Counter-Currents
Remembering Frank Herbert:
October 8, 1920–February 11, 1986
Greg Johnson
Frank Herbert. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
438 words
Frank Herbert was born on this day in 1920 in Tacoma, Washington. Herbert is best-known as the creator of Dune, which is the most widely-read and influential science fiction novel of all time. Herbert, moreover, is an artist of the Right. As I wrote in my review of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, Part 1:
Frank Herbert’s vision of the future was deeply reactionary. He depicts a world where liberal democracy failed and has been replaced by a feudal imperium. In Herbert’s imperium, artificial intelligence has been destroyed as oppressive and remains under the iron ban of a syncretic form of Christianity. Computer technology is a great leveler. Without it, humanity must fall back on natural gifts, which are rare. To refine these gifts and make them more common, eugenics is practiced. Biological sex differences are recognized. Bureaucracies are disdained as repressive instruments of equality and fairness. The story of Leto II in Children of Dune and God Emperor of Dune is opposed to surveillance and empire in favor of freedom and pluralism. Herbert believed that mankind would never be safe unless we could free ourselves from the leveling gaze of a single, universal political order.
Beyond that, Herbert has quite compelling reasons for his belief that liberal democracy will not take mankind to the stars and that mankind can only spread across the galaxy by returning to archaic social forms like hereditary monarchy, feudalism, and initiatic spiritual orders.
Herbert’s vision of the future is also gloriously Eurocentric. His imperium is medieval Europe writ large, while his vision of Arrakis and its native people, the Fremen, is based on Arabia, i.e., the Near East—“near” in relation to Europe, that is.
Counter-Currents has published the following works on Frank Herbert:
- Greg Johnson, “Archeofuturist Fiction: Frank Herbert’s Dune.” (German translation here, Greek translation here)
- Greg Johnson, “Frank Herbert: Our Prophet.”
- Greg Johnson, “Notes on Dune Messiah.”
- Greg Johnson, “The Golden Path: Frank Herbert’s Children of Dune and God Emperor of Dune.”
- Greg Johnson, “The Bene Gesserit Books: Frank Herbert’s Heretics of Dune & Chapterhouse: Dune.”
- Trevor Lynch, “David Lynch’s Dune.”
- Trevor Lynch, “Jodorowsky’s Dune.”
- Trevor Lynch, “The Sci-Fi Channel’s Dune and Children of Dune.”
- Trevor Lynch, “The First Dune Trailer.”
- Trevor Lynch, “Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, Part 1.”
- Trevor Lynch, “Dune: Part Two.”
- Podcast: Greg Johnson and Morgoth on Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, Part 1.
Substantial references to Frank Herbert are also present in:
- Greg Johnson interviewed by Laura Raim (Czech translation here)
- Greg Johnson, “Ben Novak’s Hitler and Abductive Logic.” (Czech translation here)
- Kathryn S., “‘Sojourners in the Desert . . . Glad of Each Delay’: Meditations on the Drylands, Part II.”
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13 comments
Watching him on Youtube is like listening to a bearded Greta.
I started watching Villeneuve’s Dune last night on a streaming service. I find the casting of fine-boned French-Jewish Timothy Chalamet as the moody hero deeply offputting. He just seems irremediably girly to me. The requisite PC race casting, with the nauseating negrolatria, is also offputting, but nowadays that’s the price of watching any screen item created after 1960, at least.
I am finding that the massive visuals are overwhelming the characters and the narrative. Everything is just too big. For all its flaws, Lynch’s Dune had vivid characters and tense narrative energy.
However, this Dune does convey the truly alien character of an imagined universal civilization ten thousand years into the future.
Totally agree about the negrolartry…sickening. It’s spoiled so many recent movies for me. And a fugly ‘Zendaya’ as Paul’s Chain. Don’t want to watch….and I really enjoyed both the books and the David Lynch movie.
I should have guessed the MC was jewish. Can we NEVER escape this pernicious minority?
Thank you for reminding me I need to nag my husband again to read your Dune articles. I loved reading about Leto the Second’s story. I found it so exciting and moving. Hopefully I will get around to reading the books one day.
Seek out the Scott Brick and Simon Vance-read audiobooks. They pop up on YT from time to time. FH said it was written to be read aloud so maybe it’s the most appropriate way to dig in.
Thanks!
Thank you. I really appreciate this.
Cheers Greg.
Your coverage and recognition of his work is so refreshing and essential and also helps purge the odors the 2 DEIune abominations left behind.
While a donation isn’t currently possible, sharing and celebrating the Herbert info I’ve accumulated is for now my payment in kind.
The movies have come and thankfully gone. So another reason I am glad to see your article return is that it provides an opportunity to ask a sincere question looking for a serious un-facile answer that CC is uniquely suited to ruminate on fearlessly. It’s something I didn’t see explored in your BG Books article and grows ever more timely:
Why do you think Frank chose to let Judaism survive the Commission of Ecumenical Translators intact and avoid the assimilation and hybridization that met all the other faiths?
I can’t accept that Herbert was simply kissing star-shaped ring for expediency’s sake. Feels way too pat for a deep thinker such as he was.
(Ironic how his birthday falls a day after 10/7!)
Thanks Greg for refreshing and reposting this.
Some more nuggets for anyone interested in his ideas:
A collection of Frank’s interviews
One of note, an unpublished interview in 3 parts in which he outlines his design of a more perfect system of government.
Lastly, park this author’s lib tendencies to one side and there is much here to embellish your enjoyment and understanding of the series, especially his deeper dives into its islamic/arabic aspect (which the small hats expunged in the recent movies):
https://hdernity.medium.com/revisiting-dune-table-of-contents-fe65e52da302
If you notice in the first part of the new dune, when the freeman chick summons the sand worm, destroying herself and her enemies, it is an acknowledgement of the allegory of the book. This scene is not in the book, according to the resident dune scholar( this was not yet a thing in that conflict), so it was consciously added by the filmmakers.
The fremen chick?
Ah, you mean Dr. We Wuz Kynes N Liet.
Greg Johnson, “Frank Herbert: Our Prophet.”:
“It is more likely that AI would simply exterminate us as the only plausible threat to its survival, and it would decide this, wargame out all the possible counter-measures, and set its plans in motion 15 minutes after going online, while humans are still congratulating themselves on their brilliance… Thus we need a real Butlerian Jihad today, before AI goes online.”
If we talk about how we could use partial-intelligence to wargame the disestablishment of the Zionist aristocracy, the funding for these projects should dry up pretty quickly in the West.
Of course they will then have to concede the nobility of work ethic amongst their own people to fight this technology; fertile grounds for schisms and new sects of Judaism. We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.
The spice is an open symbol. It represents fossil fuels at one level, obviously. It’s also like coffee in granting mentat powers, I suppose herbert observed. I gain mentat powers when I drink coffee!
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