Mr. Teg wrote: ↑06 Aug 2023 00:19
The third party
updated quote about the Himalayas and the safety deposit box is questionable (but not really important in the end).
It depends on what the argument is about. There have been a lot of people claiming that Brian's story about the Dune 7 notes is a lie, and that such notes do not exist and/or he doesn't have them. The third-party quote is pretty compelling circumstantial evidence that it is in fact true.
Mr. Teg wrote: ↑06 Aug 2023 00:19
First, Frank Herbert is quoted as saying the publishers already had a copy of the outline (so why the need for the safety deposit box?).
To me, the two things don't seem related. The publishers had their copy, Frank had his. He placed his copy (or one of his copies) in a safety deposit box, apparently "in case something happened with him." But it might also just be because he was moving around a lot in these months, between Port Townsend, LA, Hawaii, Seattle, and on various publicity tours. Or there might have been some other reason we don't know about.
Mr. Teg wrote: ↑06 Aug 2023 00:19My friend from college, a third party, was a sales rep for TOR and had regular meetings with Doherty. In fact, he gifted me with an advance reader copy of the Road to Dune. When I asked him about the notes and outline, he had no idea what I was talking about and I had to explain the whole shebang to him. His reply was that the HLP was looking for a way to revive the franchise and Kevin J Anderson was recommended to them, which isn't as inspiring as the official narrative.
I don't really see the relevance of this, and I also don't think it really conflicts with the "official narrative" in any significant way. Here's Brian's telling:
Brian Herbert, House Atreides afterword wrote:The trouble was, a fellow named Ed Kramer kept after me. An accomplished editor and sponsor of science fiction/fantasy conventions, he wanted to put together an anthology of short stories set in the Dune universe—stories by different, well-known authors. He convinced me that it would be an interesting, significant project, and we talked about coediting it. All the details weren’t finalized, since the project had a number of complexities, both legal and artistic. In the midst of this, Ed told me he had received a letter from best-selling author Kevin J. Anderson, who had been invited to contribute to the proposed anthology. He suggested what he called a “shot in the dark,” asking about the possibility of working at novel length, preferably on a sequel to CHAPTERHOUSE: DUNE.
So he's saying that they were working on plans to revive the franchise, with the initial idea being an anthology, and then Kevin J. Anderson was recommended. It's also clear that he's glossing over some elements, since he mentions unspecified "legal complexities." So isn't this essentially the same as what your friend told you, just told from a different point of view?
Mr. Teg wrote: ↑06 Aug 2023 00:19(btw, someone updated and reposted that thread on alt.dune).
Not sure what you mean by this.
Mr. Teg wrote: ↑06 Aug 2023 00:19Btw: 2014Trevoke asked Brian Herbert:
Will you release your father's raw notes on Dune?
Brian Herbert Perhaps, but not soon. There are several forms this could take, including his notes for the original novel DUNE, and his subsequent notes about the series. It’s amazing that Frank Herbert kept so many complex details straight without using a computer—more than 1,000,000 words in Frank Herbert’s 6 Dune-series novels.
I don't know what Brian meant by that. Maybe he was talking about making a reference database, like the "Dune Concordance" he created for himself. Or maybe he was talking about all the work he did without a computer (either by hand or typewriter). Basically, he seems to be saying that Frank didn't have all the notes for Dune computerized, which is certainly true. Again, I don't see why it matters. We know Frank Herbert did use a computer for some of his writing: he wrote a book where he talks about it.
Mr. Teg wrote: ↑06 Aug 2023 00:19Second,Frank Herbert is quoted as saying the Dune 7 ending was suppose to be about democracy and governments not what we got in HoD and SoD.
If we accept these sources as proof of the outline, we have to accept what the intended ending was suppose to be about in his own words.
Sure. But it doesn't necessarily mean that those ideas were expressed in the outline in any definite way.
Mr. Teg wrote: ↑06 Aug 2023 00:19I find that a more plausible theory than to think that they have an outline (which cannot be credibly denied) but decided not to use it at all.
I absolutely agree and this is where the waters get muddied...
Muddied how? You have a whole lot of quotes, but you don't say what argument they are meant to support.
Mr. Teg wrote: ↑06 Aug 2023 00:19NYT Feb 13, 1986
Mr. Herbert had been working with his son Brian on the seventh novel in his ''Dune'' series and several other projects at the time of his death, according to Kirby McCauley, Mr. Herbert's literary agent in New York.
It seems clear that McCauley or the NYT journalist got this wrong. They must have conflated Dune 7 with the book the two were working on together,
Man of Two Worlds. (Or perhaps with the conversations they had had about collaborating on a Dune prequel at some point, though I think that's much less likely.)
Mr. Teg wrote: ↑06 Aug 2023 00:19UCLA speech, March 1985,Brian Herbert has also claimed that his father talked about collaborating with him on a book about the Butlerian Jihad. And in a Q&A session after a talk at UCLA on April 17, 1985, we have this exchange (at 50:45):
Q: Concerning the seventh Dune book you're planning. Do you plan to have it like go back in the history of the saga, to you know kind of explore the rise of the Guild… ?
FH: To do a prequel, you mean?
Q: Yeah, yeah, that's it.
FH: Yeah, I'm going to. I'm going to do a short story or novelette on this in the next year.
Dune 7 and the Dune prequel novella were two separate things. It's presumably the same one mentioned in
Dreamer of Dune:
Brian Herbert, Dreamer of Dune wrote:[At his death] He also left undone a new collection of science fiction stories, which was to include a 20,000-word novella set in the Dune universe.*
*The new short story collection was a contractual obligation to G. P. Putnam’s Sons, as part of a package deal that included the “Dune 7” novel.
Mr. Teg wrote: ↑06 Aug 2023 00:19During the same time, McNelly has stated that he had numerous conversations with Frank Herbert about writing a prequel to Dune together centering around the material in the DE (baseline), and he had sent Frank Herbert an outline, extensive notes, and several sample chapters.
Just to be precise, I believe McNelly said he had
one lengthy phone conversation with Frank, and the material he sent was an outline, notes, and just one sample chapter.
Mr. Teg wrote: ↑06 Aug 2023 00:19Both Brian Herbert and Willis McNelly claim that they were going to collaborate on a prequel with Frank Herbert.
Before Frank's death Brian Herbert said the DE was a masterpiece.
After Frank's death Brian Herbert refused all contact with McNelly and refused to reprint the DE (backed by lawyer's).
After agreeing to collaborate with KJA, Brian stated at a book signing that Ai Perdito by L Ron Hubbard and Kevin is great literature.
Brian and Kevin have often said the Dune 7 notes will never be published.
The HLP has often stated that the DE will never be reprinted.
A couple of corrections here. Brian Herbert supposedly called the DE a masterpiece in a 1990 letter, so not before Frank's death, which also shows that there was contact between them after Frank's death.
Look, I agree that the HLP's treatment of McNelly was rather shabby (particularly in that statement they forced him to sign onto), but I also think McNelly brought some of it upon himself:
- First by putting himself forward to continue the Dune series (as author or co-author). Brian and the estate/HLP clearly were not open to this, for several good reasons, including no doubt the copyright complications and pitfalls involved with basing the work on the DE and thus on contributions by a bunch of different people who might make difficulties. (Other considerations might include McNelly's unproven status as an author, his age, and the fact that the bare bones of the story he was proposing had already been told in the DE.) Perhaps they should have responded to his approach out of courtesy, but there may have been legal considerations that would make such a response unwise.
- Having made that decision, republishing the DE was not an attractive proposition to them, since it would tend to open that door, or at least make it harder for them to go in a different direction.
- McNelly communicated with fans on alt.fan.dune and Frank Herbert mailing lists in ways that tended to rile them up against the HLP once they started trying to revive the franchise.
- Spurred on by some of these hardcore fans, he made legal threats against the HLP. I would call this extremely foolish: I don't think he had a legal case, and even if he did he had no chance of prevailing. And it was totally counterproductive to any faint hope of getting the DE republished.
As for Brian's comment about one of Kevin's books with L. Ron Hubbard (!) being great literature, I don't see the relevance, though I'm curious how that collaboration worked. KJA completing some unfinished Hubbard outline or draft? From what I can tell, the book is a comedic spy adventure, so it's possible the comment was tongue-in-cheek, but I can also see how it would appeal to Brian, who started out writing humor.
If that anecdote proves anything, isn't it only to devalue the… err, value of literary praise by Brian Herbert, and hence the significance of his calling the DE a masterpiece?
Mr. Teg wrote: ↑06 Aug 2023 00:19Kevin and Brian have been open about how much has been retconed and the rationale behind this is best explained by KJA himself.
You’re obviously a dedicated Dune fan, and so am I. We’ve both read the original chronicles very closely and enjoyed their mastery. One thing you must keep in mind, though, is that *a lot* of people gave up on the Dune books. GOD EMPEROR, HERETICS, and CHAPTERHOUSE are very difficult novels for many readers, and Frank retained only about 10% of his audience through to the end. Rather than writing our new Dune novels to please the small group of the elite, we have instead recaptured and revived interest among that 90% who loved the first DUNE and not the others. ]
The original outline is for the 10% but they are not writing for that 10% but the other 90%.
They retconed the hell out it to appeal to those 90%.
It is self-evident that the Brian and Kevin books are written to be less challenging than Frank's books, but I think you're making some unwarranted leaps of logic here. First, Kevin does not say anything about retcons. Second, when was this quote from? Because it seems obvious that the audience for
Hunters and
Sandworms are mainly the readers who
did get through all of the original series.
Ultimately, we cannot know how much of the original outline they ignored/changed without seeing the outline. If the outline was very sketchy, they may not have needed to omit or change much of it at all, just add their own stuff to it.
Mr. Teg wrote: ↑06 Aug 2023 00:19They didn't need the original outline.
Maybe some of McNelly's.
Wait, what? McNelly never did any work on a post-
Chapterhouse sequel, and I've never heard anyone argue that
Hunters/Sandworms are derivative of DE material.
If anything, the books that would draw on McNelly's outline would be the Butlerian Jihad prequels.