Talk:Frank Herbert/Archive 1

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 Travels
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., 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 3talks 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


 * Agreed, unless there is proof, we cannot just write Brians POV. I added the same comment under controversies and more under the heading "Brian and Kevin claims" Lundse 09:52, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

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.

Controversies
It seems that the section under controversies, which details the dispute over the canoninical nature of BRIAN Herbert's novels, would be better located on a page about Brian Herbert or Kevin J. Anderson, with links from all of the new Dune books to those pages... There is no relevance of this dispute to either a Frank Herbert Article nor any article regarding the original Dune books. Does anybody disagree? --jonasaurus 00:07, 13 July 2005 (UTC)


 * I do. The issue is very much tied in with Herbert's legacy, and how (in the estimation of some fans) his son is raping it for his own gain. --Maru 02:48, 13 July 2005 (UTC)


 * I see your point, I had not thought about it that way. However, there is hardly an adequate explanation of that controversy within the article. It seems to me that the section encompasses two disparate issue (only one of which belong on that page). 1. The controversy over the legitimacy of his son's writing and 2. the debate over the canoninical nature of the new books.

I plan on clarifying the section regarding topic #1, and creating an article on topic #2 with links that lead from the pages on the new books. Does this sound like an adequate plan? --jonasaurus 03:02, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Someone has edited this article so that it completely endorses Brian and Kevins view, if none of the alledged proofs that they have the notes come up, I am going to revert it. I have already changed to mistaken claim that Man of Two Worlds was the last book Frank wrote (it was Ascension Factor, finished by Bill Ransom) Lundse 09:40, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

I reverted the following:


 * However, even if the issues are true there are minimal conflicting issues when compared to many other works of fiction - especially speculative fiction. The amount of readers who state these opinions are minute, most critics applaud Brian and Kevins addition to the DUNE saga; the New York Times, The Los Angeles Times are just some examples.

Aside from being ungrammatical, it's both POV by minimizing the discrepancies at the heart of the controversy (without supporting analysis or evidence) and empty of content. The hand waving comparison to other fiction and such discrepancies requires some sort of articulation to be useful (possible c.f. with Tolkien's work?). Critical acclaim by newspapers would be a useful counterpoint to claims of low quality if it's cited. Justin Johnson 20:18, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

There are no inconsistancies! What are they?! stop sprouting lies as the thruth!!! I'd like to see you write a better story than they did. It's extremely difficult to fill Franks shoes but the work that they did is more than satisfactory. If you give me your email, I'd be more than happy to discuss this with you in detail to hammer it out but until then this is missing much and is more POV your way.

POV statement
I think the following is perilously close to being POV: "Herbert is acknowledged as one of the finest science fiction (SF) writers of all time." That pretty much says to me that he is universally considered blah blah. I'm sure there are people out there who wouldn't give 50 cents for his collected works and who think that all of the Dune books are a big bore. "Finest" is awfully POV. Is there any so sweeping a statement in the Wiki articles about Wells, Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov, Silverberg, you name your favorite author? I think this one ought to be rewritten as, say: "Herbert is considered by many to be one of the finest science-fiction writers of all time." Or as: "Herbert is acknowledged by most people to be one of the most important science-fiction writers of all time." Or something.... You don't have to like John W. Campbell's stuff, for instance, to acknowledge that he was one of the most important people in the field.... Hayford Peirce 23:59, 11 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes but perhaps without the weasel words. What about "F.H. reached great success as author: Dune series was and is published in many countries etc...". Pavel Vozenilek 19:28, 12 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree with Hayford Peirce. The article is extremely fannish and POVish.--Bcrowell 23:09, 4 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I've done some edits to tone down the fannish and POVish stuff.--Bcrowell 23:13, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

There are no “discrepancies in the writing”. Write your proof before changing something in an "Encyclopedia"; that is opinion disguised as fact. Stating that the writing level is not satisfactory is one thing but claiming outlandish scenarios without justification is a whole other ballgame.


 * There's a host of factual and thematic discrepancies, along with wholesale additions to the Duniverse that have no foundations in the original books. For example, thematically, the Butlerian Jihad wasn't a Terminator style war of AI versus humanity, it was a human-driven rejection of the machine mindset.


 * I agree that citing actual discrepancies is useful to articulating the controversy. Simple denying the discrepancies, however, is just as POV as claiming them without examples. Justin Johnson 21:26, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

That is left to opinion. Frank did not directly mention that there wasn't a war and the mindset could have come much later. Moreover, people could have forgotten (for lack of a better word) about the jihad... If you've read The Battle of corrin you'd know that people by then were already starting to forget.

film "widely considered a classic of the genre"
I've deleted the text stating that the 1984 film "while often called flawed, is widely considered a classic of the genre." (Sorry about marking this as a minor edit -- that was a mistake.) The film gets a 6.4 rating on imdb. I haven't seen any evidence that it's "widely" considered even a good movie, let alone a classic of the genre.--Bcrowell 23:09, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Critics opinions aside, Frank Herbert didn't seem to have anything but nice things to say about the movie. --Mr. ATOZ 18:33, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Brian and Kevin claims - the notes
I think it should be decided once and for all how wikipedia is going to handle the controversies over Brian and Kevin's additions to the Dune universe - how we are going to refer to the notes, and whether the new writing is cannon. My claims on the notes are: Unless the two offer any proof that they have the notes, I cannot see why we should believe them. Wikipedia should reflect the fact that we only have their words for it (which is hardly NPOV). Also note that for a long time there were no notes, they were alledgedly found just before Kevin and Brian started writing their prequels. Lundse 09:52, 4 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Given Brian's status as Frank's estate in this matter, it's not for them to prove the existence of notes to us. Regardless, it's not the notes that make Brian Frank's heir, it's his legal status as son and inheritor.  The notes aren't required for Brian to be the 'official' estate. Justin Johnson 20:13, 4 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I am talking about whether wikipedia should say the notes exist or whether that is claimed by Brian Herbert (on other matters, see below). Some people claim there has been some proofs offered, I would like to know whether this is true. And I do think that in order for wikipedia to write that the notes exist, we must have more than the word of Brian Herbert (who has too much to gain by this claim to be neutral). Lundse 08:08, 6 March 2006 (UTC)