Talk:Frank Herbert

Contents

1 Wordage 2 Herbert's Travells 3 Biography editing 4 Legacy 5 Inspirations and influences 6 Inspirations and influences

Wordage

Can we remove the time specific comments like 'is currently' etc? It will help the article to age better, also the critical comment needs to be attributed to someone I think. --2toise 10:59, 18 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Yes. 'currently' could be replaced with as of 2003. Angela 11:04, Oct 18, 2003 (UTC)

Herbert's Travells

When I first came to Saudi Arabia (in 1978) it was said that Frank Herbert had stayed in Jeddah for a few months as an English teacher - or a few days as a journalist, depending on which story you believed.

Some dozen or so locations around the area were said to be the inspiration for locations in Dune (Taif barrier the Shield Wall, etc.) and they did all seem to be a remarkable match to the descriptions in the book.

Certainly it is easy to see Dune as a history of Saudi Arabia: House Al Saud vs. House Rashid, IXian technology as American technology, spice as oil, Mohammed and Islam, Suq mentality and the corruption of the merchant classes, and countless other apparent links.

Is this urban legend, or is there any substance? There is little on the 'net and I do not have access to many Western printed references --Anjouli 06:55, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Interesting, never heard that one. Of course, he could just as easily have gotten all that from a book - the idea that environment shapes culture was already a staple of anthropology, but few SF writers at that time had ever bothered to crack an anthropology text. --Stan 07:22, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Hi Stan. There was at least one person I used to know claimed to have known him in Jeddah. He described him as a pleasant chap in a safari suit, fat and balding, with a huge beard that always got filled with sand when he went exploring the desert in his open jeep. Without a good reference, may be a lot of BS.

Only on-line ref I can find is: Herbert conceived "Dune" after a stint in the military and travels around the Middle East. [1] (http://bilge.seablogger.com/archives/000062.php), which is a bit thin as evidence. Anybody got anything better? --aAnjouli 07:44, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

If it helps, 'The Maker of Dune: Insights of a master of science fiction' has an article/essay in which FH recounts the genesis of Dune, saying that it grew out of an article he did on a desert reclamation project. Oddly enough, the actual article never got published. -- Maru Dubshinki 08:21 PM Saturday, 12 March 2005

There is substance to this. The parallel has always been obvious to me, I think I rememember reading somewhere that FH spoke about Arabia being an inspiration for the book, and spent some time in the Arabic world, and he did study Arabic. I can't without some research comment about certain locations having direct parallels or where FH travelled exactly. I was meaning to add some comments about this to [[[Dune (the novel)]] and this article.

The Fremen for instance quite clearly talk in Arabic. He also drew a direct paralled between oil and spice. The comparison with the founder of Islam is rather clear, there are far too many parallels to be accidental, though I don't think FH ever stated it directly. Paul Atredies concerns about seperating his human life from his religious role is paralleled by Mohammed's concerns to seperate his religious visions from his words as a man. : ChrisG 07:53, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

O'Reilly in his book, chapter 3[2] (http://tim.oreilly.com/sci-fi/herbert/ch03.html)talks about Islam, Judaism and Dune. O'Reilly is less explicit about a direct link with Mohammed, more pointing out parallels to Lawrence of Arabia and Islam's tendencies to Mahdi's. The Lawrence of Arabia is very telling I think for Dune. While I think the comparison with Mohammed in Dune Messiah is more telling, how to be a man, a political leader and a religious prophet, without the the religious element swamping all. : ChrisG 08:55, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

If the Fremen speak Arabic, they speak very bad Arabic "Ahl as-sunna wal-jamas - the real world of the senses" this is clearly a take on "Ahl as-Sunnah wal Jama'at - The people of the (Prophet's) tradition and the community" meaning the Sunnis. "Mohw'pwium d'mi hish pash moh'm ka" & "L'ii ani howr samis sm'kwi owr samit sut." have no meaning at all. "Moulana Kausar Niazi" was a real Pakistani politician, Shakir Ali is an artist in Pakistan.

I took the strong influence of Islam in the books as recognition that Islam is a much more important world religion than Western fiction typically acknowledges. Justin 16:10, July 25, 2004

Biography editing

• The Biography portion of the article is grossly over-written and bloated, with journalistic semi-info rather than straightforward narrative. It was apparently written by someone deeply in awe of Frank Herbert -- who was, actually, a very nice gentleman, I met him a couple times.... It needs to be edited and cleaned up -- but I'm too lazy to do it myself. --Hayford Peirce 22:38, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

---

I just took a look at the entry on "Shakespeare". It's quite a bit shorter than the one on Frank Herbert. I think this article needs to be drastically shortened, with, among other things, all the fannish references to his wife and personal life resolutely chopped out. They really shouldn't be in here -- it looks to me as if a fan of Herbert originally wrote a 5000-word bio of him for some other project, perhaps a high school class, then dropped it into WP.... --Hayford Peirce 16:57, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

To be fair, there is vastly less documentation and known facts about Shakespeare's life. -- Maru Dubshinki

Thanks, I'll just throw away my graduate degree and while I'm at it my postgraduate degree shall I? Why should it shortened because Shakespeare is so short? If you think Shakespeare needs a longer entry then write it yourself, rather than complain about it! Wikipedia is not paper! Nor is the article particularly biased; if you do any checking, you will discover that Frank Herbert is rather respected within science fiction circles. Obviously his contribution to literary fiction is rather more arguable; and consequently there is no suggestion he has made such a contribution. --ChrisG 18:29, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I'm not saying it's biased -- I'm just saying that it's fannishly written with lots of extraneous stuff that shouldn't be there. It's an article about Herbert the writer, not Herbert the husband. And you will note there's a WP notice at the top of the article that it's already too long. Just because this is an electronic forum doesn't mean that thousands of extraneous words can just be dumped into any article. The articles should be pithy and concise. I'll let Shakespeare take care of himself -- but this article needs serious work on it. I'm glad you have a postgrad. degreee, but I doubt if it is in English or writing. Nothing wrong with that, but you have to look at this article the way it appears to an outsider: fannish and adoring. It should be disinterested and impersonal. --Hayford Peirce 18:43, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

One of my goals of the article was to get it down to 32kb; but I see no reason why it should be any shorter than that. Of course, it could be considerably better and I agree less fannish. But I am a fan and therefore I'm not the person to rectify it; because I love the topic too much. This being said I took offence at your comments because I think they are unjustified; there are many more poorer articles on Wikipedia and they are filled with far less quotes in support of the arguments. I don't take any offence at your edits and I suspect I'll be reading Napoleon Disentimed soon; I remember nearly buying once before. --ChrisG 19:24, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I agree that there are lots of other articles that are far worse than this one (and this one really isn't that bad, just overly wordy). But eventually they'll all be improved -- it's a slow process sometimes, however. Generally speaking, there have to be one or two people who take a real interest in the article and dedicate themselves to improving it. But in the meantime, one shouldn't use the poor articles as a justification for not fixing up another one. A better example would be to take a great article and then aspire to reach the same quality. It can be done, but it has to be done slowly, and it also has to fit the general WP guidelines, or style, or whatever you want to call it. Once you figure it out, it isn't difficult to then apply it to any article about anything. As far a being a fan, I can understand that, and there's nothing wrong with it. I'm a fan of George Jones the country singer and therefore haven't done much of anything to the present article about him, as it is hard to remain objective. I did, with some difficulty, write articles about Pancho Gonzales and Bill Tilden, the great tennis players, that, I think, give some idea of their greatness without merely saying that they were. It's tricky.... Frank Herbert seemed like an awfully nice guy the two or three times I met him. He was a friend of Jack Vance for many years (they and Poul Anderson had a houseboat together) and I was a close friend of Jack's for a long time and he told me a couple of funny stories about Frank.... I think Napoleon Disentimed holds up pretty well all things considered. I wish there were a cheaper edition available, although Amazon sells lots of used copies of it.... --Hayford Peirce 22:09, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I took a first crack at de-fannish-izing the biography section by combining the first two paragraphs and taking out the "pompous and portentous" story of Herbert telling his parents he wanted to be an author. Is that edit too heavy-handed? --Walkiped 00:48, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

That's a close call, but I think your edit was a good decision. -- – Quadell ^{(talk) (help)}[[]] 00:58, Sep 26, 2004 (UTC)

Legacy

Can we really say that Herbert left notes for his son to use? The only base for that claim is Brian Herbert, a rather undistinguished novelist, who is hardly a disinterested, impartial source; he has also notably not let anyone see or examine the purported notes. Perhaps that should be reflected in the article. -- Maru Dubshinki 08:00 PM Saturday, 12 March 2005

Inspirations and influences

TODO: Frank Herbert's inspirations and influences. To be noticed among other things: Carl Jung, history, other languages (Arab... Hebrew?), classical works (such as Homer), Machiavelli, dunes in the desert, ecology, his position towards intellectuals, his experience about "magically guessing cards" (in interview), his quasi-infinite variety of interests... Potential sources: Interviews with him and his son (Brian Herbert), McNellis' eulogy at his funerals (http://groups.google.ca/group/alt.fan.dune/msg/c8c7382c0752e8d3?q=obituary+frank+herbert+1986&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&edition=ca&rnum=4), others.

Inspirations and influences

(unfinished text moved from the article here, Pavel Vozenilek 16:17, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC))

TODO: Frank Herbert's inspirations and influences. To be noticed among other things: Carl Jung, history, other languages (Arab... Hebrew?), classical works (such as Homer), Machiavelli, dunes in the desert, ecology, his position towards intellectuals, his experience about "magically guessing cards" (in interview), his quasi-infinite variety of interests... Potential sources: Interviews with him and his son (Brian Herbert), McNellis' eulogy at his funerals (http://groups.google.ca/group/alt.fan.dune/msg/c8c7382c0752e8d3?q=obituary+frank+herbert+1986&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&edition=ca&rnum=4), others.