In grade school he was the acknowledged authority on everything. A kid that small shouldn't be so smart.' Young Frank was not unlike Alia in Dune, a person having adult comprehension in a child's body. On his eighth birthday, Frank stood on top of the breakfast table at his family home and announced, 'I wanna be a author.' His maternal grandfather, John McCarthy, said of the boy, 'It's frightening. Wells, Jules Verne, and the science fiction of Edgar Rice Burroughs. He loved Rover Boys adventures, as well as the stories of H.G. He carried around a Boy Scout pack with books in it, and he was always reading. It has been translated into dozens of languages and has sold almost 20 million copies.Īs a child growing up in Washington State, Frank Herbert was curious about everything. Today the novel is more popular than ever, with new readers continually discovering it and telling their friends to pick up a copy.

His magnum opus is a reflection of this, a classic work that stands as one of the most complex, multi-layered novels ever written in any genre. He was a man of many facets, of countless passageways that ran through an intricate mind. Read moreįrank Herbert (1920-1986) created the most beloved novel in the annals of science fiction, Dune. The White Plague is a prophetic, believable, and utterly compelling novel. As the world slowly recognizes the reality of peril, as its politicians and scientists strive desperately to save themselves and their society from the prospect of human extinction, so does Frank Herbert grapple with one of the great themes of contemporary life: the enormous dangers that lurk at the dark edges of science. For John Roe O'Neill is a molecular biologist who has the knowledge, and now the motivation, to devise and disseminate a genetically carried plague-a plague to which, like those that scourged mankind centuries ago, there is no antidote, but one that zeros in, unerringly and fatally, on women. It tells of one man's revenge, of the man watching from the window who is pushed over the edge of sanity by the senseless murder of his family and who, reappearing several months later as the so-called Madman, unleashes a terrible vengeance upon the human race.

The White Plague is a marvelous and terrifyingly plausible blend of fiction and visionary theme. Suddenly, a car-bomb explodes, killing and injuring scores of innocent people.įrom the second-floor window of a building across the street, a visiting American watches, helpless, as his beloved wife and children are sacrificed in the heat and fire of someone else's cause.įrom this shocking beginning, the author of the phenomenal Dune series has created a masterpiece. A warm day in Dublin, a crowded street corner.

The white plague by frank herbert