Frank Herbert (author of Dune, etc.) is probably still my favorite writer.  Most writers make me thing about how I would have done things differently.  Herbert makes me think about how I never would have thought to do things like he did them.  Not everything he wrote was a masterpiece, but he usually did a great job and almost always left me with something I hadn't thought of before... or at least I hadn't thought of things that *way* before.

Dune was the first "grown-up" novel I ever read.  It wasn't really sci-fi in the usual ways that genre deals with its setting and plot elements.  By that, I mean that Herbert's work was rarely about amazing technology and extrapolating things to fantastic proportions.  Instead, he was more into using the future as an alternate place where he could redefine societies in order to test out possible outcomes.  I guess that describes a lot of science fiction authors, but I really think he was unique among them for the way he approached things on so many levels.

For one thing, he viewed human potential as almost limitless.  It the distant future, to take the one described in the Dune series, for example, humanity sharpened its mental and physical prowess to develop talents such as the Voice or to become Mentats, human computers.  Characters could similarly focus their physical abilities to almost unimaginable ends to perform superhuman feats of strength, agility, and endurance as well as sexual skills to the extent that they could actually enslave partners or kill them at will.

On a more subtle level, most of his writing was focused inwardly.  Rather than a superficial account of dialogue between characters, Herbert tended to describe their inner thoughts and impressions in parallel.  Thus, the reader's experience existed simultaneously on multiple levels.  More than just a literary device, this was a running theme throughout all of his works

A while back I ran across some big news: There will be a legitimate 7th Dune novel.  The series had ended abruptly with Frank Herbert's death in 1986, but the last two books were excellent (Heretics of Dune was my favorite other than the first novel), but the existing works closed with something of a cliffhanger along with more than a few unanswered questions.

At the time Herbert died, it was reported that he was working with his son on the next novel in the series (they had collaborated with one another once before on the novel "Man of Two Worlds").  I have been wondering what was to become of that series ever since his death.  Fortunately, just the other day I happened to notice that Brian Herbert had published a biography on his father ("Dreamer of Dune") and I skimmed all the interesting bits searching for information about the series and other novels by the elder Herbert I enjoyed (as of this writing, I have read roughly 75% of the fiction he published).

At the end of the biography Brian reveals why the 7th Dune novel had never been published until now: For years he had no answer to the mysteries left in the series, but just recently he came across a bank box containing the full outline and text written for the novel (my impression was that, up till now, all that was available was a brief outline, probably one short on details).  This sounds like something of a far-fetched story, but the last years of Frank's life were detailed in "Dreamer" and tell the story of a man who was somewhat disheveled in his business dealings (this was due mainly to the fact that his wife who had previously handled all his professional affairs outside of the writing itself for 30+ years had died two years before her husband).  All kinds of things managed to get misplaced, so who knows?  Dune was worth a huge chunk of cash, so it would make sense to store it "off-site."

Regardless, Brian Herbert has been collaborating with Kevin J. Anderson (a notorious franchise hack; see also his Star Wars novels) on two additional trilogies that represent prequels to the original Dune novel.  The first of these is the "House" series (i.e., Atreides, Harkonnen, and Corrino) and another is in progress as I write this ("The Buttlerian Jihad" is on the shelves at the moment, the other two will follow shortly).  Incidentally, the latter trilogy had a little more legitimacy for me given that it was intended to be a project between Brian and Frank (albeit never begun nor even outlined).  Of course, before Brian and Kevin tackle "Dune 7" (no formal title has yet been revealed), the two will publish "The Road to Dune," a collection of short stories in the Dune universe including some missing chapters from the Dune series (by Frank, hopefully), etc.  That will be mildly interesting.  Okay, maybe I'm a little cynical.  I'll try to withhold judgment.

Getting back to the original series, I read the 5th and 6th novels when I was fairly young (perhaps 8th grade?), so I may have an inflated opinion of them, but I recall being very taken with them at the time, more so than any since the first novel, which is saying quite a lot.  However, if you haven't made it past the first novel, you might have a bit of work to get to the last couple.  I found the middle of the series to be a bit slow.  After re-reading the first Dune novel a few years ago, I recently re-visited Heretics and found that I still enjoyed it.  I tried to get into Chapterhouse: Dune (the sixth) novel, but was distracted at the time.  Hopefully, I'll get into it shortly... at least before the next novels in the resuscitated series come out.

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