Introduction
Frank Herbert will forever be known as the “author of Dune,” the science fiction masterpiece that made his career and made his name. But he was an exceptionally diverse author who wrote in numerous genres. Even at the beginning of his writing career, Frank Herbert wrote whatever inspired him, irrespective of genre, market, or audience tastes.
His first novel, The Dragon in the Sea, was published by Doubleday in 1955 and bought outright by Universal Studios for film (the movie was never made). A tense science fiction war drama set aboard a futuristic submarine hauling fuel through enemy lines—the story focused on the pressures encountered by the crew when faced with insurmountable dangers, a science fiction spin on Das Boot.
The Dragon in the Sea proved to be a success, even resulting in film interest, and Frank Herbert wrote another novel, and another, and another—thrillers, mysteries, science fiction, mainstream (including the SF dystopia High-Opp, released by WordFire Press in 2012). His agent, Lurton Blassingame, couldn’t sell any of them.
With his family on the road in Mexico, Frank Herbert tried to eke out a living as a writer (as described in detail in Brian Herbert’s Hugo-Award-nominated biography Dreamer of Dune). He followed up Dragon with a succession of manuscripts, novels, and stories of all types: thrillers mysteries, science fiction, mainstream.
None of them could find a market.
But he was determined and followed his creative vision with tale after tale, all of which remained unpublished. Among them were A Game of Authors, Angels’ Fall, “Paul’s Friend,” “Wilfred,” “The Waters of Kan-E,” “The Yellow Coat,” “Public Hearing,” High-Opp, and many others.
Undaunted, Frank Herbert penned books and stories … until he wrote the most unpublishable novel of all, a massive SF epic called Dune, which was rejected more than twenty times before being released by an obscure publisher of auto-repair manuals. Dune went on become one of the best-selling SF novels of all time.
In this volume are collected four complete novels written during Frank Herbert’s years of struggle. These manuscripts were complete and edited to Herbert’s satisfaction, which his agent then submitted to numerous publishers. Other than the correction of the occasional typo, WordFire Press has reproduced these novels as Herbert wrote them.
High-Opp is a dystopian novel about high society and low society, a story that would prove oddly prescient about today’s class-warfare debates. Daniel Movius, a successful bureaucrat who scores high in the public opinion polls that drive society, is betrayed and finds himself stripped of everything, cast down to the dregs of society—which he discovers are ripe for revolution.
Angels’ Fall (originally titled We Are the Hounds) is a jungle survival adventure that features Frank Herbert’s characteristic microcosm of people under intense stress. The following is how he described the book to his agent when he’d completed it:
December 18, 1957
Dear Lurton:
Here’s the new novel. (Bev says it takes two people to write a novel: one to write it, and one to hit the writer over the head when it’s finished. She borrowed my shillelagh for the occasion.)
From this distance (which somewhat garbles information) I get the impression of Doubleday that they’re kind of the Ford Motor Co. in book publishing. You can’t tell one novel from another without the license plates. Admittedly, this is over-simplification. But I’d hate to have this piece get lost on somebody’s assembly line, and painted blue instead of red.
That’s why I’m suggesting (a suggestion you may take only if you agree) that we try Hounds on a smaller publishing house, or one with a reputation for putting a heavy concentration of effort on a book they think will go (Scribners?). I can’t be certain from here. But I do believe that this novel will run away if it’s given any kind of push at the beginning.
(This is not to say that Doubleday didn’t get all the mileage there was out of Dragon.)
The book selling business is booming out here. A friend’s store is some 60% ahead of last year. (We helped him somewhat with his motivational research methods applied to his promotion.)
Season’s greetings and all that.
Best regards,
Frank
Five years later, with many rejections and no further novels published, Frank Herbert had parted ways with Lurton Blassingame, revised the manuscript substantially, and changed the title from We Are the Hounds to Angels’ Fall. Then he went in search of another agent.
April 30, 1962
Dear Mr. Halsey:
Here is the opus we discussed over the telephone.
An earlier version of this went to my previous agent, Lurton Blassingame, in New York almost three years ago. [Note: it was actually five years.—ed] I asked for his comments and suggestions. Instead, he showed it to several readers, and returned it. Blassingame and I are no longer associated. The attached is a very different story from what he saw.
This one is written with a low-budget movie version in mind—minimal number of sets, four sustaining characters … and you’ll see what I mean.
Best regards,
Frank Herbert
Unfortunately, Angels’ Fall found neither a film studio nor a publisher.
A Game of Authors is a suspenseful Cold War thriller. In pursuit of a scoop, American journalist Hal Garson follows up on a mysterious, desperate letter that points to the whereabouts of legendary author Antone Luac, who vanished without a trace in Mexico years ago. The celebrated writer's disappearance is an enduring mystery, and Garson senses this story will make his career.
Despite warnings, he travels to isolated Ciudad Brockman and begins asking questions … too many questions, which places him in the crossfire of a local crime lord, a Communist insurgent group, and finally to the imprisoned writer—and his beautiful daughter—who may not want to be found.
Finally, A Thorn in the Bush, a short mainstream slice-of-life novel inspired by Herbert’s travels in Mexico (as was A Game of Authors) deals with an American woman hiding from her past in an isolated Mexican town of San Juan, a place where she can be content, a place where no one knows about her shadowy past life. Until an ambitious American painter takes up residence in San Juan, attempting to depict—and expose—everything about the sleepy Mexican town. But he may have underestimated the lengths a seemingly harmless old woman will go to protect her secrets.
WordFire Press initially published these lost works in invidual volumes and now they are collected here for the first time. A volume collecting Frank Herbert’s unpublished short stories is also available from WordFire Press (Fall, 2015).
—Kevin J. Anderson