Frank Herbert, born on October 8, 1920, authored Dune, the top-selling science-fiction novel of all time. He worked as a journalist for much of his earlier life and selling pulp adventure stories to magazines such as Esquire in 1945. He took six years to research and write Dune, which was published by Sterling E. Lanier, an editor of Chilton Book Company, best known for its auto-repair manuals.
Dune was not an immediate best seller but it was a critical success, winning the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1965, and shared the Hugo Award with Roger Zelazny's ...And Call Me Conrad in 1966. Herbert followed his novel with 5 sequels: Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse: Dune. None of them ever achieved the same critical acclaim he received for Dune and although almost all of them appeared on the New York Times Best Sellers list, none of them won any Hugo or Nebula awards. I personally think God Emperor of Dune was one of the worst books I've read. The last two novels in the series come the closest to reaching the same level as Dune.
The 1984 movie version by David Lynch turned out to be a bomb, but the Sci Fi Channel produced it as a mini-series in 2000, following it with Children of Dune (the first part of which was actually from Dune Messiah) garnered its highest rating production at that time.
After Herbert's death in 1986, his son Brian and author Kevin J. Anderson have continued the Dune saga with notes discovered a decade later.
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