HORRORS is an ongoing series exploring the overlooked darker elements of well known media.
Frank Herbert is most famously the author of Dune and its sequels, although I think it’s often overlooked that he wrote other books in his lifetime, many of them with interesting SciFi and Horror elements. They cover a wide variety of topics, including a plague that wipes out the entire female sex, a starship AI that gains sentience and pronounces itself God, and a literal Star being tortured. Most of them are also much shorter than the Goliath of text that is Dune. Here are a few of them if you need a good read.
HELLSTROM’S HIVE
A simple, yet horrifying idea in its execution: What if humans lived like an ant colony? There’s some absolutely sickening imagery in this when it gets down to every detail of how this would play out, especially when it comes to reproduction. If you’ve seen Bone Tomahawk you might get the idea. You only need the reproductive organs, why keep anything else? In all things, the Hive is brutally efficient. We get some perspective from a government agency investigating the Hive, and also from Hellstrom himself, leader of the colony. In an interview, Herbert stated: “In terms of what we want now, as we think of our world now, what would be the most horrible kind of civilization you could imagine?” I think he succeeded.
WHIPPING STAR
What a great title! And quite literal too. In this far-future setting, they are making too many laws too fast. To counter this, a Bureau of Sabotage is created (BuSab). Jorj X. McKie is sent to investigate a case of a species of sentient Stars, who are disappearing and whenever one “blinks out”, millions die or are driven insane. There’s some bits about how difficult it can be to communicate with such a different species from yourself, and some repercussions of this universe’s version of FTL travel. It’s quite short, but if you enjoy the exploits of Jorj, his story continues in The Dosadi Experiment.
THE WHITE PLAGUE
After an IRA bomb explosion that claims the lives of his wife and children, John Roe O’Neill’s mind cannot take the loss and sets out to systematically exterminate all women with a plague. He releases it in several countries and it spreads rapidly, with the novel exploring how people would deal with such an apocalyptic event. I found this one a bit boring and tedious at times, but you might enjoy it more than me!
THE PANDORA SEQUENCE
A series of four books (Destination: Void, The Jesus Incident, The Lazarus Effect and The Ascension Factor) co-authored with, and completed by, Bill Ransom after Herbert’s passing. Maybe not as wide in scope as the Dune universe, but I found them equally engaging. It begins with a starship’s quest for a planet to settle on, but once their on board computer system gains sentience things become more complicated. Taking place over hundreds of years, from spaceflight to settlement on the planet Pandora. It covers topics such as the effect of colonization on the environment and native species, divergent evolution, genetic engineering, religion, racism and cybernetics. Besides Dune, this is definitely my favourite. ※
LORMAGGOT 