Frank Herbert was born on October 8, 1920, in Tacoma, Washington. He began his career as a journalist when he was seventeen. From 1946 to 1947 Herbert attended the University of Washington. During the 1950s he sold several stories to science fiction magazines, and in 1956 his first novel, The Dragon in the Sea, was published by Doubleday. He worked for the San Francisco Examiner newspaper for ten years, and while there he wrote the stories that would become his most famous novel, Dune. “Dune World” was serialized from December 1963 to February 1964 in Astounding Science-Fiction magazine. The serialization of “The Prophet of Dune” followed (January to May 1965) in the same magazine. These stories were revised, expanded, and combined to form Dune, which was published in 1965 by Chilton, a company that was known for publishing how-to books, not science fiction.
Dune was rejected by over twenty publishers before its acceptance by Chilton. In spite of its daunting length, the novel became a favorite of science fiction fans, and other readers found that its themes echoed their own growing interest in environmental science. Since its publication, Dune has been translated into fourteen languages and has sold twelve million copies worldwide, making it one of the most popular science fiction novels ever published. Herbert died on February 11, 1986, in Madison, Wisconsin
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