Old Rambling House by Frank Herbert - A Short Story From the Author of Dune

The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast - Vintage Sci-Fi Short Stories

All the Grahams desired was a home they could call their own ... but what did the home want? Old Rambling House by Frank Herbert, that’s next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast.

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Today’s author wrote one of the best selling science fiction books of all time, Dune. Frank Herbert was born in Tacoma, Washington in 1920. His lied about his age to get the first of many newspaper jobs in 1939. Herbert loved photography, buying his first camera at the age of ten. In 1942, during World War II, he was a photographer in the U.S. Navy’s Seabees. He served for six months but suffered a head injury and was given a medical discharge.

Frank Herbert said he had been reading science fiction for about ten years, before he began writing sci-fi, and said some of his favorite authors were H. G. Wells, Robert A. Heinlein, Poul Anderson and Jack Vance.

His first science fiction story Looking for Something, was published in the April 1952 issue of Startling Stories.

He began researching Dune in 1959 and the novel was published six years later. But, did you know the world was first exposed to the Dune World in a December 1963 issue of Analog science fiction magazine. It was featured on the cover. That 1963 issue contained Part One of Thee Parts of Dune World.

Dune was then rejected by almost twenty book publishers, and in his rejection letter one editor wrote, "I might be making the mistake of the decade, but…”

Sterling Lanier of the Chilton Book Company, the company most often associated with automobile repair manuals, was exposed to Dune World in Analog and offered Herbert a $7,500 advance plus future royalties for the rights to publish Dune.

Obviously Dune was a success, winning the Nebula Award for best novel in 1965 and sharing the Hugo Award in 1966 with Call Me Conrad by Roger Zelazny. However, Dune, was not an immediate bestseller, and following its publication he went back to writing for newspapers. He didn’t become a full-time author until 1972.

In addition to his numerous novels Herbert wrote about 30 short stories, six of them are in the public domain. Let’s turn to page 89 in the April 1958 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine, for, Old Rambling House by Frank Herbert…

Next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, He walked alone in the dawn and the dusk, and no one knew his name. But the day he perished, and the way he perished–a world will never forget! Mimic by Donald A. Wollheim.

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