Top 10 Books Written by Frank Herbert
Not named Dune
Frank Herbert was a superb American science fiction writer who published short stories and novels from the 1950s to the 1980s. He captured the imagination of readers around the world when his magnificent epic novel was published in 1965. Dune is one of the most-loved science fiction novels of all time. He wrote five sequels.
Herbert’s Dune universe overshadowed many other fascinating novels featuring bizarre, scary, wonderful worlds over the decades. He mastered so many aspects of science fiction that readers loved to read. His work had a significant impact on subsequent developments in science fiction, yet he is frequently only remembered for Dune.
Frank Herbert’s Top Ten Books — Other than Dune
10. The Heaven Makers (1968)
In The Heaven Makers, Herbert depicts the effects immortal aliens have been secretly imposing on human society. Aliens orchestrate and watch our struggles as a badly needed break from the endless tedium of their long lives. These struggles include full sensory depictions of such Earthly delights as wars, natural disasters, and marital breakups.
But there is a problem for the producers of these epics. The aliens’ government strictly prohibits active interference in the lives of the natives — an activity which Fraffin, the most highly esteemed of all alien producers, has been engaging in for centuries.
With the relatively recent advent of reality television, today’s readers will find it easy to relate to this novel’s plot. The very possibility that human history may have been orchestrated by alien entertainment producers for their fellows’ amusement will make more than a few readers wince in sympathy at the human characters’ predicament.
9. The Eyes of Heisenberg (1966)
This far-future dystopian story unfolds when Lizbeth and Harvey Durant, members of Parents Underground, request permission to watch skilled surgeon, Dr. Potter, make the ‘usual’ genetic alterations to their son, who is still an embryo. Normally, parents don’t ask, even though this is permitted. The unusual request foreshadows danger to the parents and the embryo.
The Durants’ son has an unusual genetic structure, which includes full fertility, high intelligence, and an incredible life expectancy. By not transforming this unusual DNA back into the usual pattern, the surgeon has disobeyed the law— and the parents know it.
Surgeons are legally obligated to seek out embryos with DNA patterns suitable to be transformed into “Optimen” and transform the others back into ordinary humans. Tension rises as Dr. Potter and a nurse destroy the records of this extraordinary embryo. Will this conspiracy of silence allow the embryo to survive and transform this sterile society?
8. Whipping Star (1969)
Frank Herbert created a series of far-future short stories and two novels in his ConSentiency universe. Here, humans have contacted numerous other civilizations and together they have built the ConSentiency, an interstellar government that handles conflicts between the civilizations.
Unfortunately, the ConSentiency at some point in its past had transformed itself into a radical democracy, a frightfully efficient one able to create laws so fast and so thoughtlessly that disasters nearly wrecked the entire system. The result? Leaders created one of the most intriguing government bodies in the history of science fiction: The Bureau of Sabotage. BuSab would function as a brake to the wheels of government, forcing it to legislate slowly and thoughtfully.
Enter Jorj X. McKie, a “Saboteur Extraordinaire.” He is a born troublemaker, a perfect BuSab investigator.
In Whipping Star, the first of two novels, he is given an astonishing mission: to stop the death of stars. McKie must solve the mystery of their death — and quickly. Anytime a star dies, it results in the death of millions. Why? Stars are sentient beings. They are powerful aliens known as the Calebans who appear as stars to humans and other sentients in the galaxy. They introduced instantaneous travel called jumpdoors to the ConSentiency. Trouble is, if all the stars die, every sentient being who has ever used the Calebans’ means of travel will also die.
Readers will be utterly absorbed in the story as McKie travels from world to world to track down clues. What he discovers astonishes him. A deviant human who loves flagellation has hired a Caleban — the key Caleban — to receive a star’s equivalent of flogging, one that will eventually lead to its death. Why did that particular Caleban agree to this outrageous contract? What will McKie do to stop it?
7. The Dosadi Experiment (1977)
In the second novel in the ConSentiency universe, there is a deadly experiment happening on a poisonous planet called Dosadi. Twenty generations earlier, powerful individuals among the Gowachin, an alien civilization, began the experiment by kidnapping thousands of humans and Gowachin, moving them through jumpdoors, and forcing them to live on Dosadi, experiencing painful, short lives of constant hunger and conflict.
Only one large city is relatively toxin-free. Constant fighting over scarce livable space and resources forces the survivors to grow more and more competent, stronger, and intelligent — and angrier. Nothing but survival is on every inhabitant’s mind.
Why did this experiment occur? What do the Gowachin conspirators hope to achieve? And why are the Calebans cooperating in the horror? BuSab learned of this experiment, one that violates every law of the ConSentiency. Jorj X. McKie, “Saboteur Extraordinaire,” as a government official, is permitted to go through “the God Wall,” which prevents inhabitants from escaping, down to the planet to investigate.
Readers will be immersed in this society along with McKie as he learns that this experiment has created sentients who are capable of exacting cruel vengeance. If these brilliant, angry people escape, what havoc will they wreak on an unsuspecting galaxy?
6. The Godmakers (1972)
In a different universe than that of the ConSentiency, a massive human galactic empire exists, but it was badly fractured by the ancient Rim Wars. Numerous planets are cut off from the empire. Five hundred years after the last of the wars, two Imperial organizations, the Rediscovery and Reeducation Service (R&R) and Investigative Adjustment (I-A), are tasked with bringing those planets back into the empire — with force, if necessary.
The novel begins with the first solo assignment undertaken by young R&R agent, Lewis Orne. He learns the supposedly peaceful society he has encountered on Planet Hamal is actually warlike. He reports his conclusions. His superiors investigate and determine that Orne’s assessment is correct. Orne is immediately promoted to I-A. Readers will be simultaneously gratified by the hero’s success and puzzled by it. How did a novice gain such high competence so quickly?
Orne has a secret: his psi powers are growing stronger. Solving mysteries with uncanny knowledge and skill, he is becoming much more than an intelligent, insightful agent. What is he and what strange destiny must he face? The Godmakers is a page-turner. The reader must find out.
5. Hellstrom’s Hive (1973)
In another dystopian novel, Herbert depicts America as a police state being threatened by something far worse. Agents of the State determine that Dr. Nils Hellstrom, a well-known expert on insects, is engaging in something far more sinister than merely studying the creatures on his remote Oregon farm. Project 40 is a cover for his real experiment: an attempt to create an insect/human hive mind modeled on those of ants and bees.
50,000 hybrid human/insect beings are hard at work building tunnels and caverns under the farm. They have no free will. Like ants, they merely respond to chemical cues. There are scientists with tiny, useless bodies and brilliant minds who are developing secret weapons to defend the hive. There are giants who are good at heavy lifting. There are soldiers who disable or kill perceived enemies of the hive. The hive entity desires nothing but to replicate itself and displace all humans on Earth with its own progeny.
Why would Dr. Hellstrom create such a bizarre experiment? Will he succeed? Unlike most fiction that features a hero, this novel focuses on a villain — an anti-hero. Herbert’s skill as a writer permits the reader to live inside the villain’s mind and learn what obsesses him and why. In so doing, Herbert has created what might be science fiction’s most fully developed villain, one that readers will identify with.
4. The Jesus Incident (1979)
The Jesus Incident is the first novel in a trilogy known as “The Pandora Sequence,” which depicts events over a 500-year period. Frank Herbert and Bill Ransom co-authored these novels. An earlier novel by Herbert, Destination: Void, can be read as a prequel. All four books are well worth the read.
A powerful AI controls a starship that calls itself Ship. It carries its cargo of humans to Pandora in the Tau Ceti star system, a dangerously poisonous planet loaded with lethal predators such as Nerve Runners and Hooded Dashers. It also features peaceful floating Hylighters and sentient kelp. When the humans are brought out of hibernation, Ship demands they develop a proper way to “WorShip” it. If they succeed, they will live. If they fail, they will be destroyed. As part of the test, the humans are left to the planet’s “tender mercies.”
3. The Lazarus Effect (1983)
The Lazarus Effect is the second novel in “The Pandora Sequence” trilogy. Ship seems to have abandoned the humans to their fate. Centuries later, humans have succeeded in killing off the sentient kelp, which they hated. They had feared it would destroy humans by absorbing them into its consciousness. Unfortunately for them, the kelp was a stabilizing force in Pandora’s ecology. Now the last of the land surfaces have been engulfed by the world-ocean.
But there’s hope: sentient kelp DNA survives. Genetic engineers have stored it within human DNA. Some humans hope to use that residue to bring back the kelp. Others fear that act will destroy their way of life. What follows is a tense conflict that will keep readers on the edge of their seats.
2. The Ascension Factor (1988)
The Ascension Factor is the third novel in “The Pandora Sequence” trilogy. Ship has returned to Pandora. The clone of Raja Flattery, a major character in Destination: Void, was revived by Ship. His title is Director, but he rules Pandora as a dictator. He believes Pandora’s ecological upheaval will doom humanity and so has requisitioned the entire output of the planet’s economy to build a new starship in which humanity can escape. Flattery uses the proceeds to finance the construction of an orbiting assembly station. “Project Voidship” is nearly underway, and the resulting famine on Pandora allows Flattery to control the population.
Humans have succeeded in reviving the kelp, which has regained consciousness. The kelp is helping humans to reclaim once-sunken land and a full-scale revolt against Flattery is brewing. Knowing the importance of the kelp, Flattery will not kill it off, but he seeks to stunt its growth. But the kelp is secretly connecting people, allowing them to organize even as Flattery seeks to keep them in ignorance.
How humans and kelp work together to defeat Flattery’s machinations, and how Ship responds, make for a stunning wrap-up of the many tangled plotlines the co-authors wove together over the years in “The Pandora Sequence” trilogy.
1. Destination: Void (1966 and 1978)
Herbert wrote the original version of Destination: Void during the heyday of America’s space program as a series of short stories in the early 1960s. It was first published as a novel in 1966. He rewrote it in the 1970s when he felt the original was becoming technologically outdated.
A short, tense prequel reveals that humans are sending out a starship crewed by expendable clones. They are supposedly tasked with flying the starship, loaded with colonists in hibernation, to a nearby star system and settling an Earthlike planet there — but the entire mission is a lie. The mission is in fact a massive effort to create humanity’s first genuine artificial intelligence. At the end of the prequel, the mission fails. The starship explodes.
The main story begins with a new crew of clones in a new starship. A disaster occurs, one deliberately created by mission planners. The ship is controlled by an Organic Mental Core, a human brain with two backups in case of trouble. All three brains have failed. Members of the crew, awakened to deal with the crisis, are too few to handle all the systems the OMC had handled with ease. They know they must create some sort of artificial system, or the mission and the colonists are all doomed. Thus, the crew begins their all-out effort to create an AI.
Tensions build as the reader realizes how truly devious the mission planners have been. Each of the four crew members has his or her own expertise, but they have also each received secret instructions unknown to the others. Each character in turn gradually realizes something else is going on. The disaster they are attempting to handle is not an ordinary disaster.
Viewpoint narration shifts between the four characters as the story proceeds. They begin collaborating in earnest as they realize the entire crew had been lied to. Even so, creation of an AI is essential for their survival.
