript (which seem to be versions sent to publishers for their evaluation) and the author's corrected proofs, the boxes I looked at included Herbert's correspondence with his agent and different publishers (including a lot of rejection letters, ranging from regretful to fairly blunt dismissals: Doubleday looked at three drafts and went from a cautious "maybe" to something like a rant about all the book's flaws) and John W. Campbell. (Some of this has been published in 'The Road to Dune') An interesting aspect is that you can see how some of this feedback may have affected choices in the late-stage editing of the book.

The boxes also include the drafts of changes between the serialized Analog version and the book edition, including the added appendices and terminology.

Finally, what I found most fascinating of all were a couple of folders of disorganized scraps of paper and heavily yellowed legal-format sheets (the other typescripts were letter-format). There are handwritten lists of names and words (one says "Catalan or Caladan?"; in one of the typewritten drafts Herbert has crossed out Catalan and substituted Caladan), and even a page of the symbols used for Kynes' ecological lessons. There are discarded outlines and false starts under various titles (including 'Muad'Dib' and 'C/Oracle'), and on the back of an earlier typewritten outline there's a handwritten version of the chapter with the worm attack on the harvester in a form not too different from the final, written on the back of earlier.

There's a handwritten note listing the main characters as Leto Atreides, Jessica Linkam and their son Barri, and another draft giving the villain as Valdemar Harkonnen. (This also corresponds with information in 'The Road to Dune.')

Oh, and there are two versions of the chapter where Jessica and Paul meet Liet in the old ecological testing station, both significantly different from the final. In the first (and I think earlier), Paul is written as significantly younger, and ends up reflecting that he's made a fool out of himself: "I talked when I should have listened!" In the other, Liet explains his vision for Dune, and strongly impresses both Paul and Jessica, to the extent that she is afraid he has become a hero to her son (which she doesn't consider appropriate for a Duke).

I was allowed to handle all the material, and to make photocopies. Unfortunately I didn't have time to copy nearly everything (of the fraction I had a chance to look at), particularly since the notes on legal-size paper didn't fit the copy paper, and I couldn't use the automatic feeder on most the material because the paper was crumpled or too fragile. Still, I got some of the choicest bits to study at leisure. While I promised not to "publish" the material, I should think a picture of a page or two, just to show what they look like, would be OK.

Four hours was not nearly enough time to fully survey, much less study or copy, the complete collection, even the bits relating only to this one book. If I had had the opportunity I would gladly have spent another couple of days at the library, but I had other commitments and could only indulge my interest so far. Many thanks to the Special Collections librarian, Ms. Sharon Perry, for her great help and indulgence!

The Special Collections reading room at the Pollak Library is open to the public on weekdays, so if you're ever in the Anaheim region I would highly recommend a pilgrimage.

Cheers,
Gunnar

PS: While I guess this newsgroup is past its time, it would be nice if there was a good discussion forum somewhere for fans of Frank Herbert and Dune, with the kind of in-depth discussion we used to have here back in the day.

[Sammy Sands]

"Gunnar" wrote in message
news:3eda9153-8cb7-45f8...@googlegroups.com...

--

Wow! What an experience that must have been. Great description, too.

I wonder what Hitch, John Kenny, Jocko and others are up to these days.

Sammy aka Bastard Toadflax

[Raveem]

Splendid account of a worthwhile pilgrimage.

It is rather sad to see activity on the newsgroup so low. It really needn't be so since with Google Groups to access the web version, it is basically a forum with the addition of tied in email access.

Raveem.

[Etienne Rouette]

Wow, that must have been quite an experience! Thanks for sharing.

And Hitch come back, all is forgiven!

(Top-posted to honour Hitch).

Gunnar wrote:
> Hello true believers!
>
[snip]
>
> Cheers,
> Gunnar

[Gunnar]

I've now had a chance to look over the copies I made, compare them with the ones Dr. McNelly shared with me some ten or twelve years ago (finding that there's no overlap, but some continuity between the pages), with the Pollak Library catalog, and briefly with the excerpts in 'The Road to Dune.'

Altogether I have almost 300 photocopied pages of manuscript pages and working notes for Dune, plus more than 20 pages of correspondence (most of which is included or summarized in 'The Road to Dune').

The manuscript papers include:

1) The first 138 pages of a late draft of the book (all I had time to copy)
2) A draft of the Terminology of the Imperium glossary
3) Two typewritten drafts of introductions/summaries for the second and
third part of the novel (the latter to become Appendix III)
4) Various loose handwritten notes
5) Various fragments of earlier chapter drafts
6) Two incomplete early outlines of the book
a) First Outline (numbered Chapter 1 to Chapter 12)
- Linkam and Gurney lead a company of spice miners on a hostile planet.
Pages end with no resolution.
b) Second Outline (numbered chapters B, F-L)
- Similar to the version expanded by BH&KJA into "Spice Planet". All about
Duke Leto's effort to mine the spice and learn about the planet's
ecology. Ends with him managing to blackmail the emperor into banishing
the Harkonnens. (Some early chapters missing.)

For the sake of illustration and scholarly discussion, I've uploaded just two pages from this pile. Note that Frank Herbert's estate (represented by the Frank Herbert Partnership) owns the intellectual property of these pages; I'm only including them here under what I believe to be fair use:

- The first page of 6.a. As far as I could find and as near as I can tell, the earliest notes for what would become Dune. Linkam is the prototype of Leto; note that one of his men carries that name:

http://i.imgur.com/zHjyo.jpg

- Notes for or summary of a later draft. Note the names of the characters (Barri, Jessica Linkam, Hoskanner) and the explanation of the story's theme of addiction. Very close to both the 6.b outline and the 'Spice Planet' version of the story, and apparently intermediate between them:

http://i.imgur.com/YB86J.jpg

I could describe the other papers at length, but let me just make some general observations instead:

First, I clearly haven't seen all the relevant papers in the collection, since Dr. McNelly sent me pages I didn't come across myself. And of the papers I did look at, I didn't have time to photocopy everything. I'm kicking myself in particular for apparently not copying the page with sketches of Kynes' symbolic language for teaching ecology.

Second, 'The Road to Dune' already includes most of the coherent, fully written out material (that differs significantly from the published versions) that I could find among the papers. Vice versa, pretty much all the bits of Frank Herbert's writings in 'The Road to Dune' are taken from the papers in the Pollak Library. The one big exception is the outline they describe as the basis for 'Spice Planet.' Although I found a version with a similar plot (6.b above), in that version the character names have already evolved to the familiar ones (with the exception of Esmar Tuek for Thufir Hawat, still).

I am quite satisfied that the outline they describe does exist (more or less; they are probably also drawing on other loose notes to fill in blanks, like the one I linked to above; which is perfectly fine and legitimate, of course), either in some library storage box I didn't look at, or among the other papers they describe finding. I think the story they give of him throwing that version away and starting from scratch (with input from John W. Campbell) must be a bit simplified; the drafts I'm looking at show more continuity between revisions than they imply, and Campbell didn't get involved until Dune as we know it had largely crystallized.

In any case, an impressive amount of documentation of the process of writing Dune has survived. I think it sheds light on some old claims, beliefs and theories about the origins of the novel (for example, I see absolutely no evidence that any part of DM or COD was conceived in detail, much less written, during the drafting of Dune; rather, I see numerous references to the first novel itself as a trilogy). I think this would be very interesting to explore.

OK, that's all from me for now.

[Sammy Sands]

Thank you for this, Gunnar!!!!!

"Gunnar" wrote in message
news:018dca2a-5bdc-4093...@googlegroups.com...

[Tony]

"Gunnar" <har...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:

Tony replied: That's interesting Gunnar. I forget where I read that Frank
Herbert intended the Dune series to form an initial trilogy (Dune, Dune
Messiah, Children of Dune). Perhaps it was in one of his interviews,
essays, or the preface to a book. By the way, Did you happen to read the
book "The Science of Dune," edited by Kevin R. Grazier?

[Gunnar]

On Friday, September 7, 2012 12:01:50 AM UTC+2, Tony wrote:
> Tony replied: That's interesting Gunnar. I forget where I read that Frank
>
> Herbert intended the Dune series to form an initial trilogy (Dune, Dune
>
> Messiah, Children of Dune). Perhaps it was in one of his interviews,
>
> essays, or the preface to a book. By the way, Did you happen to read the
>
> book "The Science of Dune," edited by Kevin R. Grazier?

FH makes the claim in the intro to 'Heretics'. I've always been a bit skeptical. I can easily believe that he had the idea that Paul would be destroyed by the forces he had unleashed and by his own prescience, and that the government and religion he created would become ossified structures. Those ideas can be found in Dune. ("Prophets have a way of dying by violence"; "Institutions endure.")

I don't think he had the specific events of 'Messiah' and (particularly) 'Children' in mind, or had thought up concepts like face dancers, gholas or Leto II's worm transformation. For one thing, I don't think he expected at the time to have an opportunity to write any sequels. Dune itself was already longer than most publishers were willing to consider, and he and his agent (Blassingame) occasionally tried to sell it as a trilogy. (Interestingly, Campbell didn't accept the whole thing for Analog serialization at once. Part 1 was accepted by June 1963 and the first installment published in December, but a December 2, 1963 letter from Blassingame to Herbert "hopes" that Campbell will accept parts 2 and 3. By March the following year, Herbert had made revisions requested by Campbell, so he must have accepted it by then.)

But I should hasten to add that I have no proof that Herbert's claim isn't true, and the fact that I didn't find any drafts or notes that suggest any plans for the next books is hardly conclusive, since I only examined a small part of the material, and didn't look at the papers for 'Messiah' or 'Children' at all. Maybe once he'd finished the bulk of the writing and was just editing and revising it, he also toyed with some ideas for where the story could go next?

I have not read 'The Science of Dune'. Is it any good?

-G

[Sammy Sands]

"Gunnar" wrote in message
news:5ffb9036-30f7-4c4d...@googlegroups.com...

--

I considered it to be a waste of time. Its connection to Dune is just in
passing. Most of the essays just use it as an intro into them. Any insight
into Dune is far and in between.

Sammy

[Gunnar]

On Tuesday, September 4, 2012 4:34:52 AM UTC+2, Gunnar wrote:
> For the sake of illustration and scholarly discussion, I've uploaded just two pages from this pile. Note that Frank Herbert's estate (represented by the Frank Herbert Partnership) owns the intellectual property of these pages; I'm only including them here under what I believe to be fair use:
>

> http://i.imgur.com/zHjyo.jpg
> http://i.imgur.com/YB86J.jpg

To back up the fair use rationale, maybe I'd better provide a bit more in the way of analysis.

The first link is, as mentioned, the first page of an outline that covers chapters 1-12 of an unnamed story (clearly a very early version of Dune). It is by no means representative of the other pages (one for each chapter), which are all much shorter and less detailed, and only provide key words for planned events and the occasional line of dialogue.

The main reason I believe this outline predates all other known drafts or notes is that it lacks a number of features of Dune found in the other versions, and differs from things they all have in common. For example, Linkam (the character who would become Duke Leto) is not a Duke, but a "group control administrator" previously employed by CHOAM (or CHAM, as Herbert apparently considered calling it); there's no mention of his family, or of a feud with another House. The outline doesn't even mention sandworms! (Though it's possible, of course, that Herbert had them in mind without mentioning them. However, a note to Chapter 5 explains: "Why you can't -- tunnel, drill, blower etc. Stasis generator won't work -- static fld burns it out." It seems the problem is the weather, not worms.)

In this version, Linkam is a former CHAM administrator who has formed his own competing firm. He and Gurney Halleck lead a company of spice miners to a hostile "dune planet." They have a contract to harvest a certain amount of spice in a certain amount of time; the main problem is the ecological conditions on the planet, including ferocious sand storms, but they also face sabotage by unknown parties (the outline mentions a "former enemy"; we might also suspect the CHAM company looking to rid itself of a competitor). This CHAM company is smaller than Dune's CHOAM: "Ten planetary monopolies".

Incidentally, talking about CHAM/CHOAM, we see that Herbert initially put accents over Combiné Honnête, and that the O stood for something other than Ober (I read Offi.. but can't make out the last two letters). With the accents, the whole thing is more obviously French, allowing us to interpret "avancer" as the verb "to advance." "Ober" (always the most mysterious part of the acronym) is not a French word, but it could be a corruption of "obérer": to burden (with debt), or possibly "obéir": to obey. If Herbert got "combiné" from looking up "combine" in a French-English dictionary, that could also be where he got the idea for "melange" (both words can mean "mixed").

There's no mention of any feudal aspect to any of this; it appears to be a completely professional, capitalistic enterprise in a futuristic-modern universe. The theme of a small extraction crew in a hostile environment with possible saboteurs among them is similar to Herbert's previous novel, 'Dragon in the Sea.'

This chapter outline establishes one of the fundamental aspects of Linkam/Leto's character: his concern for his people. "damn' the non-recourse riders in their contracts! They're human beings!" prefigures similar sentiments in Dune. This version provides an intriguing reason for what was to become The Atreides Code: over-compensating for the professional cynicism of someone's whose job is motivation (i.e. manipulation). This tension between cynicism/pragmatic self-interest and basic decency is part of what makes Duke Leto such a compelling character in the final novel, and the seeds were there from the start.

Tracing the origins of other parts of the book, the bit about 30,000 people having bought shares in him may be the basis for Baron Harkonnen's musing in Dune about how Leto is "detained there by a million shares of himself sold in dribbles every second of his life," and "Consider leis..." ended up as the opening line of the anti-CET song in the 'Religion of Dune' Appendix. However, the part of Dune that most clearly derives from this outline is the section where Leto asks Gurney to convince more of the outgoing crew of spice miners to stay on Arrakis. Only the number of people involved is significantly different, and Herbert kept changing that even in late drafts (eventually settling on 800).

By the way, Herbert habitually misspelled "persuade" as "pursuade"; it shows up in a number of other drafts as well.

The outline ends with a line from "Leto", apparently one of Linkam's men. That another character should carry that name helps explain what would otherwise be a strange discrepancy on a later page: Chapter 7 mentions "flight w/paul" as a plot point, but we know from other notes that Paul was called "Barri" in early drafts. Perhaps Herbert went back and forth on the name, but I think it's more likely that "Paul" at this stage was considered as the name of a different character, possibly the one who eventually became Liet-Kynes.

Here, the main character is only called Linkam or "Link". In the outline Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson talk about in 'The Road to Dune' he was apparently "Jesse Linkam", while proto-Jessica was "Dorothy Mapes" (another name that was partly reused for another character). In the other page I linked, we see that once he was renamed Leto Atreides, his partner became "Jessica Linkam", clearly just a gender-switch of the old name, before the "Linkam" part was eventually dropped completely.

Gurney Halleck, on the other hand, here seems to have emerged almost fully formed from the start, with his baliset and all. However, there are some really strange notes about him later in the outline. Chapter 6: "Female complications w/Gurney. / Y'know the suppressants don't work on me!" Chapter 9: "trouble with men. / gurney and gal fnd tgthr. / just tlkg! jumped up... we were just tlkg! / gg have to send gurney back? / men ugly....suppressants have peculiar psych effect. / purity of womanhood....throwback to adolescence in mental attitude twd females." Apparently Herbert's initial concept included drugs being used to suppress sexual urges among the crew. While this particular theme was abandoned, drugs of course took on much greater importance as the novel developed.

In the margins we see the words "bene gesserit", apropos nothing. I find it unlikely that Herbert had the Sisterhood in mind when he created this outline, so I think it was added later. On the back of this page (and the whole rest of the outline) there's a handwritten version of the harvester rescue from much later in the writing process (Leto and Jessica have their final names), and Herbert may have written this note at around the same time.

All in all, we can see the traces of this outline all over the final novel (at least the first third of it), and most of it was used in one form or another, though often in greatly changed form. I didn't come across any other papers that seem to relate to this stage of the book's development; it's possible that it only ever existed in the form of this outline before Herbert had the idea of layering the feud of two Great Houses on top of his spice mining story, and started over on the composition. I'm not even sure whether the outline was ever completed. The pages I have stop with Chapter 12, but they seem to only be where they were because of what Herbert wrote on the back later, so it's quite possible that further chapters have been lost or are hidden somewhere else among the papers.

-G

[Sammy Sands]

Fascinating stuff. Well written, too. Thanks, Gunnar!

Sammy

"Gunnar" wrote in message
news:f38aac13-f2ca-46b5...@googlegroups.com...

accents over Combin� Honn�te, and that the O stood for something other than

Ober (I read Offi.. but can't make out the last two letters). With the
accents, the whole thing is more obviously French, allowing us to interpret
"avancer" as the verb "to advance." "Ober" (always the most mysterious part
of the acronym) is not a French word, but it could be a corruption of

"ob�rer": to burden (with debt), or possibly "ob�ir": to obey. If Herbert
got "combin�" from looking up "combine" in a French-English dictionary, that

[Gunnar]

On Sunday, September 9, 2012 11:37:57 PM UTC+2, Sammy Sands wrote:
> Fascinating stuff. Well written, too. Thanks, Gunnar!
>
>
>
> Sammy
>

Thanks Sam. It would be nice to have all the manuscript papers and notes, and to be able to share them freely so people could make their own analyses, but unfortunately that's not possible.

-G

[Sammy Sands]

"Gunnar" wrote in message
news:883635d9-85b1-4b81...@googlegroups.com...

--

Yes. That would be nice. But, thanks to you, we've had some fresh
thought and Dune Plums that we didn't have before.

Sammy (I like plums)

[Tony]

I think you're right: Frank Herbert probably had a few general ideas about
plot lines for possible sequels to "Dune," with nothing as specific as
Leto's sandworm transformation. However, I do remember that before he
embarked on the writing of "Dune" he became convinced that science fiction
was going to become "the next big thing." Therefore, he may have been more
optimistic about the prospects for a Dune science fiction sequel than you
suggest. I agree with you that it's difficult to draw definitive
conclusions about an author's beliefs or intentions based upon a partial
reading of existing notes. It was interesting to learn about the quantity
of specific revisions Frank Herbert generated as he worked toward the
finished version of his Dune masterpiece.

I enjoyed "The Science of Dune," not only for the interesting speculations
about Dune science that it contained, but also for the informative overview
of the different branches of science discussed.

[sola...@gmail.com]

Hi Gunnar,

There is a forum for Herbert discussion that is worthwhile (that is to say, not the family/corporate Dunenovels.com forum). Check out http://www.jacurutu.com

I am a co admin of that place. I myself have been to the Herbert archives three times, and we have two or three other members that have visited. We have copied much of the archives thus far.

[Dan Cline]

WOW great to see you back! Awesome information too!

[Ed Stasiak]

> Gunnar

>
> While I promised not to "publish" the material, I should think a picture
> of a page or two, just to show what they look like, would be OK.

Why doesn't the university just publish the Herbert material as is?

Is there some copyright issue with his son, (wouldn't surprise me...)
because I thought the university own the papers outright and could
do as they pleased with them?

I'm sure they'd make their money back and then some, as fans would
love poring thru the early drafts and re-writes and (lol) rejection letters.

[tony]

"Ed Stasiak" wrote in message
news:5363b00c-a411-46b8...@googlegroups.com...

Hi Ed,

I'm taking a guess here, but it could be that for university library
collections of this type:

"Copyright law specifies that reproduction is not to be 'used for any
purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research.'