(1947- ) US author, son of Frank Herbert, who began publishing sf with his third book and first novel, Sidney's Comet: Being an Account of the Remarkable Events Which Occurred During the Approach of the Great Garbage Comet (1983), a comic Satire which launched the short Garbage Chronicles series; the eponymous Comet, composed of human garbage, threatens Earth in the twenty-seventh century; the sequel, The Garbage Chronicles: Being an Account of the Adventures of Tom Javik and Wizzy Malloy in the Faraway Land of Catapulted Garbage (1985), is also perhaps somewhat desultory. Both feature, inter alia, amusing parodies of his father's stylistic quirks, also visible in Man of Two Worlds (1986) with Frank Herbert, which frolics rather cumbrously with reality games; its presentation of Aliens who dream us up is not always coherent, though the final pages, when humans dream back, are more exhilarating. Sudanna, Sudanna (1985), set on a surreally conceived planetoid, describes the lives of its resident bureaucracy-ridden Aliens in a tone that determinedly shifts from Humour to gravity and back. Prisoners of Arionn (1987) again juxtaposes aliens (conceived with an elaborate though somewhat skittish lightness of touch) and human society (in this case San Francisco) in a plot which uneasily details the former's kidnapping of the latter, while at the same time examining with genuine insight some family relationships. If Herbert was in fact wrestling with genres in an attempt to intermingle them fruitfully, an inadequate control over narrative structure was proving detrimental to the attempt. This sense of virtuous effort and only partial success persists through The Race for God (1990) and Memorymakers (1991) with Marie Landis.
After this point in his career, Herbert changed tack and began to write Sequels by Another Hand to his father's famous Dune sequence, all of them with Kevin J Anderson. Though they do not attempt to replicate or vie with the cognitive drive of the original series, or in any way to continue its complex arguments, they have won admirers. The Space Opera Hellhole sequence, comprising Hellhole (2011) and Hellhole: Awakening (2013), both with Kevin J Anderson, is not connected to Dune. Nor are two later novels, Ocean (2013) with Jan Herbert and The Little Green Book of Chairman Rahma (2014), in both of which Ecological extremists disrupt the planet in order to save it, and in The Green Book establish a Dystopia where humans are penned into crammed Keeps, allowing the rest of the world to revert to "nature". In both novels, through a process of "topsy-turvy" Satire, ecological extremism is seen as a mirror reversal of early twenty-first century Climate Change denial. [JC]
see also: Telekinesis; Transportation.
Brian Patrick Herbert
born Seattle, Washington: 29 June 1947
died
works
series
Dune
Dune: Prelude to Dune
Dune: Legends of Dune
Dune: Frank Herbert's Original Dune Chronicles
Dune: Origins Trilogy
other series
Garbage Chronicles
Timeweb Chronicles
- Timeweb (Waterville, Maine: Five Star, 2006) [Timeweb Chronicles: hb/Alan M Clark]
- The Web and the Stars (Waterville, Maine: Five Star, 2007) [Timeweb Chronicles: hb/Alan M Clark]
- Webdancers (Waterville, Maine: Five Star, 2008) [Timeweb Chronicles: hb/Alan M Clark]
Hellhole Trilogy
individual titles
- Sudanna, Sudanna (New York: Arbor House, 1985) [hb/Ron Walotsky]
- Man of Two Worlds (New York: Putnam, 1986) with Frank Herbert [hb/John Schoenherr]
- Prisoners of Arionn (New York: Arbor House, 1987) [hb/Ron Walotsky]
- The Race for God (New York: Ace Books, 1990) [pb/Joe Burleson]
- Memorymakers (New York: Penguin/Roc, 1991) with Marie Landis [pb/]
- The World of Darkness: Vampire: Blood on the Sun (New York: HarperPrism, 1997) with Marie Landis [tie to the role-playing game: pb/Joshua Gabriel Timbrook]
- Ocean (Monument, Colorado: WordFire Press, 2013) with Jan Herbert [pb/]
- Stormworld (Monument, Colorado: WordFire Press, 2013) with Bruce Taylor [novella: chap: pb/]
- The Little Green Book of Chairman Rahma (New York: Tor, 2014) [hb/Stephen Youll]
- The Assassination of Billy Jeeling (Golden, Colorado: ReAnimus Press, 2018) [pb/Clay Hagebusch]
collections and stories
nonfiction
works as editor
links
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