In more than a decade of illustrating science fiction, I must have read hundreds of science fiction novels, novellas, short story collections etc. (I always try to read the stuff I illustrate — one owes that much to any writer I think — to convey on the cover at least a semblance of some aspect of the world contained within.) Amongst these are quite a few Frank Herberts, but I have to admit to a gap in my reading vis-a-vis his short stories. So I came to know all the material contained in this volume. Suffice it to say that each one presented a novel challenge so far as an appropriate image was concerned. Each was quite distinct from the other and all were a joy to read. I think in the end there is enough variation in the images to do some small justice to the richness that is Frank Herbert's imagination and I for one am glad to have caught up with a glaring omission in my science fiction reading.
Then there is "THE ROAD TO DUNE." Byron Preiss, the editor of EYE, suggested a collaboration between myself and Frank Herbert that would be in the tradition of Hiroshige's 52 STATIONS OF THE TOKAIDO, that is, an artist's view of a progression of places. I was put in mind of a pub down the Old Kent Road called THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE-DOWN and its painted sign with the image of a huge fish standing on a river bank with a rod in its fin/hand. Dangling at the end of the line is a freshly hooked angler. I was reminded of this as I tried to tackle THE ROAD TO DUNE. The opportunity was sort of a privilege, but good grief! So difficult! Embarras de richesses! I would have to extract from DUNE's dense potpourri some singular aspect, and convey in a short series of black-and-white illustrations some hint of an integrated story line, all the while regarding myself as some kind of itinerant artist sketching madly through some yet-to-be Frank Herbert, DUNE-related scenario!
Well, a project like that could take months. The bywaters merely hinted at in the series of novels each conveyed rich tapestries of their own. What about the Sardaukar and their ghastly home planet, Salusa Secundus? Perhaps we should know a little more about the Harkonnens and life on old Giedi Prime. The Bene Gesserit, yes, far too mysterious a bunch. We could investigate them a little and uncover a few more of their plots and intrigues. Surely there are half a dozen books waiting to be written about the Butlerian Jihad alone! No, too broad a brush required for all those possibilities.
But I couldn't resist the Tleilaxu. Here was a weird crew if ever there were one. The enigmatic technocrats who steered a barely tolerated line past the dictates of the Butlerian creed. Yes, let's go ahead, thought I—and then I met someone who had read the recently released HERETICS OF DUNE and who suggested to me that all my embryonic ideas were way off beam and that the Tleilaxu weren't in the tiniest bit anything like the beings I was about the depict!
So that's how I came to the subject I eventually tackled. I would be an artist in residence in the Palace at Arrakeen, single most colossal structure in all of human history. As I write this, the pictures are nearing completion and I don't envy Frank Herbert one bit the job of weaving something new around them. But I must say that in working through the various sketches, reading extracts from the different DUNE books, I have begun to appreciate the scale of this edifice.—"Designed to reduce a pilgrim's soul to motedom!"—ultimately though, big as it is, it's only a building. Frank Herbert's DUNE myth is far, far bigger. I look forward to one day tackling some other neglected corner of his great yarn!
Frank Herbert, Eye
(Series: # )
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