Frank Herbert Lives

"Just keep a backup copy of everything you write off premises," Brian told me he had said to his father on several occasions. "It was the insurance agent in me talking," he recalled later. "Fire, flood, or any number of disasters could have ruined his work if he wasn't careful. Little did I know he would take my advice to the extreme." Brian's advice would bear fruit he couldn't have imagined.
"I remember the phone ringing in May of 1997 and it was this lawyer for Dad's estate," my uncle told me. "He said there was a safety deposit box that had been overlooked all these years at a local bank in Seattle. Initially I thought it might be jewelry from my mother's - Beverly Herbert's - estate that he'd kept for safe keeping or something. But then something in my head reminded me of those conversations I'd had with Dad before he passed away. I remember him working on that small Tandy computer in his hospital bed and me telling him to always save copies of his work."
Two weeks after that phone call Brian found himself, along with an estate attorney and the bank manager, covering their ears as two safety deposit boxes were drilled open for lack of any keys.
"I can't remember exactly what I was thinking at that particular moment," Brian said to me about this momentous day. "I knew there must have been something important in there for Dad to have kept it locked up."
The boxes were laid onto a table and Brian watched as the lids yawned open, as if waking from a deep slumber. From the first box, the attorney handed Brian volumes of recipes his father had cooked up (the "I write" man was also an excellent chef). In the second box were a few very old five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy disks with stacks of papers underneath.
"I remember being handed the papers and placing them on the table," Brian said to me, his voice rich with anticipation. "Then I uncovered the top page and my heart nearly stopped."
What Brian saw was beyond imagination and hope. He'd uncovered an item that'll be shared with millions o f people. On the cover of the first page, scribbled in Frank Herbert's unmistakable hand, were two words: 'Dune 7.'
In the middle of June 1997, my own mother (Penny Merritt) called me. There was an air of excitement in her voice. We went through the usual 'how are you' and 'I'm fine how are you' type conversation, then I finally had to ask:
"What's going on?"
"What do you mean?" she asked, trying to sound calm and collected, but failing miserably.
"Mom. What's going on?"
"Oh honey, it's just wonderful," she said in a quavering voice.
"What is?"
"We've found notes for a seventh Dune book. They were discovered in a safety deposit box in Seattle after all these years."
I sank onto the couch, my mouth agape. After confirming that she wasn't 'joshin me,' we talked about what this meant to us and to literature. But mostly we talked about what it meant to us, to our family.
"You know," I finally said, "Grandpa's not really dead then."

Dune was first published in 1965, the year of my birth. Dune Messiah followed in 1969, then Children Of Dune in 1976, Heretics Of Dune in 1981, God Emperor Of Dune in 1983, and Chapterhouse Dune in 1985. The prequels written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson are: Dune: House Atreides, (1999), Dune: House Harkonnen (2000), Dune: House Corrino (2001). Tor Books has contracted with Brian and Kevin to write three more early prequels to show the development of what would become the Dune universe. Dune: Butlerian Jihad is due out at the end of 2002, Dune: Machine Crusade is set for 2003, and Dune: Battle Of Corrin is set for 2004. Dune 7 (as yet, untitled) will be available sometime after 2004. No concrete date has been set for its publication.