The Plowboy Interview: Frank Herbert

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PLOWBOY: One thing I've noticed in reading and thinking about your books is that every society you describe seems to have glaring faults . . . no matter how noble the intentions of its creators. For instance, the most positive social system I saw in any of your works was the community described in The Santaroga Barrier. [ EDITOR'S NOTE: This book portrays an isolated city that does not participate in American consumerist society. Commercial corporations send an agent in to uncover Santaroga's secrets and to attempt to subvert the community.]

At first impression, Santaroga appeared to be far superior to normal American society. The people were cooperative, peaceful, and happy. But by the time I reached the end of the book, I'd become aware of flaws in the community that seriously compromised its virtues.

HERBERT: I wrote The, Santaroga Barrier with the hope that half the book's readers would end up saying, "Oh boy, what a nifty society . . . I'd like to live there" and the other half saying, "You wouldn't catch me dead in that place." The underlying message, then, was that one person's utopia is another person's dystopia or worst possible world—and that any attempt to create a perfect society will fall into the trap of replenishing itself only from. itself, and ignoring those differences between people that give us strength as human beings.

PLOWBOY: That's not the kind of one-sided viewpoint a reader might expect to find in the work of an author who professes to "preach" in his fiction. Soul Catcher, like The Santaroga Barrier, also seemed to be making strong negative statements about American society . . . only in that book the not entirely positive alternative was native American culture, a society many people think of as being—or, at least, having been—close to perfect. [EDITOR'S NOTE: In Soul Catcher, a spiritually powerful Indian kidnaps the son of a prominent politician . . . with the intention of slaying the innocent youth as part of a ceremonial revenge . One important aspect of the ritual is that the victim-must agree to the slaying.]

HERBERT: Soul Catcher described a collision between two mythologies, those of the native American world and of the European immigrant culture. And, in truth, this very real collision has not yet completed its shaking-down process. Indeed, the two societies still have some grave misunderstandings about each other. Many people, for instance, think that the Indians were the best ecologists this land has ever seen. I don't think that's necessarily true. Some native American cultures were actually quite hard on their environments . . . they were just slower-because their populations were small—at causing damage than the whites were.

PLOWBOY: Really?

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