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Overview
The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert is the most complete collection of Herbert's short fiction ever assembled-thirty-seven stories originally published between 1952 and 1979, plus one story, "The Daddy Box," that has never been appeared before.
Frank Herbert, the New York Times bestselling author of Dune, is one of the most celebrated and commercially successful science fiction writers of all time. But while best known for originating the character of Paul Atreides and the desert world of Arrakis, Herbert was also a prolific writer of short fiction. His stories were published individually in numerous pulps and anthologies spanning decades, but never collected. Until now.
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466829879 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Tor Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 11/18/2014 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 704 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
FRANK HERBERT (1920-1986) was the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning creator of the Dune saga, and the New York Times bestselling author of the first five novels in the series, including Dune and Children of Dune.
Frank Herbert (1920-1986) created the most beloved novel in the annals of science fiction, Dune. He was a man of many facets, of countless passageways that ran through an intricate mind. His magnum opus is a reflection of this, a classic work that stands as one of the most complex, multi-layered novels ever written in any genre. Today the novel is more popular than ever, with new readers continually discovering it and telling their friends to pick up a copy. It has been translated into dozens of languages and has sold almost 20 million copies.
As a child growing up in Washington State, Frank Herbert was curious about everything. He carried around a Boy Scout pack with books in it, and he was always reading. He loved Rover Boys adventures, as well as the stories of H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and the science fiction of Edgar Rice Burroughs. On his eighth birthday, Frank stood on top of the breakfast table at his family home and announced, "I wanna be a author." His maternal grandfather, John McCarthy, said of the boy, "It's frightening. A kid that small shouldn't be so smart." Young Frank was not unlike Alia in Dune, a person having adult comprehension in a child's body. In grade school he was the acknowledged authority on everything. If his classmates wanted to know the answer to something, such as about sexual functions or how to make a carbide cannon, they would invariably say, "Let's ask Herbert. He'll know."
His curiosity and independent spirit got him into trouble more than once when he was growing up, and caused him difficulties as an adult as well. He did not graduate from college because he refused to take the required courses for a major; he only wanted to study what interested him. For years he had a hard time making a living, bouncing from job to job and from town to town. He was so independent that he refused to write for a particular market; he wrote what he felt like writing. It took him six years of research and writing to complete Dune, and after all that struggle and sacrifice, 23 publishers rejected it in book form before it was finally accepted. He received an advance of only $7,500.
His loving wife of 37 years, Beverly, was the breadwinner much of the time, as an underpaid advertising writer for department stores. Having been divorced from his first wife, Flora Parkinson, Frank Herbert met Beverly Stuart at a University of Washington creative writing class in 1946. At the time, they were the only students in the class who had sold their work for publication. Frank had sold two pulp adventure stories to magazines, one to Esquire and the other to Doc Savage. Beverly had sold a story to Modern Romance magazine. These genres reflected the interests of the two young lovers; he the adventurer, the strong, machismo man, and she the romantic, exceedingly feminine and soft-spoken.
Their marriage would produce two sons, Brian, born in 1947, and Bruce, born in 1951. Frank also had a daughter, Penny, born in 1942 from his first marriage. For more than two decades Frank and Beverly would struggle to make ends meet, and there were many hard times. In order to pay the bills and to allow her husband the freedom he needed in order to create, Beverly gave up her own creative writing career in order to support his. They were in fact a writing team, as he discussed every aspect of his stories with her, and she edited his work. Theirs was a remarkable, though tragic, love story-which Brian would poignantly describe one day in Dreamer of Dune (Tor Books; April 2003). After Beverly passed away, Frank married Theresa Shackelford.
In all, Frank Herbert wrote nearly 30 popular books and collections of short stories, including six novels set in the Dune universe: Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, and Chapterhouse: Dune. All were international bestsellers, as were a number of his other science fiction novels, which include The White Plague and The Dosadi Experiment. His major novels included The Dragon in the Sea, Soul Catcher (his only non-science fiction novel), Destination: Void, The Santaroga Barrier, The Green Brain, Hellstorm's Hive, Whipping Star, The Eyes of Heisenberg, The Godmakers, Direct Descent, and The Heaven Makers. He also collaborated with Bill Ransom to write The Jesus Incident, The Lazarus Effect, and The Ascension Factor. Frank Herbert's last published novel, Man of Two Worlds, was a collaboration with his son, Brian.
Read an Excerpt
The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert
By Frank Herbert
Tom Doherty Associates
Copyright © 2014 Herbert Properties LLCAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-2987-9
CHAPTER 1
LOOKING FOR SOMETHING?
Mirsar Wees, chief indoctrinator for Sol III sub-prefecture, was defying the intent of the Relaxation-room in his quarters. He buzzed furiously back and forth from metal wall to metal wall, his pedal-membrane making a cricket-like sound as the vacuum cups disengaged.
"The fools!" he thought. "The stupid, incompetent, mindless fools!"
Mirsar Wees was a Denebian. His race had originated more than three million earth years ago on the fourth planet circling the star Deneb—a planet no longer existing. His profile was curiously similar to that of a tall woman in a floor-length dress, with the vacuum-cup pedal-membrance contacting the floor under the "skirt." His eight specialized extensors waved now in a typical Denebian rage-pattern. His mouth, a thin transverse slit entirely separate from the olfactory-lung orifice directly below it, spewed forth a multi-lingual stream of invective against the assistant who cowered before him.
"How did this happen?" he shouted. "I take my first vacation in one hundred years and come back to find my career almost shattered by your incompetency!"
Mirsar Wees turned and buzzed back across the room. Through his vision-ring, an organ somewhat like a glittering white tricycle-tire jammed down about one-third of the distance over his head, he examined again the report on Earthling Paul Marcus and maintained a baleful stare upon his assistant behind him. Activating the vision cells at his left, he examined the wall chronometer.
"So little time," he muttered. "If only I had someone at Central Processing who could see a deviant when it comes by! Now I'll have to take care of this bumble myself, before it gets out of hand. If they hear of it back at the bureau ..."
Mirsar Wees, the Denebian, a cog in the galaxy-wide korad-farming empire of his race, pivoted on his pedal-membrane and went out a door which opened soundlessly before him. The humans who saw his flame-like profile this night would keep alive the folk tales of ghosts, djinn, little people, fairies, elves, pixies ...
Were they given the vision to see it, they would know also that an angry overseer had passed. But they would not see this, of course. That was part of Mirsar Wees' job.
* * *
It was mainly because Paul Marcus was a professional hypnotist that he obtained an aborted glimpse of the rulers of the world.
The night it happened he was inducing a post-hypnotic command into the mind of an audience-participant to his show on the stage of the Roxy Theater in Tacoma, Washington.
Paul was a tall, thin man with a wide head which appeared large because of this feature although it really was not. He wore a black tailcoat and formal trousers, jewelled cuff links and chalkwhite cuffs, which gleamed and flashed as he gestured. A red spotlight in the balcony gave a Mephisto cast to his stage-setting, which was dominated by a backdrop of satin black against which gleamed two giant, luminous eyes. He was billed as "Marcus the Mystic" and he looked the part.
The subject was a blonde girl whom Paul had chosen because she displayed signs of a higher than ordinary intelligence, a general characteristic of persons who are easily hypnotized. The woman had a good figure and showed sufficient leg when she sat down on the chair to excite whistles and cat-calls from the front rows. She flushed, but maintained her composure.
"What is your name, please?" Paul asked.
She answered in a contralto voice, "Madelyne Walker."
"Miss or Mrs.?"
She said, "Miss."
Paul held up his right hand. From it dangled a gold chain on the end of which was a large paste gem with many facets cut into its surface. A spotlight in the wings was so directed that it reflected countless star-bursts from the gem.
"If you will look at the diamond," Paul said. "Just keep your eyes on it."
He began to swing the gem rhythmically, like a pendulum, from side to side. The girl's eyes followed it. Paul waited until her eyes were moving in rhythm with the swinging bauble before he began to recite in a slow monotone, timed to the pendulum:
"Sleep. You will fall asleep ... deep sleep ... deep sleep ... asleep ... deep asleep ... asleep ... asleep ..."
Her eyes followed the gem.
"Your eyelids will become heavy," Paul said. "Sleep. Go to sleep. You are falling asleep ... deep, restful sleep ... healing sleep ... deep asleep ... asleep ... asleep ... asleep ..."
Her head began to nod, eyelids to close and pop open, slower and slower. Paul gently moved his left hand up to the chain. In the same monotone he said, "When the diamond stops swinging you will fall into a deep, restful sleep from which only I can awaken you." He allowed the gem to swing slower and slower in shorter and shorter sweeps. Finally, he put both palms against the chain and rotated it. The bauble at the end of the chain began to whirl rapidly, its facets coruscating with the reflections of the spotlight.
Miss Walker's head fell forward and Paul kept her from falling off the chair by grasping her shoulder. She was in deep trance. He began demonstrating to the audience the classic symptoms which accompany this—insensitivity to pain, body rigidity, complete obedience to the hypnotist's voice.
The show went along in routine fashion. Miss Walker barked like a dog. She became the dowager queen with dignified mien. She refused to answer to her own name. She conducted the imaginary symphony orchestra. She sang an operatic aria.
The audience applauded at the correct places in the performance. Paul bowed. He had his subject deliver a wooden bow, too. He wound up to the finale.
"When I snap my fingers you will awaken," he said. "You will feel completely refreshed as though after a sound sleep. Ten seconds after you awaken you will imagine yourself on a crowded streetcar where no one will give you a seat. You will be extremely tired. Finally, you will ask the fat man opposite you to give you his seat. He will do so and you will sit down. Do you understand?"
Miss Walker nodded her head.
"You will remember nothing of this when you awaken," Paul said.
He raised his hand to snap his fingers ...
It was then that Paul Marcus received his mind-jarring idea. He held his hand up, fingers ready to snap, thinking about this idea, until he heard the audience stirring restlessly behind him. Then he shook his head and snapped his fingers.
Miss Walker awakened slowly, looked around, got up, and exactly ten seconds later began the streetcar hallucinations. She performed exactly as commanded, again awakened, and descended confusedly from the stage to more applause and whistles.
It should have been gratifying. But from the moment he received the idea, the performance could have involved someone other than Paul Marcus for all of the attention he gave it. Habit carried him through the closing routine, the brief comments on the powers of hypnotism, the curtain calls. Then he walked back to his dressing room slowly, preoccupied, unbuttoning his studs on the way as he always did following the last performance of the night. The concrete cave below stage echoed to his footsteps.
In the dressing room he removed the tailcoat and hung it in the wardrobe. Then he sat down before the dressing table mirror and began to cream his face preparatory to removing the light makeup he wore. He found it hard to meet his own eyes in the mirror.
"This is silly," he told himself sourly.
A knock sounded at the door. Without turning, he said, "Come in."
The door opened hesitantly and the blonde Miss Walker stepped into the room.
"Excuse me," she said. "The man at the door said you were in here and ..."
Seeing her in the mirror, Paul turned around and stood up.
"Is something wrong?" he asked.
Miss Walker looked around her as though to make sure they were alone before she answered.
"Not exactly," she said.
Paul gestured to a settee beside his dressing table. "Sit down, won't you?" he asked. He returned to the dressing table as Miss Walker seated herself.
"You'll excuse me if I go on with this chore," he said, taking a tissue to the grease paint under his chin.
Miss Walker smiled. "You remind me of a woman at her nightly beauty care," she said.
Paul thought: Another stage-struck miss, and the performance gives her the excuse to take up my time. He glanced at the girl out of the corners of his eyes. "Not bad, though ..."
"You haven't told me to what I owe the pleasure of your company," he said.
Miss Walker's face clouded with thought.
"It's really very silly," she said.
Probably, Paul thought.
"Not at all," he said. "Tell me what's on your mind."
"Well, it's an idea I had while my friends were telling me what I did on the stage," she said. She grinned wryly. "I had the hardest time believing that there actually wasn't a streetcar up there. I'm still not absolutely convinced. Maybe you brought in a dummy streetcar with a lot of actors. Oh, I don't know!" She shook her head and put a hand to her eyes.
The way she said, "I don't know!" reminded Paul of his own idea; the idea. He decided to give Miss Walker the fast brush-off in order to devote more time to thinking this new idea through to some logical conclusion.
"What about the streetcar?" he asked.
The girl's face assumed a worried expression. "I thought I was on a real streetcar," she said. "There was no audience, no ... hypnotist. Nothing. Just the reality of riding the streetcar and being tired like you are after a hard day's work. I saw the people on the car. I smelled them. I felt the car under my feet. I heard the money bounce in the coin-catcher and all the other noises one hears on a streetcar—people talking, a man opening his newspaper. I saw the fat man sitting there in front of me. I asked him for his seat. I even felt embarrassed. I heard him answer and I sat down in his seat. It was warm and I felt the people pressing against me on both sides. It was very real."
"And what bothers you?" Paul asked.
She looked up from her hands which were tightly clasped in her lap.
"That bothers me," she said. "That streetcar. It was real. It was as real as anything I've ever known. It was as real as now. I believed in it. Now I'm told it wasn't real." Again she looked down at her hands. "What am I to believe?"
This is getting close to the idea, Paul thought.
"Can you express what bothers you in any other way?" he asked.
She looked him squarely in the eyes. "Yes," she said. "I got to thinking while my friends were talking to me. I got to wondering. What if all this—" she gestured around her—"our whole lives, our world, everything we see, feel, hear, smell, or sense in any way is more of the same. A hypnotic delusion!"
"Precisely!" Paul exhaled the word.
"What did you say?" she asked.
"I said, 'Precisely!'"
Paul turned toward her and rested his left elbow on the dressing table. "Because," he said, "at the very moment I was telling you what you would do when you awakened, at the moment I was giving you the commands which resulted in your hallucination, I got the same idea."
"My goodness!" she said. The very mildness of her exclamation made it seem more vehement than if she had sworn.
Paul turned back to the dressing table mirror. "I wonder if there could be something in telepathy as well?"
Miss Walker looked at him in the mirror, the room seeming to draw in closely behind her. "It was an idea I couldn't keep to myself," she said. "I told my friends—I came with a married couple—but they just laughed at me. I decided on the spur of the moment to come back here and talk to you and I did it before I could lose my nerve. After all, you're a hypnotist. You should know something about this."
"It'll take some looking into," Paul said, "I wonder ..." He turned toward Miss Walker. "Are you engaged tonight?"
Her expression changed. She looked at him as though her mother were whispering in her ear: "Watch out! Watch out! He's a man."
"Well, I don't know ..." she said.
Paul got on his most winning smile. "I'm no backstage wolf," he said. "Please, I feel as though somebody had asked me to cut the Gordian knot, and I'd rather untie it—but I need help."
"What could we do?" she asked.
It was Paul's turn to hesitate. "There are several ways to approach the problem," he said. "We in America have only scratched the surface in our study of hypnotism." He doubled up his fist and thudded it gently on the dressing table. "Hell! I've seen witch doctors in Haiti who know more about it than I do. But ..."
"What would you do first?" she asked.
"I'd ... I'd ..." Paul looked at her for a moment as though he really saw her for the first time. "I'd do this," he said. "Make yourself comfortable on that settee. Lean back. That's it."
"What are you going to do?" she asked.
"Well," Paul said, "It's pretty well established that these sensory hallucinations are centered in one part of the human nervous system which is laid bare by hypnotism. It's possible, by using hypnotism, to get at the commands other hypnotists have put there. I'm going to put you back in deep trance and let you search for the commands yourself. If something is commanding us to live an illusion, the command should be right there with all the others."
"I don't know," she said.
"Please," Paul urged. "We might be able to crack this thing right here and now in just a few minutes."
"All right." She still sounded hesitant, but she leaned back as directed.
Paul lifted his paste gem from the dressing table and focused the table spotlight on it. "Look at the diamond," he said....
This time she fell into the trance more readily. Paul checked her for pain threshold, muscular control. She responded appropriately. He began questioning:
"Do you hear my voice?"
"Yes," she said.
"Do you know what hypnotic commands are in your mind?" he asked.
There was a long pause. Her lips opened dryly. "There are ... commands," she said.
"Do you obey them?" he asked.
"I must."
"What is the most basic of these commands?" he asked.
"I ... can ... not ... tell."
Paul almost rubbed his hands. A simple 'Don't talk about it,' he thought.
"Just nod your head if I repeat the command," he said. "Does it say, 'You must not tell'?"
Her head nodded.
Paul rubbed his hands against his pants legs and realized suddenly that he was perspiring excessively.
"What is it you must not tell?" he asked.
She shook her head without speaking.
"You must tell me," he said. "If you do not tell me, your right foot will begin to burn and itch unbearably and will continue to do so until you do tell me. Tell me what it is that you have been commanded not to tell."
Again she shook her head. She reached down and began to scratch her right foot. She pulled off her shoe.
"You must tell me," Paul said. "What is the first word of the command?"
The girl looked up at him, but her eyes remained unfocused.
"You ..." she said.
It was as though she had brought the word from some dark place deep within her and the saying of it was almost too much to bear. She continued to scratch her right leg.
"What is the second word?" Paul asked.
She tried to speak, but failed.
"Is it 'must'?" he asked. "Nod your head if it is."
She nodded her head.
"You 'must' what?"
Again she was wordless.
He thought about it for a moment. "Sensory perception," he thought. He leaned forward. "Is it 'You must sense ...'?" he asked. "Is it 'You must sense only ...'?"
She relaxed. Her head nodded and she said, "Yes."
Paul took a deep breath.
"What is it 'You must sense only ...'?" he asked.
She opened her mouth, her lips moved, but no sound issued.
He felt like screaming at her, dragging the answer from her mind with his hands.
"What is it?" His voice cracked on the question. "Tell me!"
She shook her head from side to side. He noticed signs of awakening.
Again he took a deep breath. "What will happen to you if you tell me?"
"I'll die," she said.
He leaned forward and lowered his voice to a confidential tone. "That is foolishness," he said. "You can't die just because you say a few words. You know that. Now tell me what it is that you have been ordered to sense."
She stared straight ahead of her at nothing, mouth open. Paul lowered his head to look directly into her eyes. "Do you see me?" he asked.
"No," she said.
"What do you see?" he asked.
"I see death."
"Look at me instead," Paul said. "You remember me."
"You are death," she said.
"That's nonsense! Look at me," he commanded.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert by Frank Herbert. Copyright © 2014 Herbert Properties LLC. Excerpted by permission of Tom Doherty Associates.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Introduction (1975) ………………………………………………………………………………………………...………………………...1
Looking for Something? (1952) ……………………………………………………………………………...………………………….13
Operation Syndrome (1954) ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………27
The Gone Dogs (1954) ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….84
Pack Rat Planet (1954) ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….108
Rat Race (1955) ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….156
Occupation Force (1955) ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………182
The Nothing (1956) ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………187
Cease Fire (1958) ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….200
A Matter of Traces (1958) ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….220
Old Rambling House (1958) ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….233
You Take the High Road (1958) …………………………………………………………………………………………………………243
Missing Link (1959) ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………255
Operation Haystack (1959) ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….284
The Priests of Psi (1960) ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………321
Egg and Ashes (1960) .............................................................................................................................384
A-W-F, Unlimited (1961) ........................................................................................................................391
Mating Call (1961) .................................................................................................................................431
Try to Remember (1961) .......................................................................................................................451
Mindfienld (1962) .................................................................................................................................490
The Tactful Saboteur (1964) .................................................................................................................535
The Mary Celeste Move (1964) ............................................................................................................576
Greenslaves (1965) ..............................................................................................................................584
Committee of the Whole (1965) ..........................................................................................................605
The GM Effect (1965) ...........................................................................................................................624
The Primitives (1966) ...........................................................................................................................640
Escape Felicity (1966) ...........................................................................................................................673
By the Book (1966) ...............................................................................................................................699
The Featherbedders (1967) ..................................................................................................................725
The Being Machine (1969) ....................................................................................................................761
Seed Stock (1970) .................................................................................................................................782
Murder Will In (1970) ...........................................................................................................................795
Passage for Piano (1973) ......................................................................................................................824
Gambling Device (1973) .......................................................................................................................845
Encounter in a Lonely Place (1973) ......................................................................................................854
Death of a City (1973) ..........................................................................................................................863
Come to the Party (1978, with F.M. Busby) ........................................................................................872
Songs of a Sentient Flute (1979) .........................................................................................................899
Frogs and Scientist (1979) ...................................................................................................................940
Feathered Pigs (1979)..........................................................................................................................942
The Daddy Box ....................................................................................................................................944