Time Traveler Show #24: Missing Link (Frank Herbert)

[james_davis_nicoll]

Missing Link (Frank Herbert)

A hapless junior officer is put on the job of working out if a newly discovered group of aliens can be reasoned with or if the human ship in orbit will have to kill them all. The key to friendly relations turns out to lie in Insane Troll Logic combined with some extremely dubious North American anthropology.

The performance is fine; my snarking is directed at the story. Why was Herbert a Big Name Author, again? How low was the bar set in his hey day?

Comments

[mishalak]

His reputation more or less rests just on Dune. Everyone kept hoping he would produce something that incredible again and as far as I know he never did. And Dune is actually a fairly incredible work; it is one of the first works of science fantasy and a solidly fun read from what I remember at age 25.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

He wrote that one book about the hive mind that developed among a commune of cheese makers, where the hive mind wasn't presented as a terrible thing. I liked that, forty-five years ago. I wonder if it would seem like a good book now? I wonder what it's called?

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

The Santaroga Barrier

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Have you read it recently enough to have an opinion about it?

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Recently, no. Opinion, yes! I remember the story quite well because it made such a taupe impression on me. Taupe because it was not terribly exciting or fun. Even though the protagonist was in danger the stakes seemed incredibly low. Solidly interesting even when I read it about 1990 without being fun or full of beautiful scenery that would make it popular.

I think what made Dune such a big thing was that it was sort of a Sci-Fi Gormenghast. A few good SF ideas and wondrous imagery in a easy to understand nobility on adventures/battling for power framework. It is not a hugely better book in terms of character or science, but Herbert got the emotional impact right.

[awesomeaud.livejournal.com]

I thought you were talking about Hellstrom's Hive!

:)

[(Anonymous)]

I don't recall there being a hivemind I Hellstroem's Hive. It was hormones or something.

[scentofviolets.livejournal.com]

One of Herbert's best. The last line is the giveaway . . . you can read this one as either a horror story or a 60's ecotopia.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

"...Why was Herbert a Big Name Author, again?..."

DUNE was the Emperor's New Clothes in book form. Since nobody who read it could possibly have been foolish enough to shell out good money for a short story padded out to 800 pages, obviously it was a work of genius.

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

Because he wrote that one book that had some of the best ecological science fiction ever... which someone at some point mistook for being insteresting because of the Characters and Plot, thereby leading to an unfortuante number of sequals where stuff not focused on the ecology of arrakis happened, or worse; In which arrakis stopped being a desert planet entirely.

Which is weird considering the book is CALLED "Dune", not "Emperor of Spice" or anything. The protagonist of the book was in the title man.

The anthropology and religious themes and characters all kind of sucked (oh look a feudal political landscape based off of the holy roman empire under charlemagne with kung-fu TERF nuns playing the role of the catholic church, oh look "zen-sufi" religion that happens to be indistinguishable from catholicism, oh look mysteriously brutal magical native bedouins, GIANT PENIS WORMS EAT YO HYDROLOGICAL EMPIRE *yawn*, and the plot of jesus christ superstar to tie it all together)

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I've always bounced hard off the first few pages of Dune. I don't know what it is, but I can't read that thing. I never get as far as the ecology stuff.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

I spent twenty years under the impression that I'd never finished reading it, so I got a copy.

I was wrong.

You did the right thing.

[rozasharn.livejournal.com]

You don't need to "get as far as" the ecology stuff. It's all in an appendix. Just get hold of a copy and turn directly to the back of the book.

[nelc.livejournal.com]

You make it sound like a great read. I'm sure my golden-age self would have read it, even if he hadn't already.

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

It's a shame the putative level of ecology in the book wasn't matched by comprehension of thermodynamics.

[ext-2116956.livejournal.com (from livejournal.com)]

Add total pseudo science of memories passed through parents' gene plasm. Talk about breaking suspension of disbelief! I tried to ignore that part for the sake of the rest of the story, but it was a distraction.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

Frank Herbert seemed to like the idea.

So did Lafayette Hubbard.

I don't know if there's a connection. It's entirely possible they both just thought it would be a great timesaver.

I expect it never occurred to either of them to wonder, if this worked, why it is that after so many generations of consistent examples, Jews and American Indians aren't BORN thinking, "Don't trust this asshole!"

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

I thought The Dragon in the Sea was pretty good. But obviously Herbert is a big name author because of Dune. It sure got some interesting reviews. I don't think Herbert knew what he was doing, as evidenced by the sequels, and his inability to write the movie script. The novel was better than his writing. The ecological, esoteric religion, and resistance themes were right for the time. Wrapping it up in a heroic space opera plot made it accessible to a very wide audience, and we're talking about the baby boomers here. It's what they read after Stranger in a Strange Land and before they saw Star Wars.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

Basically. Herbert was a very Campbellian author. But his interests pulled him away from the classic Campbell subject matter, and his prose never caught up. Dune hit the sweet spot: accessible power fantasy plot (which Herbert deliberately sabotaged -- he was already breaking with Campbell's kleagle nuttiness), kitchen sink interests.

There is a fix-up novel of Herbert's short stories, The Godmakers, in which Herbert revises four very Campbell / Astounding shorts from the late 1950s into a strange mystical conclusion.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank the very mild stars. I thought this was the story where the solution was the Earth explorers just had to get the aliens drunk and then bargain with them; it's not. (I don't know that the story I'm thinking of was Herbert, and don't recall the title, but I want to punch it all the same.)

[martin-wisse.livejournal.com]

That's a Mack Reynolds story, James has talked about it earlier, iirc.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

You are right! And now I am again thinking of whether we need to walk away from science fiction and start a new genre where we can have nice things.

(Well, I suppose Reynolds isn't a major shaper of the genre these days.)

[(Anonymous)]

The Reynolds story is discussed here http://www.deproverbio.com/display.php?a=3&r=3