The Plowboy Interview: Frank Herbert

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

HERBERT: Yes, Dune was so arid that the very idea of water coming down from the skies in rain, and of great rivers flowing over the land, conjured up visions of paradise. But when that one change was made, it had a regular "domino theory" series of consequences that hadn't been anticipated. Indeed, by the time Dune reached the stage described in my fourth desert planet book—God Emperor of Dune—the changes had pretty well eliminated individualism!.

PLOWBOY: Why? Why did you choose to portray the effects of such a seemingly desirable change as being so disastrous?

HERBERT: I felt that the historical interrelationship between the native Fremen and their desert planet had created what amounted to a religion. They had learned not to question the way to behave in their environment, but to act in certain ways on faith. They were locked into their system. So, even when the environment changed, the people didn't change their social mythology, their values, or their ways of relating to one another.

PLOWBOY: In other words, they failed to alter their own part of the planet's ecology.

HERBERT: That's right. You see, I think there are such things as psychological ecology, religious ecology, economic ecology, etc. And none of them can exist in a vacuum. They're all interrelated. So whenever we make decisions and put them into effect, we ought to review and assess all the potential results.

The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action in mind.

PLOWBOY: There must be a lot of folks—including many who call themselves environmentalists—who aren't in agreement with your thinking about the relation between humans and ecology.

HERBERT: Yes, there certainly are. Too many ecologically concerned individuals seem to think that simply getting rid of one noxious environmental pollutant-whether that "culprit" be nuclear power, commercial pesticides, or whatever—will solve all our problems.

PLOWBOY: I wouldn't think that most science fiction writers share your concerns, either.

HERBERT: The bulk of science fiction authors—and there are some notable exceptions to this rule—are heavily into what I call the technological toy syndrome.

Writers and scientists who believe that technology alone can solve problems have fallen into a common scientific fallacy . . . the belief that science can answer any question in absolute terms, that it's possible to reduce phenomena to one explanation that will operate in a vacuum. That's not the way the universe appears to me. And it quite clearly didn't appear that way to Albert Einstein or Werner Heisenberg, either.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print