American · 1920–1986
Frank Herbert spent years researching desert ecology before writing Dune, which he originally envisioned as a magazine serial about the politics of water scarcity. A journalist and ecological consultant by trade, he brought a systems-thinking approach to fiction that treated planets as organisms and civilizations as ecosystems. The novel was rejected by twenty publishers before Chilton—an automotive manual publisher—took it on. Herbert wrote five Dune sequels, each pushing further into philosophy and political theory, but the original remains the bestselling science fiction novel in history.