Chapter 8

The South Seas Dream

WHILE WE stayed with the Vances in California, Dad wasn’t doing much creative writing. For several years, he had been wanting to return to the Northwest, and now he had feelers out for jobs in Washington State and Oregon—either in the newspaper business or other professions that involved writing. To get by, my parents borrowed money from Mom’s Aunt Ruth and Uncle Bing, who lived in nearby Sebastopol, California.

In the spring of 1954, when Dad was thirty-three years old, he obtained an important job. It was as speech writer for Guy Cordon, a U.S. Senator from Oregon who was running for re-election that year. Cordon chaired the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, with substantial responsibilities in government land-use policy. He also sat on the powerful Senate Appropriations committee and on a number of subcommittees, including Armed Services and Atomic Energy.

Years before in Burley, Frank Herbert had been influenced by Henry W. Stein, an ex-newspaperman who spoke of the romance of life on a big-city newspaper. Stein also instilled in the boy a passionate interest in politics. Stein had been involved in state and national politics, serving as a presidential elector from the State of Washington.

Now my father jumped at the opportunity to join Cordon’s staff. This would vault him into elite circles, providing his developing intellect with important insights into the mechanics of national politics—insights that Frank Herbert could use extensively in his writing for years to come.

Initially he would work in Washington, D.C., with the Senator, but for only a six-week period between early April and the primary election in May. After that, Dad was to return to Portland, Oregon, to handle publicity and other tasks for the re-election campaign. Under those circumstances, it wasn’t practical for us to accompany him to the nation’s capital.

We packed at fanatical speed to move our household to Portland, and within seventy-two hours everything we owned was ready to go. Then, as always, my parents owned a lot of books, so this made up a great deal of the weight of the shipment. Dad made arrangements for men to come in and carry the items.

Two days later, with only a few suitcases, we were six hundred miles north in Portland, staying in a hotel. Cordon’s previous speech writer had resigned on short notice, so Dad was needed right away. He only had one day to help Mom find an old house to rent in the city.

That evening, Mom, Bruce and I accompanied the new political staffer to Portland Airport. My parents kissed, and Mom said to Dad, “Give ’em hell, darling.”

My mother would not listen to the radio until hours later, when she was certain his plane had landed safely in Washington, D.C.

A man of ethics with a perfect senatorial attendance record, Guy Cordon had been in office for a decade. Like ex-president Harry S. Truman, his close friend in the other major party, he refused to become obligated to private interests. Since Cordon was chairman of the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, oil companies were always trying (without success) to curry favor with him. He was a “nuts and bolts” man, a technician who cared more about substance than politics. Many times he avoided publicity. My father would grow to respect him very much.

In a magazine article, Frank Herbert wrote:

Senator Cordon carries a full mane of gray hair which lends an air of dignity to a face dominated by a pair of intense, but twinkling eyes. There’s something homespun and basically solid about the Senior Senator from Oregon.

My parents wrote to one another, but Mom had more time to write than he did. Her letters were more frequent and longer. One thing was common to all of their correspondence: They spoke of how much they missed one another, how much they ached to be together again.

Each evening my mother liked to read, or would knit while listening to Fulton Lewis, Jr., or Paul Harvey on the radio. The oil furnace didn’t heat the house enough for her, so she liked to bundle up in an afghan and sit by a cozy fire. She read murder mysteries, historical accounts and, increasingly, books about politics. She was fascinated by biographies of American political leaders, including Eisenhower and Stevenson, and analyses of events that led to the first and second world wars.

In April and May 1954, the Army-McCarthy hearings were in full swing in Washington, D.C. Radio broadcasts began at 2:00 P.M. Portland time, and Mom listened to every moment of them.

She was a fine seamstress, and using a sewing machine borrowed from Babe, she made curtains for the house, along with her own slacks, shorts, blouses, skirts, and dresses. She also knitted sweaters for Dad.

In every way possible, she wanted to help Dad on the Cordon campaign, either with advice based upon her political researches or through other campaign-related tasks that he needed completed in Oregon. She was always volunteering to do things for him, and he very much appreciated it. She located news accounts from papers all over Oregon about Democrat Richard Neuberger, who would probably be Cordon’s opponent for the senate seat after the May primaries.

Using all available information on Neuberger, my father then prepared speeches and press releases that attacked the opponent’s positions on a variety of issues.

Public opinion polls came in showing Neuberger doing too well, and as panic set in on the Cordon staff, some of them discussed tactics that could only be classified as dirty politics. My father refused to participate in any of those schemes, and instead recommended a course of direct confrontation with Neuberger on the issues. Cordon followed this advice, but seemed uncomfortable campaigning. With his aversion to publicity, his accomplishments and messages did not always reach the attention of the voters. Cordon had done a great deal to promote the interests of Oregon labor, for example, by saving a Columbia River dam construction project in committee, but few people outside of the U.S. Senate ever learned about it.

Frank Herbert had taken on a formidable task, attempting to publicize a man who would not blow his own horn, a man who was widely respected by his peers in the U.S. Senate, but not well-known in his own state. In two earlier U.S. Senate elections, Cordon had won easily against weak Democratic opponents. Now, in Neuberger, he faced a former state senator and published writer who was easily recognized in Oregon. His wife, state legislator Maurine Neuberger, aided his cause with her own personal popularity, having been a champion of consumer protection issues.^*

In a very real sense, Mom missed Dad so terribly that she tried to keep herself busy while he was gone. She was always asking him on the telephone and in letters when he would be home, and telling him she was keeping the home fires burning. Whenever the phone rang, she ran for it, hoping it was him, hoping he would surprise her with a call from Portland Airport. Whenever she heard footsteps on the front porch, she thought they might be his. When they spoke on the phone, I sometimes saw tears in her eyes, and as they closed she often said to him in Spanish, “Adios, mi amor.” (“Good-bye, my love.”)

Dad, who was living in a five-dollar-a-day room at the historic Mayflower Hotel, missed her just as much. As days away from her passed, he wrote in a letter home that he had been singing the words from a popular song to himself, “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.”

They counted the days remaining until my father would come home.

While in Washington, D.C., he obtained a pass through Senator Cordon’s office and attended a number of the Army-McCarthy hearings. Dad sat in the Senate reserved gallery amidst much security, since five members of Congress had been wounded a short time before by Puerto Rican separatists who fired pistols from a spectators’ gallery.

Senator Cordon had been criticized by Neuberger for not coming out against Senator Joseph McCarthy, and this was hurting Cordon’s campaign, dropping him in the polls. To counter this, Frank Herbert was sitting in on the hearings, obtaining information that Cordon might use to advantage. Cordon, former Oregon State Commander of the American Legion, was strongly pro-military, and concurred with many of McCarthy’s publicly expressed positions. But troubling bits of information were reaching Cordon’s ears concerning the methods of the Senator from Wisconsin.

On his maternal side, Frank Herbert was a McCarthy himself, with many relatives in Senator McCarthy’s home state, including the famous red-baiter himself, who was a distant cousin. Dad referred to him as “Cousin Joe,” and on one occasion they met in the nation’s capital, at a cocktail party.

After initially keeping an open mind about McCarthy, Dad was appalled to learn about blacklisting methods the Senator used to prevent suspected Communists and “Communist sympathizers” from working in their chosen professions—particularly since this was often based upon scant evidence. Frank Herbert, like McCarthy, felt the leadership of the Soviet Union was psychotic enough to start a nuclear war, but believed McCarthy had gone too far in his zeal and paranoia, to the point where he was endangering essential freedoms of the people of the United States. Here my father drew the line, for he was a great believer in the Constitution of this nation—particularly in the rights of individuals. After consideration he recommended that Cordon make a strong statement against McCarthy, which Cordon did. But he didn’t do it until the hearings were almost over, which Neuberger used against him.

At the hearings, Dad saw Robert F. Kennedy working as an aide to Senator McCarthy, talking in hushed tones with the Senator, doing the Senator’s bidding, constantly at his side. This, when added to RFK’s later position in support of federal wiretapping, branded him as a dangerous politician in my father’s opinion—as a politician, who, like Senator McCarthy, would not hesitate to trample on human rights for the sake of a pet cause.

In the Dune series, which would begin in serial form in 1963, Dad wrote extensively about the abuses of power by leaders. These were opinions based, in large degree, upon his experiences in Washington, D.C. Another reflection of this time can be found in the short story “Committee of the Whole,” which would appear in the April 1965 issue of Galaxy. In that story, Frank Herbert described, in highly cynical terms, the workings of a Senate committee.

Dad worked for Senator Cordon in Room 130A of the Senate Office Building. The building was commonly referred to as the “S.O.B.” And Cordon’s “big office,” as staffers called it, was Room 333.

My father’s days were long, often from early in the morning until midnight. Almost every day he had breakfast in the S.O.B. dining room, usually a poached egg on unbuttered wheat toast, a half grapefruit without sugar and two cups of black coffee. He read three newspapers with breakfast—The Washington Post, The New York Times, and, in great detail, The Congressional Record. He scanned for items of interest and read quickly—a style of research that would be beneficial to him during his long writing career.

After breakfast he liked to take a constitutional around the Capitol Building, and shortly before 8:30 A.M. he always reported to Room 130A. Dad was much more than a speech writer to the Senator. Each morning after organizing his papers, Dad went up to the third floor to consult with Robert Parkman (Senator Cordon’s administrative assistant) on promotional projects for the day. Then he went back downstairs and worked on speeches, political letters and news stories about the Senator, for release to the press.

Speech writing took up most of his time and involved many rewrites. He worked on this for most of each morning and often into the early part of the afternoon. At least four lunches each week were with important people, including Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay, a friend and supporter of Cordon. Frank Herbert knew McKay from years earlier in Salem, Oregon, when the younger man had been a reporter and McKay had been a state senator. Other lunches and important meetings were with research directors at the Defense Department (for the Army Corps of Engineers), with National Archives people, with Senator Margaret Chase Smith (whom Dad admired), and with Jack Martin, press secretary to President Eisenhower—all to obtain assistance for the Cordon campaign.

From mid-afternoon to 6:00 P.M., Dad could invariably be found in the Library of Congress, in what he called his “second office.” That was Study Room 249 in the Library of Congress Annex. The little room came equipped with telephone extension 807, where he could always be reached if someone needed him right away.

Usually he took his portable Remington typewriter into that office. With piles of books and periodicals all around, he researched and wrote speeches, political letters and press releases. To add spice to the Senator’s speeches, my father included familiar quotations and anecdotes of famous people, particularly American politicians with a sense of humor, such as Chauncey M. Depew. Depew, renowned as a raconteur and after-dinner speaker, wrote an autobiography, My Memories of Eighty Years, which Dad referred to often.

The Library of Congress, in two huge buildings by the Capitol, was the largest reference facility in the nation, with more than thirty-three million documents. As a senatorial staffer, Frank Herbert had C-9 security clearance. This permitted him access to the Legislative Reference Service, through which he could use virtually any document or book in the library. He just got on the telephone, ordered what he wanted, and presently it arrived in a cart, with blue bookmarks designating the pages that were of interest to him. Additional notes were included on material available at other government facilities, such as the National Archives. If Dad wanted any of the material, he just ordered it through the Library of Congress, and presently it was in front of him.

He had so much research to do, so much studying, that at times he felt like he was cramming for a college examination. In a moment of late-night silliness he wrote to Mom, referring to the library as “the Liberace of Congress.”

Despite his schedule, remarkably, he found time to write science fiction, and that year a number of his short stories were published. One, “Pack Rat Planet” (Astounding Science Fiction, December 1954), was an extrapolation of his experiences in the Library of Congress. It described a huge Galactic Library built into underground chambers that took up almost the entire subsurface of the Earth. All inhabitants of the planet worked in some fashion for the library, and were referred to by the inhabitants of other planets as “pack rats,” tending vast storehouses of useless information. (This was later expanded into the novel Direct Descent, Ace, 1980).

Dad made friends with Cordon’s secretary, Dorothy Jones, and her husband, Lyle. The Joneses had lived in American Samoa, and were interested in accompanying us to Mexico on another trip. My father was becoming especially obsessed with the idea of living in American Samoa. If he could obtain a government job there, he thought it would leave him plenty of free time to write. So in his spare time he had been putting out feelers, letting people know he wanted to live there with his family.

Through Cordon, Dad met Stewart French, chief counsel of the Subcommittee on Interior and Insular Affairs. French, a powerful man in Washington, D.C., became a personal friend and invited Frank Herbert to his home on a number of occasions. French promised to help Dad obtain an appointment in American Samoa after the U.S. elections were concluded. Since U.S. territories were administered by the Department of the Interior, Dad also told Secretary of the Interior McKay of his interest. McKay said he would do what he could, again after the re-election of Cordon.

My mother was at first hesitant at the prospect of going to Samoa. She felt Dad should concentrate on the Cordon campaign and worry about future assignments afterward. Gradually, though, she came around to his way of thinking. She liked warm climates, and Portland was decidedly on the cool side much of the time.

During his stay in the nation’s capital, Dad made a train trip to New York City, his first visit there. As he wandered around in the forest of buildings, staring upward, he felt like a country bumpkin. He stayed at the Biltmore Hotel on Madison Avenue, and met his literary agent, Lurton Blassingame, for the first time. Lurton was a thin man who looked like an Oxford professor. Meeting Lurton was not, however, the principal purpose of Dad’s trip, which was made on behalf of the Cordon re-election committee.

On the top floor of a New York City office building, Dad tried to convince Paul Smith, board chairman of Collier’s magazine, to run an article on Cordon. By prearrangement the article would be written by a well-known writer and former adviser to Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ray Moley, who had also promised to write several other newspaper and magazine pieces on behalf of the Senator. Smith made no commitment beyond a promise to watch for the article when it came in, whereupon he would read it himself. It would not have to go through the usual “slush pile” route of unsolicited submissions.

Frank Herbert saw the slush pile at Collier’s, and found it disquieting. At a later writing workshop recorded by his friend Bill Ransom, Dad said the slush pile was in a large room, dominated by a long table, with big blackboards covering two walls. Mailmen came in pushing large carts full of manuscripts. These submissions were dumped on the table. College students working part-time then sorted the manuscripts, usually distributing them randomly into readers’ boxes. There were messages on the blackboards, and the sorters pulled out anything that particular editors said they were looking for. Some writers were mentioned negatively, with their manuscripts tossed in a rejection sack. Envelopes that looked unprofessional were tossed directly into the rejection sack without being opened. These unfortunate writers would receive form letters, often after long delays.

When Ray Moley learned that Collier’s wasn’t offering a contract in advance, he refused to write the article. Nothing on speculation, he said. So, prompted by Cordon, Dad took on the writing chore, and set to work on it in the Library of Congress. The completed article, entitled “Undersea Riches for Everybody,” was four thousand words long, a popular length at Collier’s, and described problems of underwater oil and gas exploration on the continental shelf. It outlined Cordon’s position on this issue, and, if published in time, was expected to boost the campaign.

Dad completed it in a few days and rushed it to Lurton for submission to Paul Smith. In order to make each proposal more noticeable to an editor, Lurton always submitted it in an orange folder, with an agency label bearing the story title and name of the author.

An astute judge of talent, Lurton encouraged my father and assured him, “You’ll be a big name before too long.” The agent became something of a father figure to Frank Herbert, and a tremendous inspiration. He was also a no-nonsense man who said what was on his mind. Lurton’s brother, Wyatt Blassingame, was an award-winning short-story writer who also offered advice and encouragement. Wyatt’s work had appeared frequently in national magazines and anthologies. He had written pulp science fiction as well, with such memorable titles as “Ghouls of the Green Death” (1934) and “The Goddess of Crawling Horrors” (1937).

Lurton wanted very much to see Dad’s novel completed, the psychological thriller about submarine warfare that he had begun a couple of years before in Santa Rosa. But that writing project had been derailed by the necessity of survival.

At least my father had a job, for the time being. That was not always the case during the years I lived with him.

The subjects Dad researched for Cordon were varied, and would form a basis not only for the Senator’s speeches, but for the political-ecological writings of Frank Herbert in the next four decades. He researched tidelands oil, the Submerged Lands Act, the Continental Shelf Lands Act, land grants, an “oil-for-education” congressional amendment, Federal Aid to Education, issues of grazing on national forest lands, and the highly publicized Hells Canyon issue involving construction of a huge hydroelectric project on the Snake River. Sometimes Dad wrote committee reports on Senate bills for Cordon.

He also analyzed Cordon’s voting record in detail, on environmental, educational, agricultural, power development, and other issues. With this information, he prepared abstracts of the Senator’s comments for press releases and other purposes, slanted to show how Cordon’s positions were benefiting people in the State of Oregon.

Guy Cordon, a strong influence on my father, believed in reducing government spending and in limiting the size and power of bureaucratic institutions. Between 1947 and 1951, the Senator voted to cut all federal appropriations, to cut non-defense spending, to reduce government publicity expenditures and to reduce government employee benefits. He voted to limit the President of the United States to two terms in office. Cordon also advocated state instead of federal control over offshore resources, and opposed federal construction of massive public power facilities—positions that were directly at odds with those of Neuberger.

One of Senator Cordon’s most important speeches, involving what was known as the Hill Amendment, was sixteen pages long and involved wading through nearly fifty documents. Dad worked all night to complete it, and, bleary-eyed, showed up with it at Cordon’s office at 9:00 one morning. He found the door to the Senator’s inner office closed, which usually meant an important visitor was inside. But Cordon’s secretary told Dad to go right in with the speech. Upon entering he noticed a man in a Homburg felt hat seated with his back to him. The man had his feet on Cordon’s desk.

Something was very familiar about the hat.

Frank Herbert said, “Here’s your speech, Senator,” and was about to leave when he realized that the visitor was ex-president Harry S. Truman. Cordon introduced them, and they shook hands. Truman said something to the effect that he hoped it was a good speech, and Dad, flabbergasted, beat a hasty retreat. Cordon and Truman were buddies, despite being in different political parties. Both men were outspoken individualists. At the time, Truman had retired from public life and was working on his memoirs.

After reading the speech, Cordon took Dad to lunch and told him it was “a powerful piece of paper,” and “one of the best damned research jobs” he had ever seen. Dad got another raise. The speech was ingenious, and in writing it my father called upon a technique he had learned in the newspaper business. Neither Cordon nor anyone on his staff had ever seen anything like it. Using what newspapermen called the “concentric circles” technique, Dad wrote the speech so that it could be cut from the end in a number of places, thus making successively shorter and shorter speeches. A variety of lengths could be chosen, and each time the length was expanded, it enlarged upon the arguments in the central theme, making it more and more convincing.

One evening late in May—so that primary voting for our neighborhood could be held in our house—Mom moved the furniture and rugs out of the front hall, living room and dining room, and scrubbed the floors. Balloting booths were moved in. Two days later on the morning of the election, a number of election officials arrived. I remember standing in the living room in a thick forest of adults who towered over me, all of whom were talking politics. At the time, I was just getting over the measles. Mom took us out to a restaurant for dinner while the heaviest election crowds were in the house.

Cordon won the Republican primary as expected, and my father returned to Portland in June. At our dinner table, he spilled forth stories of important people he had met or heard about. He spoke of a faraway place called Washington, D.C., and of distant lands he wanted to visit, such as American Samoa. He called Samoa “paradise,” and showed us romantic color photographs from books and magazines of palm trees, thatched huts and sailing boats.

“We’re going to live there soon,” he announced.

My half-sister Penny, by Dad’s first marriage, came to visit us late in the summer of 1954. Twelve years old, she wanted to spend time with her father, and despite the fact that he remained in arrears on his child-support payments, her mother assented.

That August, Dad received terrific news. Collier’s wanted to publish his article, and were paying well for it: $1,250. Dad was elated. Through Lurton, he tried to get assurance that “Underseas Riches” would appear in time to help Cordon’s re-election campaign. Dad felt strongly that the Neuberger side was engaging in a smear campaign, spreading false information about Cordon’s positions on issues. Neuberger had a way of coloring the facts, of distorting them to his advantage.

In the Cordon campaign it was hoped that the article, in a popular magazine, would help set the record straight. Months went by, however, and the election occurred first. The article, while paid for by Collier’s, was shunted aside for nearly three years, and never did appear in the magazine. Ultimately the publication folded.

The 1954 national elections were held on Tuesday, November 2nd. Oregon returns were slow coming in, since they only had one voting machine in the entire state. Consequently, the vast majority of votes had to be tabulated by hand. After polls closed in the state, Cordon held a slight lead, and it increased slowly all night long, until he was twelve thousand votes ahead. He showed surprising early strength in heavily Democratic Multnomah County. When Neuberger went to bed late that night, he thought he had lost the election. Cordon wasn’t so certain. He called it a “horse race.”

During the following morning and early afternoon, Cordon’s lead shrank. The election was so close that the governor ordered the placement of guards on all ballot boxes, to prevent vote tampering. By 2:30 P. M., Neuberger was only eighteen hundred votes behind. Two hours later, he took the lead. The margin then increased by ones and twos and tens, and kept increasing. When all votes were tabulated, Senator Cordon carried twenty-six of thirty-six counties but still lost the election by less than four tenths of one percent, since he didn’t carry the most populous counties. It was the closest U.S. Senate race in the nation and the most dramatic election in Oregon history.

Thereafter, Frank Herbert put more effort into obtaining a position in American Samoa, where he believed the slow, laid-back lifestyle would fit into the vision he had for his life. Adding to government material on the South Seas that he had shipped back from Washington, D.C., he purchased books about American Samoa and other trust territories, including a book about interesting archaeological ruins at Ponape (also known as Pohnpei, and formerly Ascension Island) in the Caroline Islands.

Dad’s application for a government position went through channels to William Strand, Director of the Office of Territories. Secretary of the Interior McKay and others put in recommendations in support of it. Strand, however, had the final word. He apparently felt my father was overqualified for the position, and that he would not remain in it long before wanting to devote full time to other pursuits. Strand may have been correct in this assessment, and it may have been based upon an offhand comment made by someone who knew my father—a comment to the effect that his first love was writing. Maybe Dad told too many people about his creative interests, and word got out that he wouldn’t be a good “government man.”

Dad turned his attentions to his writing. He had sold more short stories in 1954 than in any previous year, along with the lucrative sale to Collier’s. He had in mind a novel based upon his experiences working for Senator Cordon, but for the moment he was sour on politics. The unfinished submarine thriller was at hand, the novel Lurton wanted to see. Lurton also wanted more science fiction short stories.

So, with our funds dwindling once again, Dad set to work on the submarine novel.

A few days before Christmas 1954, we rented a little A-frame beach cabin in Healy Palisades, Washington. This was a tiny community between Seattle and Tacoma, in an area now known as Federal Way. The rent was low, and well it should have been. The cabin, all six hundred square feet of it, was at the bottom of a steep hill, reached by a long narrow trail. We moved in by boat, using a large open dory powered by an inboard diesel engine. This was supposed to be an interim house, a cheap place to live until Dad finished his submarine novel, Under Pressure. Dad set to work on the book, rising early each day and working far into the night.

My mother began to do freelance copy-editing for local stores, writing retail advertisements to bring in what money she could. Mom’s work was only part-time, paying very little. To reduce family expenditures she removed frayed collars from our shirts and sewed the collars back on inside out, giving new life to old fabric. She also cut long sleeves down to short when the elbows became worn, and patched our socks and the knees of trousers.

To save money, my father regularly gave his sons what he called “butch” haircuts, using electric clippers. These were crewcuts, with our hair cut the same length all over. His haircuts turned out okay at first, but always looked funny in a few weeks when the hair grew out. I had cowlicks, and as time passed without a new trim, my head took on the shape of a large, strange flower.

The proverbial church mouse had more money than we did in those days. When we didn’t have enough on hand to pay bills, Mom developed a random method of deciding which would receive priority. She threw all of them on the floor, and the ones that landed right side up were paid first. On other occasions she drew bills out of Dad’s Homburg felt hat to determine which ones to pay.

For my principal chore, I was assigned to collect driftwood from the beach to heat the house. I found quite a bit, which I stacked on the porch by the front door. Dad did his own foraging for firewood, and he supplemented that by getting on as many mailing lists as he could, under a phony name. In a few weeks, junk mail was pouring in from all over the country, which Dad and Mom tossed in the wood stove in the kitchen along with the driftwood, or in a river rock fireplace in the main living area.^*

Our beach cabin had one bedroom and one bath. I slept on a mattress on the floor of a tiny mezzanine overlooking the living room. Bruce’s crib was set up nearby. He was three, and I was seven. Due to the absence of a wall, activities downstairs often kept me awake. Especially Dad’s loud voice as he told long, convoluted “shaggy dog” stories, and his booming laughter after the punch lines. I often crawled out of bed, and in my pajamas peered through a railing at adults below. Bruce slept through anything.

A man of extremes, my father could become very angry—a side of him I saw too often. At the other end of the spectrum, he could behave like the happiest man alive. At such times his laughter was remarkable. It rolled from him in great peals. He savored each cachination, taking a couple of extra gulps of mirth at the end. When entertaining guests, my parents often had the lights down low while the fireplace blazed cheerily, giving the cabin a warm glow. A remarkable raconteur, Dad enjoyed talking far into the night.

For his desk Frank Herbert salvaged a broad slab of driftwood from the beach and mounted it on a frame constructed of plywood and two-by-fours. It was set up in the living room by a large window, so that he looked out upon the water.

One day he received an unsolicited package of peyote in the mail from a friend, along with instructions on how to take it. A note with the package said the stuff was guaranteed to cure writer’s block. Mom told him not to do it, to throw the stuff away. But Dad was curious. He’d never had peyote before, and proceeded to cut up an entire blossom. With this and hot water, he made a cup of tea. The instructions said to quaff it, and Dad did so. Instantly the stuff came back up, with most of the other contents of his stomach. After cleaning up, Dad didn’t feel any ill effect, and went back to writing his submarine novel at the driftwood desk.

Soon he seemed to be upon the waters of Puget Sound, with sunlight glinting off wave tops in a rhythmic pattern. He experienced sound with each beat of light—an eerie, beautiful pealing. The water was choppy, almost forming whitecaps, and sunlight glinted upon it. Suddenly he realized he was hearing each glint of light—the most dulcet, soothing chimes he had ever experienced in his life.

Thus when he wrote in the Dune series of a “vision echo,” he was writing from firsthand experience, from an experience of sensory mixing.

My father discarded the rest of the peyote, and never did anything like that again. He said the regurgitation was caused by strychnine, a white fluffy material that should have been separated from the blossom’s bud with a knife and thrown away.

Before we moved again in early 1955, Dad returned the driftwood desktop slab to the beach. He told my mother he had been the custodian of the wood for a short time. Years later he would say something similar to me, that none of us ever “own” land. We are merely caretakers of it, passing it along one day to other caretakers.

It is this way with the Earth, he said. We are stewards of it, not owners, and one day future generations will assume the responsibility.