Dreamer of Dune

The Biography of Frank Herbert

By: Brian Herbert

Narrated by: Scott Brick

Length: 19 hrs and 24 mins

Publisher's summary

Everyone knows Frank Herbert’s Dune.

This amazing and complex epic, combining politics, religion, human evolution, and ecology, has captured the imagination of generations of readers. One of the most popular science fiction novels ever written, it has become a worldwide phenomenon, winning awards, selling millions of copies around the world. In the prophetic year of 1984, Dune was made into a motion picture directed by David Lynch, and it has recently been produced as a three-part miniseries on the Sci-Fi Channel. Though he is best remembered for Dune, Frank Herbert was the author of more than twenty books at the time of his tragic death in 1986, including such classic novels as The Green Brain, The Santaroga Barrier, The White Plague, and Dosadi Experiment.

Brian Herbert, Frank Herbert’s eldest son, tells the provocative story of his father’s extraordinary life in this honest and loving chronicle. He has also brought to light all the events in Herbert’s life that would find their way into speculative fiction’s greatest epic.

From his early years in Tacoma, Washington, and his education at the University of Washington, Seattle, and in the Navy, through the years of trying his hand as a TV cameraman, radio commentator, reporter, and editor of several West Coast newspaper, to the difficult years of poverty while struggling to become a published writer, Herbert worked long and hard before finding success after the publication of Dune in 1965. Brian Herbert writes about these years with a truthful intensity that brings every facet of his father’s brilliant—and sometimes troubled—genius to full light.

Insightful and provocative, this absorbing biography offers Brian Herbert’s unique personal perspective on one of the most enigmatic and creative talents of our time.

©2003 Brian Herbert (P)2022 Scott Brick Productions, Inc.

WOW

Great Biography of a wonderful author. His legacy lives on with his son. Enjoyed listening to Scott read all the Dune books.

Dreamer of Dune

This biography is an interesting and yet disappointing audiobook. There’s a lot of minute detail about Frank Herbert’s life, but sadly not a lot of insight into his novels. Perhaps, this is an inescapable flaw in having the son as biographer. Especially irritating was the obsessive and excessive focus on the father’s flaws as a parent, while the son as biographer skims over the relationship of the father to his other two children.

A deeply moving real-life story

There is a technical distraction in this recording—the alternating timbres of the reader’s voice between different sets of recordings. This is very weak, and should be entirely re-recorded with a single microphone location. Otherwise, this is a deeply moving biography, as much the author’s autobiography as his father’s story. I’ll be relistening at some point.

very insightful

for being my first biological audio book, I was very impressed with the telling and amount of detail.
Scott Brick's performance was stellar as always.

Frank Herbert is an Inspiration

I loved listening to this. Dune (1-6) is my all time favorite work of fiction. Perfect if you want to be able to better understand Frank Herbert better.
It was so insightful yet heart breaking. It took some self control not to tear up hearing about the pain of losing Bev. I was not expecting to be so emotionally moved.

It’s amazing how much Brian was able to recount. He kept a journal which made it very specific. The only thing I wasn’t a fan of was it felt a bit repetitive towards the later half. Brian made it a lot about himself, which is okay because he is part of the story. However it felt like a little bit too much about Brian at some points and probably could have gone without some details.

Overall it was a great listen. Will definitely buy the book to have in my collection.

Highs and Lows of a Creative Life

One of the better biographies I have read. Told from a very personal point of view, that never gets in the way of being a well written biography. Warts and all, it never shies from the highs and lows of a creative life.

Herbert Was a Not a Nice Man

Sometimes I think it’s a mistake to read a biography of an author you really like because sometimes it happens that the man behind the fantastic stories is not a very nice person. That’s what I discovered when I read this biography of one of my favorite science fiction writers, Frank Herbert. The book has all the wonderful details regarding how and when Herbert’s great novels and stories came out and how success affected him and his family. If it were just that, I would have loved everything in it. Unfortunately, it also tells us a lot about the dark side of Frank Herbert. He spent a considerable amount of effort hiding from his ex-wife so she couldn’t collect child support payments from him. He was an overly strong (the word abusive comes to mind) disciplinarian of his children. He was an obsessively reckless driver routinely terrifying and risking the lives of his passengers. (In fact, the famous jump the bridge scene in The Santaroga Barrier appears to have been based on his decision to do exactly that with his wife and friend in his vehicle). He got friend Jack Vance to co-sign a car loan and then purposely didn’t make the payments so he could focus his money on other bills—stiffing Vance for years until he finally made enough to pay him back. In short, Frank Herbert wasn’t a nice man, even though apparently he had a gift for making people like him. And I find that sad, not that it changes how I feel about his stories.

As a biography, this is a pretty fine endeavor, but Brian Herbert also spends more than a small portion of it talking about his own life and his own writing career. To a certain extent, this is fine as he is Frank Herbert’s son and it shows his father’s influence, but often it seemed gratuitous to me. On the other hand, Brian Herbert is pretty honest with his own feelings toward his dad and how they changed for the better after he became an adult. Perhaps the nicest part of the biography is the picture he paints of his mother, Frank’s second wife, and a loving and dedicated spouse. If you enjoy Frank Herbert’s books, you’ll probably want to read this tribute, but be aware, Herbert is a complex man with a dark side.

The Morar Between Books

This book is the motor between the Frank Herbert books. It enhances the legacy of the Frank Herbert legacy.

Why did I wait so long?

i think I started the Dune series over forty years ago. in addition to it being one of my favorites, I have have long considered the original one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. In addition, I have enjoyed Brian Herbert's and Kevin J Anderson's expanded Dune Universe books as well. Why did it take me so long to read this... I can't say. This is one of the most open and honest bios I have ever read. It reminded me of my relationships with my father and my sainted mother. I highly recommend it.

Good, with a flaw

The book itself was very interesting and the reading was well-done. My one complaint was the inconsistency between the bulk of the reading and certain bits that were clearly redone or inserted later. They must have been done with a different microphone or something. It was distracting when these popped up. An engineer should have manipulated them to make the sound quality, tone, etc match better. But overall a good listen.