Dreamer of Dune, a review

 So ... Dreamer of Dune by Brian Herbert. My "book report."

It's an interesting read. I did not take notes while going through it, but I did dog-ear some pages where there were things I found ... interesting.

It tells Brian's version of his Dad's life, intertwining with it the story of how he became a writer as well.

Given that some of the revelations about their relationship are ... severe, but also described as in no way all-revealing, I think it reveals a son with deep-seated issues with his father.

Some of it is actually a little odd.

He will write about an event that happened in his father's life, and then tie it to some thing in his father's books, almost all of the citations from Dune books. But he never has a quote mark around any of these "connections" he draws, so it makes me think that they are his conclusions, not something his father would agree are conscious connections.

You have to ask yourself if Frank is as bad as some of the things suggest, or actually worse, but Brian doesn't want to unveil THAT much about himself.

It is structured basically in chronological order. The connection he doesn't make, which seems absurdly obvious to me after reading the tales of Frank's youth, is why Frank wrote main characters in his science fiction who had no real friends growing up. Who were trained and befriended by the adults in their life. Those characters being both Paul and Leto and even Farad 'n.

It's because Frank grew up that way. He had his own little sailboat and sailed off from Oregon to Alaska one summer. His parents were not great folks, both alcoholics, so they barely noticed. Frank had to take care of his younger siblings.

Some of the writing, particularly in the very beginning of the book, seems almost elementary school level. Sentences with exclamations points for emphasis. He has a tendency to overuse "halcyon" in referring back to the days of Frank's youth.

His style settles down but he goes back to the halcyon well often, and throws in some exclamation points. (It's OK when you are quoting someone yelling. Unnecessary for the author in a description.

Later on in the book, when Frank has suggested that Brian try journaling as a way getting all his thoughts down about a day and to get insight into his life, the latter half of the book can be reduced to an almost day-by-day listing of what restaurant Brian and his wife met Frank and Brian's mother Beverly for dinner and what wine they had. Or what wine they took out of Frank's wine cellar.

Wine is a big deal.

If you believe everything that Brian writes about Frank you have to come to the conclusion that Frank was not a nice man. IF you think that the X amount Brian reveals might be a sign that it was worse than X, Frank might have no redeeming qualities other than his writing.

The book is an homage, not to Frank, but to Bev, which is a bit odd. It really doesn't show many cases of Beverly being a great mom to either of her boys, and certainly doesn't show her once intervening with Frank on behalf of either of the boys. She never took their side.

And there were times when she definitely should have. When Brian was a kid, Frank demanded absolute silence in the house while he played his music records or tape recordings of music (reel to reel) and worked on his writing. If there was any noise, he would come out, angry and there would be some kind of discipline.

It never explicitly says that there was corporal punishment or extreme physical abuse. But Brian makes it clear that he would do anything to not get in trouble with his father.

The extreme example of this "discipline" was Frank used some kind of dime-store lie-detector kit on his children whenever he was trying to figure out who had offended.

Brian doesn't say that the test was junk science or even that his father used it wrong. He just says that his father asked questions in such a way that someone was always guilty of something, and not always the actual guilty party.

That's abusive to me. But the odd take is that Brian uses it to show how Frank was kind of like the Truthsayers of the Bene Gesserit in his book Dune.

Those are the often odd kinds of connections he makes. And he can go for chapters just relating the next few things in Frank's life and you think these comparisons and connections will cease. But they keep coming back.

It is a much talked about part of Frank's wife that he took care of his wife as she was dying of cancer. Brian goes into much detail about this, and you see, when she has gone, that his wife was not just the main person Frank talked to about his work and his first "editor" of any major work.

Beverly was coddling Frank. She handled all his fan correspondence and paid all the bills, even though he continually made financial decisions without consulting her. So despite probably being one of the most successful sci-fi authors of all time, and indeed bumping of into to a much higher tax bracket, the Herberts were living royalty payment to royalty payment basically their whole married life. He had trouble with paying child support to his first wife and he owed the IRS a ton.

But she in her will laid out a "plan" for the family to come together after her death. It is written by Brian to suggest Bev wanted everyone taken care of. It really shows that she was wanting everyone to take care of Frank after she died. She didn't want him alone.

She was called a "white witch" (like the Bene Gesserit Sisters in his father's book, Dune -- yes, he makes that connection) and could predict things that came true in some form or another. And she predicted she would die in a foreign land (turned out to be Hawaii) and she predicted that Frank would meet and fall in love with a younger woman after Bev died. Which also was true.

The way Brian writes about his father's affections after his wife's death, you wonder what he really feels. He said there were three women that Frank was interested in, just a few months after his wife's passing. He thought there was one above the rest, but it takes another chapter before he reveals that yeah, the young publicist was indeed the object of his affections, and indeed Frank's third wife in short order.

The gap between the revelation and the naming makes it seem like a literary "dun dun dunnnnn" moment.

But again, since it was OK with Bev, it was OK with Frank. And Brian doesn't really express much objection to it.

The story of the son and the father was they had a very "strained" childhood. Brian left as soon as he was old enough, to work in the insurance business. Frank was apparently a bigger jerk to his gay son, Bruce. But at some point they began, at Bevevrly's urging, to try to have a relationship when Brian was an adult. And that mostly worked.

Except when it didn't. There was one instance where Frank was yelling at one of Brian's kids for making noise or something when Frank was trying to work. In other words, treating Brian's kids the way he had treated Brian.

If I'd had the relationship with my father that Brian had had, there's no way I wouldn't have exploded on my father and probably cut him off completely for treating my kid that way. Brian never makes that big leap. He does tell his father off once. But he apologizes to him later on.

A couple of things I didn't dog-ear but I thought were very interesting revelations.

At one point, Frank made sure that all his kids got signed copies of Dune, and at this stage in Frank's life, Brian had never read any of his father's books. I can't remember why they were being encouraged to read Frank's stuff, but Brian makes a point to say he avoided reading Dune and his favorite book by his father was his first novel, Dragon under the Sea.

The two's relationship got "better" when Brian started writing.

"Let's talk story," was the code Brian suggests they developed for when Frank wanted to see what Brian was working on and offer suggestions.

Some of his early criticisms read to me like criticisms that could be laid at the door of his expanded universe Dune novels. And they are lines that are repeated about Brian's later works, specifically his parts of Man of Two Worlds, the novel the two of them worked on together (another part of Bev's plan, the two needed to work together).

Except for those early parts, it's basically well written. Though I could do without the list of restaurants and wines that it seems to be at times.

On the whol controversy over Denis Villlaneuve's comments about Frank writing Dune Messiah to correct a mistaken reception to Paul by readers, there's nothing in the book on this point. Not specifically detailed.

There's just one sentence that might be on point. "But he had important messages he wanted to convey and there had been so much misunderstanding over Dune Messiah."

At times he makes it seem like each novel came as its own thing, though he does say some of Messiah and Children of Dune were written before Dune was laid down in its current form.

Other times he makes it seem like a trilogy was envisioned from the beginning. There is another sentence just two sentences before the one above, however, that probably answers it. "Readers and editors were clamoring for more Dune stories and he had to give them what they wanted, what they expected to a certain point. He had to write for a particular market, after all."

Later, Brian writes in the chapter Miracles, "Dad had intended to end the dune series with Children of Dune, which he saw as the completion of a cycle. But the characters and settings he had created would not die."

Brian spends a lot of time talking about his fear of flying, something that kept him separated from his sick mother when she was dying.

He ells of two instances where he almost got the courage up to fly, but he talks himself out of it once, and he is talked out of it the other. The other being the time when she did die. SHe was in in a coma.

"I was only a little heartened when dd assured me she was in no pain at the end."

Frank told both his sons that they didn't need to fly out to see her, as she dind't want "a big death bed scene."

"I learned later aht in her last days my mother had remarked, "I wish Brian were here." It is a tragedy that I was not there and I think I shall always suffer for it."

Lastly, on Frank's later evaluation of Brian's writing (this is not about his writing as a whole but on a couple of sections of Man of Two Worlds they were working on.)

"He concurred with almost all of my recommendations but said I was too expository in on occasion, that I should leave more to the imagination of the reader."

I think that is a criticism of a lot of the prequels, certainly many that I have read. I know Hunters and Sandworms and the Butlerian Jihad books are this way. I can't remember, it's been so long, if the House Prelude books are this way as well.

Lastly, I think one of the things I think is important is how one thing is characterized, and what is left out.

The ONLY mention of the Dune Encyclopedia is a mention of the title, it coming out about the time of the Dune movie, lumped in with things like the Dune Coloring book and the IDune Activity,the Dune Activity & Coloring Book (apparently different things), the Art of Dune, The Dune Pop-up Panorama Book, The Making of Dune.

He completely mischaracterizes and minimizes the Encyclopedia by describing it as a "speculative compendium about the worlds of Dune."

What's left out is he doesn't mention the love his father lavished on the work, even if just in its introduction.

And he doesn't make any mention of his father donating his papers to Cal-State Fullerton, or of the person that made that donation possible. I started my read of the book looking at the index. And I didn't see a citation for Willis MacNelly.

Willis, if you read other's accounts, was Frank's best friend. He is listed in some media accounts as the person who gave Frank's eulogy.

Brian goes into lavish details of Beverly's memorial services and how her ashes were to be spread at her Hawaiian beach home property, the music that is played.

This is ostensibly a book about Frank, yet there's not much detail of the arrangements for Frank. His death and arrangements (digging a tree and scattering some ashes, an Irish wake afterward) are scattered on a couple of pages, while he devotes almost a full chapter to his mother.

If indeed Frank requested that his friend Willis give his eulogy, that is a very important omission.

Brian makes a point to say repeated that another man was his father's "best friend."

That man is definitely Frank's oldest friend, a friend from his youth who was still in his life.

But Willis? Apparently they were very close as adults in the same field. Willis was a professor of English literature with a focus in science fiction.

If you believe everything that Brian writes about his father, you could walk away being justified in thinking him a complete bastard who really only cared about his work and his second wife. He took great care of his second wife, but he just wasn't a nice man on any regular basis to anyone else.

You have to wonder that if the things that divided Brian from his father in their youth, which were still popping up as Frank's life wound down, how could he say this man was his best friend?

His mother's detailed plans for how to handle Frank after her death involved as much of the family coming together and living, almost like in a family compound, surrounding Frank and taking care of his needs. Brian was put in charge of his finances and business (not his literary estate, per se). His daughter from his first marriage was put in charge of handling correspondence. They were all supposed to be living in and around Frank with him in Seattle, but the Hawaii house was to be kept for the family.

But Frank? Other than her encouraging him to get closer to everyone and finishing Chapterhouse and writing a book with Brian, he was free to pursue another life after she died.

He was a nasty piece of work, and he was also coddled by all those around him.

The book also reveals a lot about Brian in the process. More than I think he intends.

It's worth a read. But again, he's not a nice man.