www.sinanvural.com/seksek/inien/tvd/tvd2.htm
Professor Willis E McNelly recorded and typed an interview that he made with Frank Herbert and his wife Beverly Herbert, in 1969 and sent it to Turkey in 1997. Professor McNelly has stated that we may use this text in any way we like.
The original text is 46 pages but the 32^nd page is missed. California State College, Fullerton INTERVIEW BETWEEN: DATE OF TAPE: INTERVIEWEE: Frank Herbert (FH) and his wife, Beverly (BH) 3 February 1969 INTERVIEWER: Willis McNelly (WM) D ATE OF TRANSCRIPTION: SUBJECT: Herberts science fiction novels, Dune and Dune Me ssiah February-April, 1970 WM: This tape recording is being made February 3 1969, in the home of Frank Herbert in Fairfax, California. Frank and his wife Bev are sit ting around including myself, Dr. Frank Herbert, as you all know, is the author of Dune and ma ny other science fiction novels. Frank, I wonder if youd tell us a littl e bit about the origins of Dune. You started a little earlier and you sa id you could trace the germinal idea? The idea come came from an article (I was going to do an article, which I never did) about the control of sand dunes. What many people dont realize is that the United States has pioneered in this , how to control the flow of sand dunes, and it started up here at Flore nce, Oregon. There is a pilot project up there of the US Forest Servic e which has been so successful that it has been visited and copied by ex perts, related departments from Chile, Israel, India, Pakistan, Great Br itain, several other countries WM: Well, I know I drove along the Oregon coast this summer and you had mentioned this a year ago, that it had begun with this, what was ha ppening along Oregon. I remember stopping t one for there, right south o f Columbia River, it is Oregon State Park now FH: Thats, well, Florence is considerably south of that. Its about centrally located on the Oregon coast and it w as an area where sand dune blew across Highway 1 US Highway 1, freque ntly blocking the highway, and the forest service put in a test station down there to determine how they could control the flow of these sand du ne. And I got fascinated by sand dun es, because Im always fascinated by the idea of something that is either seen in miniature and the can be expanded to the macrocosm or which, bu t for the difference in time, in the flow rate, and the entropy rate, is similar to other features which we wouldnt think were similar. This was considerably WM: Fifteen years ago, more or less FH: Yes. And the people treating them as fluid learn to control them. And the whole idea fa scinated me, so I started researching sand dunes and of course from sand dunes its a logical idea to go into a desert. The way I accumulated dat a is I start building file folders and before long I saw that I had far to much for an article and far too much for a story, for a short story. So, I didnt know really what I had but I had an enormous amount of data and avenues shooting off at all angles to gather more. And I was followi ng them I cant read the dictionary, you know; I cant go look up a word WM: (Laughter) FH: I get stopped by everything else on the opposite page. But so, I started accumulating these file folders, which Ill show you later, and as a result, I finally saw that I had something enormously interest ing going for me about the ecology of deserts, and it was, for a science fiction writer anyway, it was an easy step from that to think: What if I had an entire planet that was a desert? During my studies of deserts, of course, and previous studies of religions, we all know that many reli gions began in a desert atmosphere, so I decided to put the two together because I dont think that any one story should have any one thread. I b uild on a layer technique, and of course putting in religion and religio us ideas you can play one against the other. Now this is you see, Im tal king about surface now WM: Thats right. FH: Im not talking about the way things are layered WM: within the novel itself. The way character is developed for variou s reasons in the story this is just the germ of the idea, but thats wher e it begins. Well, what made you or at wha t point did you go from the sand dunes of Oregon and the ecological back ground there to the decision to utilize lets say the Arabian mystique as another counter notion or contrapuntal notion working within the novel? FH: Well, of course, in studying sand dunes, you immediately ge t into not just the Arabian mystique but the Navaho mystique and the mys tique of the Kalahari primitives and all... FH: Yes, the Kalahari desert, the black foot (people) of the Ka lahari and how they utilize every drop of water. You cant just stop with the people who are living in this type of environment: you have to go o n to how the environment works on the people and how they work on their environment. Just as I mean, you could look at this thing on the Oregon Coast quite simply, if you wanted to, and say, yes, the sand was coverin g the highway, and thats bad, so WM: so we plant certain grasses, and that stops the sand from movin g, and thats good. FH: And thats the end of it, you see, thats the end of it. But if you start going into the mechanics of how the United States Forest Se rvice set up this project and all of the internal politics undoubtedly t hat were involved I only know part of them but I do know enough of them to know there were quite a few more Then you would probably have a story there, a main street type of story. But I got off on a different kick b ecause of the science fiction angle and the emphasis on ecology. Its bee n my belief for a long time that man inflicts himself on his environment that is, Western man. WM: I think we can see that just looking around us: the simple thin g of beer used to be packed in bottles, which eventually disintegrated, then it was packed in cans, and that took at a fifty-year half-life, and now its packed in aluminium cans, and that, you know, lives for ever, a nd were gradually corrupting FH: Unless its in salt water WM: Yes, well, all right, but were gradually corrupting our environ ment as a result of that kind of thing. FH: Plastic is the thing that weyou know, Bev and I were up on the Washington coast last year and an area unspoiled, originally very pr imitive area where the Mawka tribes lived, and so on, and even there, do wn among the driftwood logs on that primitive beach, that almost unspoil ed beach, you frequently, much too frequently, come on these blue, orang e, green, white plastic containers Purex, Ivory Soap and theyre virtuall y indestructible There they are they float WM: Well, man is then, as you view him, a creature who ecologically is a destructive force, a divisive force. FH: Well, we tend to think in Western culture Im talking about Western man, you realize that. FH: We tend to think that we can overcome nature by a mathemati cal means; WM: And establish parameters of that data and subdue it. This is a one-pointed vision of man, because if you really start looking at man, Western man, youll see that you could cut him right down the middle and hes blind on that backside, you see. WM: This is the point you made earlier, Bev, in talking around abou t the death of the planetary ecologist in Dune being a very touching spo t, I think you saida very moving BH: Well, I felt also it was a very significant point. A lot of the story swung around this: how the ecologist died. I thought it was ve ry important that the planet killed the ecologist. WM: Even though the planet I mean, even though the ecologist was te chnically able to subdue anything within that BH: Well, there he lay dying WM: Dying, and BH: And understanding everything that was happening to him. BH: Much more than someone else dying in the desert would have. Complete understanding I think it made it more horrible, the fact that h e completely understood WM: That he knew what was happening to him and understood it and wa s technically capable of controlling it. FH: This of course was done deliberately for that purpose to tu rn its a turning point of the whole book, but a pivot, you might say and the very fact that Kynes, who is the Western man, in my...
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