The disappointing dabblings of a master artist
I’ve been a fan of Frank Herbert’s science fiction for decades, going back to when I first read Dune in high school. The Dune saga may be his crowning achievement, but it is certainly not the sum total of a literary career that includes fine novels such as The White Plague or those in the Destination: Void series. I had read very few of Herbert’s short stories, however, until I stumbled upon a copy of Eye. This collection of 13 short stories was published in 1985, shortly after the release of David Lynch’s motion picture adaptation of Dune. In fact, the book opens with an introduction by Herbert in which he basically apologizes for the Dune film and opines that it would have worked better as a five-hour miniseries. In order to capitalize on renewed interest generated by the film, Eye also includes a piece called “The Road to Dune,” which is like a brief illustrated tour of the planet Arrakis, featuring illustrations by artist Jim Burns and brief captions written by Herbert. Burns provides illustrations for all the stories in the book, but his drawings are so dark and detailed that they do not read well on the rough paper of a mass-market paperback.Eleven of the remaining selections in Eye were previously published in science fiction magazines from 1955 to 1973. They are presented in chronological order, followed by a new piece, “Frogs and Scientists,” which is like a one-page joke without a punchline. The majority of the stories in Eye are mediocre at best and rather disappointing when compared to the quality of Herbert’s novels. For the most part, he retains the intellectually challenging tone one expects from the author of Dune, but in short-format fiction Herbert seems to bite off more than he can chew. In each story, he drops the reader into these incredibly complex worlds but fails to provide the reader with enough guidance to orient himself to the fictional surroundings. These stories call to mind the work of H. Beam Piper (active in the ‘50s and ‘60s) who could likewise create incredibly complex worlds in a few pages. Piper, however, gave the reader enough bread crumbs to find his way, and he never lost his sense of humor. Herbert’s short stories, on the other hand, get bogged down in technical details and imaginary jargon. Often he devotes so much effort to world construction that there is little space left for plot, and the endings are often vague, New Agey, and anticlimactic.
Herbert’s choice of subject matter is often puzzling as well, as he ventures into bizarre corners of science fiction that just aren’t all that interesting. If you’re curious about the legal system of a government that employs saboteurs to attack itself (“The Tactful Saboteur”) or the mechanical minutiae of futuristic nuclear submarines (“Dragon in the Sea”) or the importance of dance and gesture in human communication (“Try to Remember”) or the difficulties of harnessing spherical amoeboid livestock for plow work (“A Matter of Traces”), then Herbert’s your man. Such weird premises, however, are more mystifying than interesting, and on the few occasions when Herbert tries to be funny he is not successful.
There are maybe three good stories here. The best, by far, is “Seed Stock,” about a colony of interstellar emigrants who took a one-way trip to a new home, only to find themselves trapped in a difficult and precarious existence. “Murder Will In” is an intriguing story about two symbiotic incorporeal entities who possess living hosts to survive. “Passage for Piano,” another tale of an Earth mission to colonize a distant world, is a surprisingly warm and human story for Herbert, but to the point where it gets a little corny towards the end. Other than these few exceptions, reading Eye is more of a chore than a joy. “Seed Stock” is the only outstanding entry, and the bad stories clearly outweigh the good.
Stories in this collection
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