The Book of Frank Herbert

3.5 stars, Metaphorosis Reviews

Summary
A collection of speculative stories by Frank Herbert.

Review
Frank Herbert is mostly remembered for Dune, but along with its sequels and several other excellent novels and series (e.g., The Dosadi Experiment), he also wrote some pretty good short stories. This is the second of two such collections I have, which together comprise much of the now-available Collected Stories (which, annoyingly, does not include several unpublished stories available separately).

The stories here definitely have the feel of their time – largely the mid-'50s – with men firmly in charge, but it's not as obtrusive or unfortunate as with some authors of the period.

The stories are uneven, with a few quite strong, some merely clever, and at least one, “Listening to the Left Hand”, actually a meandering and fairly uninteresting essay. The good ones, while they won't knock your socks off, are good, and include:

• “Seed Stock”


• “The Gone Dogs”


• “Encounter in a Lonely Place”