DUNE author Frank Herbert: “My Arab friends wonder why it’s called science fiction.“

This clip was previously posted on another YouTube channel but was subsequently taken down. I do not claim to own the content. I am simply reposting for posterity and to ensure free public access to historically important material. Filmed circa 1984, shortly before Herbert’s death in 1986. Aired on PBS in 1987. Herbert opens by saying: “Well, my Arab friends wonder why it’s called science fiction. DUNE, they say, is religious commentary... My own view of it is, ’Okay, we call it science fiction.’... I don’t care what they call it.“ For more context on what Herbert may have meant by this, see: Haris A. Durrani, TOR, “The Muslimness of Dune: A Close Reading of ’Appendix II: The Religion of Dune,’“ . Herbert does not appear to have made this statement as a way to simply say, “I have Arab friends“ (as an apologetic or a claim to authority by proximity). It’s a substantive comment, made in a somewhat amused offhand remark, about the core themes of the novels. Professor of Islamic history Ali Karjoo-Ravary, upon examining archives of Herbert’s personal papers, told CBC the following: Q: These books were written in 1965. Frank Herbert’s a pretty white American. Do we have a sense of why he chose to include these specific references in his books? Karjoo-Ravary: One of the things that I realized in my research was that, even in the 1960s, English had been so intertwined with the Muslim world because of British colonialism, because the world was already pretty globalized. Herbert constantly said that he had Arab friends. He said he had Semitic friends, which I’m not sure what he meant by that, who helped him. Part of it was also me thinking, why are we so surprised? The world was actually already pretty globalized and pretty interconnected. So him just knowing English and French and having these friends was able to really dove deeply into the history of Islam and the Islamic world. Q: You mentioned that it sort of slips by some readers, but his editors certainly picked up on it. I’m assuming they weren’t exactly keen on it. Karjoo-Ravary: They weren’t. One of them said, “You need to give us an explanation as to why there’s so much Muslim flavour,“ in the editor’s words. I think another editor also said, “What’s up with all the Islam?“ But also ... his book, at first, it didn’t do that well. And part of it was this insistence on the use of language, of using a lot of foreign words, not just Arabic. He’s taking from a lot of different languages ... and he was very adamant on using language to signify that you’re not [in the present]. And he also really believed in slow build up and experimenting with different types of narrative and different types of sentence structure to give a slower pace than was usual in science fiction at that time. The previous channel description read: “Frank Herbert Interview on Dune shortly after David Lynch’s Dune came out in 1984. He passed away in 1986 which makes this one of his last filmed interviews. He discusses messiahs, cults, Leaders, technology, genes & religious commentary. From Great Ktca Read-A-Thon that aired 09/28/87.“ Ya hya chouhada!