Mike Selby
It was the spring of 1957 when Frank Herbert arrived at the sand dunes of Florence, Oregon. A reporter for the ‘Oregon Journal,’ Herbert was flown there to investigate the USDA’s use of poverty grass.
Named “poverty” due to their low nutritional value, the Department of Agriculture had discovered the grass’s ability to stabilize sand dunes. While windblown mounds of sand take a full year to move a few inches, they cause severe damage. As Herbert would write, the dunes would “drown out forests, kill game cover, destroy lakes [and] fill harbors.” The USDA’s use of poverty grass had agriculture experts from across the globe descending on the dunes of Oregon.
In addition to reporting, Herbert also wrote science fiction, and had already sold dozens of stories to various magazines. But his work on the poverty grass story gave him a tremendous idea for a novel. A very long novel. He spent the next five years working on it. He titled it ‘Dune.’
In brief, it’s the story of a royal family’s struggle for the universe’s most valuable resource. It takes place on an unlivable planet of sand, complete with intrigue, space travel, romance, evolution, ethics, and giant murderous sandworms. It is also heavy on ecology, which Herbert felt was the “science of consequences.”
Due to his reputation for short stories, the magazine ‘Analog’ serialized the novel from 1963 to 1964. A reader favorite, Herbert’s next step was to get it published into book form. But there was a problem: no publisher wanted it.
“Nobody can seem to get through the first 100 pages without being confused and irritated,” wrote Doubleday. Harcourt Brace felt the same way, citing the novel’s unwieldy length (it was three times the size of regular science fiction novels) and the work’s “slow” and “wearying conversations.” Dutton rejected it, feeling “Something this size would require a perfectly incredible investment and a list price far exceeding any other science fiction book that has gone before.” Dodd & Mead Publishing told Herbert it was “incomprehensible” and “lost in it’s own weight.” Tom Doherty at Simon & Schuster wanted to publish it, but the cost of doing so had his board override his decision.
While Herbert was collecting these painful rejections, one publisher was trying to locate him. After reading ‘Dune’ in ‘Analog,’ book editor Sterling Lanier was trying to secure the rights to it. When he finally caught up with Herbert, he offered him $7,500 and future royalties. The author accepted, and ‘Dune’ appeared on the shelves in August of 1965, published by Chilton Books (yes, Chilton Books — the publisher of auto-repair manuals.)
Boasting stunning cover art by John Schoenherr, ‘Dune’ boasted a price of $5.95 (roughly $60 today, and had an initial print run of 2,200 copies. Sales were unfortunately dismal. The other publishers were correct: the book’s size required it to be priced over what people were willing to pay. Chilton fired Lanier over it.
But that was all they were correct on. ‘Dune’ won for “best novel” in both the Hugo and Nebula awards of that year. It began to amass a huge following on college campuses. The counterculture discovered its ecological concerns, and soon the novel was being sold through the ‘Whole Earth Catalog.’ Other science fiction writers were in awe of it. Sales began to skyrocket, and it soon became — and remains — the best selling science fiction novel of all time.
Bouyed by the book’s success, Herbert followed with ‘Dune Messiah’ (1969); ‘Children of Dune’ (1976); ‘God Emperor of Dune’ (1981); ‘Heretics of Dune’ (1984) and ‘Chapterhouse Dune’ (1985). ‘Children of Dune’ was the best-selling hardcover science fiction novel of all time.
(* Herbert’s son Brian has continued the ‘Dune’ saga, having written 20 prequels since 1999.)
(* Tom Doherty, who was overrode by Simon & Schuster, started his own publishing company—TOR, which publishes all the ‘Dune’ prequels.)
(* Chilton editions of ‘Dune’ are now worth $40,000.)