Dune

Funeral Plain: open erg.

Great Bled: open, flat desert, as opposed to the erg-dune area. Open desert runs from about 60° north to 70° south. It is mostly sand and rock, with occasional outcroppings of basement complex.

Great Flat: an open depression of rock blending into erg. It lies about 100 m. above the Bled. Somewhere in the Flat is the salt pan which Pardot Kynes (father of Liet-Kynes) discovered. There are rock outcroppings rising to 200 m. from Sietch Tabr south to the indicated sietch communities.

Harg Pass: the Shrine of Leto’s skull overlooks this pass.

Old Gap: a crevasse in the Arrakeen Shield Wall down to 2240 m.; blasted out by Paul-Muad’Dib.

Palmaries of the South: do not appear on this map. They lie at about 40° south latitude.

Red Chasm: 1582 m. below Bled level.

Rimwall West: a high scarp (4600 m.) rising out of the Arrakeen Shield Wall.

Wind Pass: cliff-walled, this opens into the sink villages.

Wormline: indicating farthest north points where worms have been recorded. (Moisture, not cold, is determining factor.)

AFTERWORD

BY BRIAN HERBERT

I knew Frank Herbert for more than thirty-eight years. He was a magnificent human being, a man of great honor and distinction, and the most interesting person at any gathering, drawing listeners around him like a magnet. To say he was an intellectual giant would be an understatement, since he seemed to contain all of the knowledge of the universe in his marvelous mind. He was my father, and I loved him deeply.

Nonetheless, a son’s journey to understand the legendary author was not always a smooth one, as I described in my biography of him, Dreamer of Dune. Growing up in Frank Herbert’s household, I did not understand his need for absolute silence so that he could concentrate, the intense desire he had to complete his important writing projects, or the confidence he had that one day his writing would be a success, despite the steady stream of rejections that he received. To my young eyes, the characters he created in Dune and his other stories were the children of his mind, and they competed with me for his affections. In the years it took him to write his magnum opus, he spent more time with Paul Atreides than he did with me. Dad’s study was off-limits to me, to my sister Penny, and to my brother Bruce. In those days, only my mother Beverly really understood Dad’s complexities. Ultimately, it was through her love for him, and the love he gave back to her, that I came to see the nurturing, loving side of the man.

By that time I was in my mid-twenties, having rebelled against his exacting ways for years. When I finally saw the soul of my father and began to appreciate him for the care he gave my mother when she was terminally ill, he and I became the best of friends. He helped me with my own writing career by showing me what editors wanted to see in books; he taught me how to construct interesting characters, how to build suspense, how to keep readers turning the pages. After perusing an early draft of Sidney’s Comet (which would become my first published novel), he marked up several pages and then wrote me this note: “These pages…show how editing tightens the story. Go now and do likewise.” It was his way of telling me that he could open the door for me and let me peek through, but I would have to complete the immense labors involved with writing myself.

Beverly Herbert was the window into Frank Herbert’s soul. He shared that reality with millions of readers when he wrote a loving, three-page tribute to her at the end of Chapterhouse: Dune, describing their life together. His writing companion and intellectual equal, she suggested the title for that book, and she died in 1984 while he was writing it. Earlier in Dune, Frank Herbert had modeled Lady Jessica Atreides after Beverly Herbert, with her dignified, gentle ways of influence, and even her prescient abilities, which my mother actually possessed. He also wrote of “Lady Jessica’s latent (prophetic) abilities,” and in this he was describing my mother, thinking of all the amazing paranormal feats she had accomplished in her lifetime. In an endearing tone, he often referred to her as his “white witch,” or good witch. Similarly, throughout the Dune series, he described the heroic Bene Gesserit women as “witches.”