Frank Herbert was born on October 8, 1920, in Tacoma, Washington. After attending the University of Washington, Seattle, from 1946 to 1947 Herbert continued working as a reporter, photographer, and editor, work that he had started doing in 1939 at the age of nineteen. Herbert pursued his journalism career for thirty years with many West Coast newspapers, including the Glendale Star (California), the Oregon Statesman, the Seattle Star, and the San Francisco Examiner. During this time, Herbert also worked a number of odd jobs and began to sell his first science fiction. His first short story was published in 1952, and his first novel, The Dragon in the Sea, was published in 1956.

Although these initial efforts introduced Herbert to science fiction audiences, it was his second novel, 1965's Dune, that immediately established Herbert as one of the masters of the field and that spawned a series of books, starting with the sequel...