The Plowboy Interview: Frank Herbert

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HERBERT: Who, me . . . a science fiction writer? I've always considered myself to be a yellow journalist.

PLOWBOY: I beg your pardon?

HERBERT: Like the best muckraking yellow journalists of the news media, I ask questions that other people aren't asking, and do a lot of investigating into the world around me. So even though I try to write entertaining, future-oriented stories, my books always contain messages that—I believe—are relevant to our situation today.

PLOWBOY: So you use your futuristic fiction to comment on contemporary problems?

HERBERT: Yes, but don't think that's all I try to do when I write . . . people don't buy my books because they think they're going to learn something from them. The fact is, if you told somebody, "Listen, I'm going to teach you a lesson that's so important it might even change your life" . . . that individual might say, "Oh boy, do that!" But if you then did instruct the person as you promised—and that's all you did—he or she would resent it.

So I try to give my readers real entertainment as well as my point of view . . . and they can take either one, or both!

PLOWBOY: How did you begin your career as a "writer with a message"?

HERBERT: Oh, I knew what I wanted to do with my life even when I was quite young. In fact, on my eighth birthday I told my family, "I'm going to be a author."

PLOWBOY: They must have been tempted to take that remark as a joke.

HERBERT: Well, I got kidded a lot as a result of my statement, but—in truth—I've never really strayed far from that goal. I was employed as a newspaper writer for many years, and I took those jobs because I saw the field as a training ground that would financially support my own writing while helping me learn to use the tools of my trade. In addition, I put in some time as a radio and television commentator. And I've done a lot of photojournalism work . . . I was picture editor of the San Francisco Examiner for quite a few years.

PLOWBOY: Then did you glean the "message themes" for your fiction from exposure to contemporary news events?

HERBERT: Heck, no. I developed all of my basic ideas during my childhood years on our family's farm.

PLOWBOY: You were a farm boy?

HERBERT: I milked cows—by hand—for over half of my early childhood years . . . on a small subsistence farm in Kitsap County, Washington. And I can still clench my hands like you wouldn't believe.

PLOWBOY: You must have had other chores, too.

HERBERT: Oh, yes. There were pigs to feed, and I had corn and such to hoe. I once even reared and canned 500 chickens as a 4-H project. We raised all our own food, so—although I grew up during the Depression—I never had to worry about being hungry. In fact, I remember those "bad years" as marvelous times, because I spent them in the company of a kind of large, extended family. My father had six brothers, so I never lived far from aunts and uncles . . . and I had cousins all over the landscape.

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