Frank Herbert Lives

My memory spun back to the meeting in Grandpa's study when I was seven. "I write." I had no idea what that truly meant... until now. The pages whipped by as I dove into the complex web of layered stories. When I'd finished, I went back and reread it, surprised by what I'd missed the first time.
I spent several summers with Grandpa after that and learned a lot from him. I took him stories I'd written and watched as he meticulously went over them. He would give me pointers on plot structure, the use of adjectives, and many other things that helped me weave tales. But I could never create a world as complex as his no matter how hard I tried. It seemed an impossible feat to create, as my Uncle Brian Herbert said of the original Dune novel in his Afterword to Dune: House Atreides - "a magnum opus that stands as one of the most complex, multilayered novels ever written." How did Grandpa do it? What grain of sand wafted into that brain of his, creating such an incredibly textured universe?
A s his family, we knew where it began. It was on the dunes along the coast of Oregon where Grandpa got his first inkling into the world that would become his masterpiece. He worked briefly in Florence, Oregon, a small, coastal, bedroom community at the time of about 1600 people (the town is now much bigger). He was there doing research for an article during his tenure as a freelance writer, trying to sell the written word to magazines. The article would be based on a U.S. Department of Agriculture study about the trouble with shifting dunes. He became fascinated by the amount of life that fought for existence on the unpredictable sands of the area. How, even in the tiniest crevices of the dunes, life clung and fought for permanence in such an inhospitable place. It was here his mind began to unfold the story that would become Dune.
After Grandpa's death, I still hadn't realised how important he was. I missed him terribly, an emptiness that one feels when a family loses someone close to them. What I hadn't realised was how it would affect others. Frank Herbert left more than just a void within our family; he'd left a void within a much bigger clan: the literary community. The last Dune novel Grandpa wrote, Chapterhouse Dune, ended on a cliffhanger, promising something greater and more profound in the final book. All of that now seemed lost with his passing. February 11th, 1986 marked the death of a man and his vision.
Or did it?
Brian Herbert, Frank Herbert's eldest son, had been harangued by agents, publishers and fans alike to finish the series. Having written several novels of his own - including co-authoring Man Of Two Worlds with his father in 1985 just prior to his death - Brian wasn't sure if he wanted to take on such a monumental task. Besides, he didn't know exactly where his dad was going with the Dune series before he died.
After more haranguing by agents and publishers, Brian was contacted by an editor who introduced Brian to his future, energetic co-aut hor.
By the first week of May 1997, more than 11 years after the death of Frank Herbert, Brian finally met up with best-selling author Kevin J. Anderson, and they began throwing ideas around. After months of painstaking research and deliberation, they decided to start setting the groundwork for three prequels to the original Dune (Dune: House Atreides, Dune: House Harkonnen, and Dune: House Corrino), but still had no clear idea how the final book should end. What did Frank Herbert have in mind for 'Dune 7'?