It’s the birthday of Frank Herbert (1920-1986), author of the bestselling science fiction series Dune. The first book in the series, Dune (1965), was rejected by 23 publishers before being published by Chilton House, a publisher of automotive manuals, and becoming the bestselling science fiction novel of all time at 12 million copies, or 20 million copies if you want to believe Herbert’s official web site, which I for one am perfectly willing to do.

Herbert was born in Tacoma, Washington, and eventually died in Madison, Wisconsin (a lateral move if ever there was one). Herbert was an extremely intelligent, curious child and grew up reading H.G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Jules Vern; he announced at the age of eight that “I wanna be a author.” (Isn’t that adorbs?) Right after high school, Herbert started working in journalism but did a lot of job-hopping, and while he studied at the University of Washington after WWII, he never graduated from college because he wasn’t willing to take required courses—only those that interested him.

Herbert and his first wife had married in 1942, had a daughter, and divorced in 1945. He met his second wife, Beverly, also a writer, at the U of Washington, and she ultimately sacrificed her own writing career to support the family while Herbert wrote. They married in 1946, had two sons, and struggled for years before Herbert struck it big with Dune, which took six years of research and writing to produce and was first published serially. When Dune was released as a novel, it tied for the Hugo Award and won the first-ever Nebula Award for Best Novel but still took several years to become a bestseller.

Dune was inspired by an article Herbert was researching on the problem of sand dunes near Florence, Oregon. It tells the epic story of the desert planet Arrakis and the noble house that has stewardship of it; Arrakis is bleak and sandy but is the only place where the spice melange can be found, the most valuable substance in the universe. This spice is addictive but increases longevity and can give the ability to see into the future; Herbert claimed that the concept of spice was inspired by psychedelic mushrooms. Dune explores themes of politics, technology, human evolution and survival, and ecology, but the main thing I remember from the first novel is worms: big ol’ horrifying sandworms that live near the spice and in fact produce it, so there’s *that* going on.

Herbert outlived his beloved second wife, who died the same year that Dune was adapted for film (1984). (Fun fact: Sting appears in the movie as Feyd Rautha; I’ve always wondered if he regretted it.) Herbert remarried the next year, then died himself the year after that from a pulmonary embolism that occurred after surgery.

Have a fantastic Tuesday, maybe pick up Dune if you’ve never read it, and stay scrupulously honest to the data.