My two favorite books by Frank Herbert (other than Dune) are Soulcatcher and Whipping Star. I liken Whipping Star to, sorta, a combination of Christopher Priest's (who I personally consider the best British Sci-Fi writer since H.G. Wells) The Inverted World and Indoctrinaire. But, I guess, I mean that more in a "weird new concepts"/emotional sense rather than storyline or device...or anything like that. I've read alot of Herbert's works, in addition to the Dune series, and there are a few I liked alot, like; The Santaroga Barrier, The Green Brain, Destination Void and Hellstrom's Hive, and a few I didn't like.
The Sci-Fi story I like the most by Herbert is Whipping Star with Jorj X McKie, Saboteur Extraordinary, for me, at least, it touched me on some very deep emotional levels as I felt a very strong attachment to sweet, abused Fannie Mae and the other strange alien lifeforms like the Taprisiot--And the way Frank Herbert paints the planetary landscape is very sharp, very distinctive--one can easily find themselves walking the beaches of Division City on Cordiality.
Another thing that REALLY blew me away was the concept of S'eye and interplanetary connectives. You have to realize that I'm as old as snot and first read this book in 1974: generic postulates such as Stargates, Hyperspace, Wormholes and the Manifold really weren't around back then and Whipping Star got me VERY interested in Wormholes, singularities, quantum mechanics and that kinda stuff back then. Heck, Fredrick Pohl's Beyond the Blue Event Horizon hadn't even come out yet! In fact, I'd have to say that The Inverted World and Whipping Star formed the "Stargate" that shot me into the Universe of hyper-intellegent Sci-Fi. Jorj X McKie is in a few other Herbert books and short stories, and many of them are good if not better than alot of stuff out there, but you can never change my opinion that Whipping Star is the best McKie and one of the best Sci-Fi's of all time!
---Like Whipping Star, Soulcatcher is a fairly small book and even though it's Fiction--as opposed to Sci-Fi I believe anyone who reads anything at all should read this book. Soulcatcher takes place in the Oregon woods, near where Herbert (and Ursula K. Le Guin, for that matter) spent most of his life. It's about a disturbed Native American torn between cultures who commits a crime. If I went any futher I'd give it away: it can really tear you up emotionally and make you want to piss on the white man's world! A very heart-wrenching book that I feel should be required reading for all--I was so inspired by this book I named my third collection of poetry after it and wrote a poem in it with a quote unabashedly stolen ripped out of said book! If I ever want to get it published I better pay the Herbert Estate first, if they allow it--
Resisting the Urge
Once again compelled to paper a tree disturbed by the white man's world writing on insubstantial almost transparent paper resisting the urge...
satrically eyeing events as they intersect impatiently undersexed smoking cigarettes pacing about like a matron in a fraternity ward we're (all) the whackos of the world creative insane intelligent ignorant there is only one world
we have to share with it we may not have asked for it we have to do the best we can with it we're (all) the whackos of the world resisting the urge...-
I am everything and nothing I am one with all living matter I am something far more than a sensory system and it's appetites I am evolved far beyond you who are called Hoquat I look backwards to see you I see your lives based on cowardice your judgements arise from illusions you tell me unlimited growth and consumption are good then your biologists tell me this is cancerous and lethal to which Hoquat should I listen?
you do not listen you think you are free to do anything that comes into your minds thinking this you remain afraid to liberate your spirits from restaint
I will tell you why this is you fear to create because your creation mirrors your true selves you believe your power lies in an ultimate knowledge which you forever seek as children seek parental guidance
where is the attonement for your violent acts throught your histories? we are born innocent yet innocense without conscious is a plague upon the earth
I take an innocent of your people to sacrifice for all the innocents you have murdered The innocent will go with all the other innocents into the spirit place thus will the sky and earth balance-
Must every millenium your cycle be purged? can you ever, will you ever, think for yourself? or are you content to perpetuate ignorance resisting the urge...
***** Before, you are wise; after, you are wise. In between you are otherwise. Fravashi saying (from the formularies of Osho the Fool) <i>Edited by: danlo60 at: 9/15/06 11:59 am </i>
|