FH inspiration

[Stan]

New to the forum and I can assume most people know how much The Sabres of Paradise influenced him. I have just ordered it and am excited to read. Are there any other books that also influenced FH while writing Dune as much as The Sabres of Paradise?

[distrans]

herbert was a fan of the 'philosophical entertainer' alan watts
a central figure in the modern introducion of the west to the eastern mind.

watts was a figure of the pacifica network public supported radio in the bay area after 49'
kpfa


thats where he got the idea about vertical burials with trees planted on...

[Stan]

Thanks

[Cpt. Aramsham]

I had a post about this on Reddit, but it may be as well to copy it (with some updates and corrections) here, given how that platform is going:

Frank Herbert at one point claimed that he read over two hundred books in preparation for Dune—though he may have exaggerated, and "read" probably in many cases means "skimmed" or "looked something up in." It's also clear (just from publication dates) that he did a lot of the reading as he was writing the book, not strictly beforehand.

Generally speaking he was an avid reader (he wrote book reviews for the San Francisco Examiner while he was working on Dune), and read a whole ton of non-fiction, both as specific research for novels and out of general interest. History, mythology, popular science, futurism, geography and ecology, political science, psychology and philosophy were among his main interests.

He read a lot of the classics: Greek and Roman plays, poetry and other writings. The Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights (Shakespeare, Marlowe, Kyd, Fletcher, Jonson, Webster, etc.). He had an abiding interest in poetry, with Ezra Pound among his favorites. He also cited Gerald Manley Hopkins, and his collection included Yeats and T.S. Eliot. Medieval poetic forms interested him, including Provençal lays and canzones. (The terms "giudichar mantene" in Chakobsa are actually from the medieval Italian poem Donna mi prega by Cavalcanti, which Pound translated.)

He also studied Japanese and Chinese culture, including religion (Buddhism, Taoism, the I'Ching), history, and poetry (haiku).

In the science fiction genre, he kept on top what was going on in the field once he became actively involved in it, so he was aware of probably all the major writers. (Though by the 80s he had stopped actively reading in the genre.) He at various times cited Vonnegut, Pohl, Le Guin, Asimov, Aldiss, Delany, Clarke, Verne, Orwell, Huxley, Bradbury, Ellison, Sprague de Camp, Miller, and many others. From an interview with Vertex magazine (1973):

HERBERT: Well, I didn't cut my teeth on science fiction. I began reading science fiction, I would guess, in the forties, the early forties. I'd been reading science fiction about ten years before I decided to write it.

VERTEX: Who were your favorite authors?

HERBERT: Well, I did read some Heinlein. I shouldn't really tie it down to ten years because I had read H. G. Wells. I'd read Vance, Jack Vance, and I became acquainted with Jack Vance about that time. Jack came along about six months or so after I'd decided to write science fiction. I heard he was in the area where I was living, and just walked in on him one day. We wound up, about six months later, our two families, going to Mexico. We lived in Mexico for a while and plotted several stories together. We're still very close friends. I read Poul Anderson. You know, we could list names here for a long while. I read the field when I started writing it. I wanted to see what was being done.

In terms of specific books that influenced him on Dune in particular, they include, according to various sources and evidence:

Arrakis and the Fremen:

• Lesley Blanch, The Sabres of Paradise (1960)
  FH picked up a lot of exotic vocabulary and even lifted some lines near-verbatim from this book.
• T.E. Lawrence, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926)
  Cited by FH's colleague Don Stanley as among the books FH read as research for Dune. He was certainly familiar with the life of "Lawrence of Arabia," as shown in interviews.
• W. Thesinger, Arabian Sands (1959)
  Cited by Hari Kunzru as a book that FH's depiction of life in the desert owes a lot to.
• Charles Montagu Doughty and Edward Garnett, Travels in Arabia Deserta (1888/1908)
  Found in FH's library, and source of some vocabulary/names.
• Charles Godfrey Leland, Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling (1891)
  Much of the Chakobsa dialog are taken from Gypsy songs and curses (in various languages, not all strictly Romani) in this book.
• R.B. Cunninghame Graham, Mogreb-el-Acksa: A Journey in Morocco (1898)
  Apparently a source of some of his Arabic vocabulary.

Ecology:

• Paul B. Sears, Where There Is Life (1962)
  FH reviewed this for the Examiner, and some of Kynes' maxims of ecology are copied directly from Sears. FH may have also used Sears' Deserts on the March (1935).
• Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (1962)
  Often presumed (e.g. John Michaud in The New Yorker, 2013) to have been an inspiration, this non-fiction bestseller about environmental destruction was certainly known to FH (The Green Brain is clearly inspired by it, calling its radical environmentalists "Carsonites"), but I don't know of any clear evidence that it influenced Dune specifically.
• Various books on desert topics from the San Francisco Examiner's library, according to two articles by his former colleague, Don Stanley:
  • FH's request: "Anything that in any way touches upon dry-weather ecology." (Stanley 1984)
  • "some university-press tome on cactuses and succulents of the Gobi desert." (Stanley 1984)
  • "I was able to supply him with dozens of volumes on such things as Saharan wind currents, erosion factors in Outer Mongolia, precipitation studies on Mars" (Stanley 1984)
  • "He pulled down a scholarly tome from UC Press having to do, if memory serves, with erosion factors in areas of light to non-existent rainfall." (Stanley 1986)
  • "Books on meteorology, cactuses, desert plant and animal life" (Stanley 1986)

The Butlerian Jihad:

• Samuel Butler, Erewhon (1872)
  The section "The Book of the Machines" (also in a different version as "Darwin Among the Machines") is usually considered the main inspiration for the Butlerian Jihad. FH explicitly cites (another book by) Butler in Destination: Void.
• Lewis Mumford, The Transformations of Man (1956)
  FH reviewed this book for the Examiner; it provides another major part of the basis for the Butlerian Jihad.
• Edmund C. Berkeley, Giant Brains, Or Machines that Think (1949)
  Another book FH reviewed for the Examiner. It uses the term "thinking machines" for computers; Frank expressed criticism of the notion that machines can think.
• Ida R. Hoos, Automation in the Office (1962)
• Robert E. Cubbedge, Who Needs People? (1963)
  Two other books that FH reviewed, that deal with the impact of automation (including early punch-card computers) on the workforce. The direct influence was probably minor, but they show how the idea of the Jihad was shaped by contemporary concerns, and by his reading in the field.

Prescience, mind-expanding powers and the Bene Gesserit:

• Isaac Asimov, Foundation (1942/1950)
  Tim O'Reilly argues that Dune is in part a response to Asimov's classic. FH also perhaps hints at this in his essay "Men on other planets" (1976).
• B.F. Skinner, Walden Two (1948)
  FH often cited Skinner as an example of the attitude towards the future that he was warning against, often pairing it with Foundation.
• Alfred Korzybski, e.g., Science and Sanity (1933)
  Apparently the basis for most of the ideas of Bene Gesserit training. (Possibly via A.E. Van Vogt's "Null-A" SF stories, which were also strongly influenced by Korzybski.)
• Alan W. Watts, e.g., The Joyous Cosmology (1962)
  FH was friendly with Watts, a San Francisco zen guru who dabbled in psychedelic drugs, and reviewed this book about his experiences with hallucinogenics for the Examiner.

Misc.:

• Norman Walter, The Sexual Cycle of Human Warfare (1950)
  The idea of the Jihad as a kind of mass psychosis or sexual fervor. Referenced by FH in "Listening to the Left Hand."
• Richard Hinckley Allen, Star Names and Their Meanings (1899)
  Most of the names of stars and planets in Dune are taken from here.
• Poul Anderson, The Broken Sword (1954)
  Michael Dirda argues that this provided the template for the intrigue between rival Houses in Dune. (Anderson was a friend of FH, they discussed Dune while it was being written, and he is referenced in the book as the historian Pander Oulson.)
• The Bible (probably not read specifically for Dune)
  Most of the quotations from the Orange Catholic Bible are Biblical.
• The Koran (or at least something that quotes the Koran)
  Paul quotes (Chani quoting) from the Koran (Sura 2:223): "Woman is thy field; go then to thy field and till it."

Other books found in FH's library or notes include:

• Kenneth Cragg, The Call of the Minaret (1956)
• F.R.J. Verhoeven, Islam: Its Origin and Spread in Words, Maps and Pictures (1962)
• Thorkild Hansen, Arabia Felix (Danish 1962, English 1964)
• Gustave von Grunebaum, Medieval Islam: A Study in Cultural Orientation (1946)
• William R. Polk, The Opening of Southern Lebanon: 1788–1840 (1963)
• Philip K. Hitti, History of the Arabs (1937)
• H.A.R. Gibb, Mohammedanism (1949)
• Pierre Bourdieu, The Algerians (French 1958, English 1961)
• Francesco Gabrieli, The Arabs: A Compact History (1963)

Of course, he may have read some of these after finishing Dune, perhaps as preparation for some of the sequels. (He mentions in an interview that he had to do additional research for Dune Messiah.)

There's also a more speculative list of influences here.

[georgiedenbro]

Very cool list, thanks!