Get The Godmakers Compiled By Frank Herbert Mobi
this book is farfuture science fiction as is Herbert's want with the backdrop of a galaxy after long brutal "Rim Wars" in the throes of enforcing peace and reincorporating lost planets into the collective while ensuring they do not reignite war.
The protagonist begins to understand certain powers and is summoned to the "godmaking" planet for his ordeal,
By itself: good, heavy Herbert scifi from the golden ages,
Frank Herbert published this book in, after Dune Messiah but before Children of Dune and the second Dune trilogy, I can see how Herbert was beginning to flesh out his ideas about how gods are made and not born, and the effects of enforced peace and what that does to a populous over hundreds/thousands of years.
Those ideas are made grand in Children of Dune making a god and God Emperor of Dune the life and eventual death of a god, using an infinitelyenforced peace to make a point on the collective human psyche.
For any Herbert fan, a good read to see where Herbert's thoughts were developing before Children of Dune, For any scifi fan, a good quick read with some interesting ideas on the human condition,
"One of the essential problems in engineering a religion for any species is to recognize and refrain from inhibiting those selfregulating systems in the species upon which the species' survival depends.
" This book may be the ultimate secret agent novel,
It could also be the most insanely ambitious work of anthropological science fiction,
It's also a gold mine for anyone interested in Frank Herbert's work,
Let me explain, . .
The Godmakers is a fixup novel, a cluster of short stories smooshed into the shape of a novel, The plot concerns the adventures of Lewis Orne, an extraordinarily capable agent working for two interstellar agencies, His mission is to prevent a devastating war, As he progresses in his career yes, Godmakers is also a bildungsroman! his abilities and achievements escalate, The conclusion sees Orne Hence the above comment about Orne as the ultimate agent, I was reminded of other sf secret agent tales, like Joe Haldman's All My Sins Remembered or Herbert's character Jorg McKie.
Orne is also an anthropologist, although the term never appears, He analyzes each planet and society as that kind of cultural detective, In the opening segment story he and an ally uncover one planet's secret by studying the shape and size of its roads, In the second, my favorite, Orne cobbles together observations about another world's language, orbital mechanics, and biology to solve another mystery, Other stories use similar approaches to determine how humans work together, One of the great pleasures I find in reading Frank Herbert is how he brings the reader to that perspective,
This is the kind of stance Herbert applied through
most of his career, most notably in Dune, Think of the detailed descriptions of societies powerfully shaped by environment in that book, or in Dosadi Experiment, He quickly yet deeply sketches out hypothetical anthropologies,
Godmakers resonates with many other Herbert themes, Religious engineering, a la the Bene Gesserit: check, The problem of a superhuman, a la Paul Atreides: yep, Multigenerational gynocentric political and breeding schemes, also a le Bene Gesserit: ditto, There's a painful physicalpsychological test, like the one opening Dune, There is also the dialectic of social stasis and revolt, best seen in the underrated God Emperor of Dune, Glowglobes float around, and Arab/Islamic themes appear,
Some of these themes speak to the general history of American sf, Godmakers relies heavily on psionics, a concept which fairly obsessed some writers and editors in midcentury, The anthropological sf approach had many echoes, especially in thes, The idea of a thoughtful, welltrained elite manipulating societies strikes a chord with many postWWII novels,
As a whole, Godmakers is more accessible than most other Herbert, Plots and action happen very quickly, Dialog, which can reach terrific heights of complexity and suspicion in his other stories, is merely informative and rapid here, The setting is barely outlined at all, And the tone is brighter, less brooding than in, say, White Plague or the later Dune books, The conceptual work is relatively shallow,
I wouldn't recommend this to nonsf readers, since it requires some genre familiarity to work, YA readers might enjoy it, and any longtime sf reader would as well, Felt like a cross between Herbert's earlier Dune and Asimov's Foundation series, although much restricted in scale, Following a galactic human diaspora due to catastrophic war, Lewis Orne joins a team that assesses civilizations for their potential for war prior to rejoining a human confederation.
Along the way, Orne discovers growing powers and must confront their source, Mindnumbingly boring, poorly written, sexist, and featuring characters that are either too flat or too unsympathetic to be enjoyed, I can't believe this novel was written by the same author whose Dune series I love so much, I have read the original four stories this novel has been expanded from, and while I kind of hated the stories too, they seem to make marginally more sense than the ending of the novel does.
If I could totally pick a nonDune book of Frank Herbert's to point at and say, "Hey, this one is all kinds of cool and fantastic!" It'd be this one.
If I needed to point to any of his nonDune books and say, "OMG this one short novel connects all the main themes of the Dune Chronicles in a rather nonDune way, focusing on the mechanics and propaganda and elements of religion in a possibly deeper way than the Chronicles!" I'd also nod at this book.
But here's the really interesting aspect:
Being a big fan of the Dune series, including Brian and Kevin's part in it, I read Godmakers with an eye to the deeppast, nearing the Butlerian Jihad with huge Psi talents, a nearly random confluence of events, and mysticism.
I kept reading about the events here with the rediscovery of lost planets, the hints of travel through mindpowers, the alien intelligences, and the opening of awareness in a very different light.
Almost as if this was protoguild navigation, Or the preprelude to the eventual AI takeover,
Please forgive me, truefans, I like to think about these kinds of confluences in terms of Herbert's massive future history, Because let's make no bones about it his Future History is massive, complex, and wonderful, I see things in this book that tie directly to the last couple of novels that are supposed to capstone Herbert's original cycle.
I'd love to see someone truly tie that together, Or perhaps they already did, Brian and Kevin
I totally recommend this book, however, We don't see SF like this much at ALL anymore, Either subject or how it is handled,
Go big or go home, .