Songs of Muad'Dib and Notebooks of Dune

[Plain Simple]

I recently came across this book "Songs of Muad'Dib" on Amazon. Apparently it is a collection of poems by Frank Herbert (many or all) set in the Duniverse plus some illustrations (also by Frank?). The book was published in 1992, wasn't a success, and has been out of print since and hence is quite expensive nowadays.

I've been scouring the net for more information on this book, but what I can find are just some short and often contradictory blurbs. Does anyone here have this book or did anyone read it?

The main thing I'm interested in, is whether this book contains new Dune material which is not included in the other Dune novels or if it is just a collection of poems from those novels with some illustrations added. And if there is new material (extra poems), are they Dune related poems or just general Herbert poems?


On a related note, I also noticed there is something called "The Notebooks of Frank Herbert's Dune" out there. A similar question for this one. It seems to be just a collection of quotes from the books (no new material), but the information on the net about it is very scarce. Anyone here with more info?

Thanks!

 

[Plain Simple]

Another related question: are there more out-of-print Dune books like this out there (with 'new' Dune material which hasn't been published anywhere else)? I'm aware of the Dune Encyclopedia. Anything else?

 

[Starbreaker]

Dune Coloring Books.

Link

 

[Mysterion]

The Notebooks of Frank Herbert's Dune is indeed a collection of quotes from the novels. IIRC, there is no new material in that volume, but some really nice calligraphy. FWIW, there was a similar book around the same time that collected quotes of Robert Heinlein's character Lazurus Long.

 

[Set Harth]

Another related question: are there more out-of-print Dune books like this out there (with 'new' Dune material which hasn't been published anywhere else)? I'm aware of the Dune Encyclopedia. Anything else?

Does Eye count? It has a chapter which is sort of an Arrakeen travelogue during the time of Muad'dib ( the rest is non-Dune material IIRC ).

It also has a cool cover showing one of the Fremen.

 

[Plain Simple]

Another related question: are there more out-of-print Dune books like this out there (with 'new' Dune material which hasn't been published anywhere else)? I'm aware of the Dune Encyclopedia. Anything else?

Does Eye count? It has a chapter which is sort of an Arrakeen travelogue during the time of Muad'dib ( the rest is non-Dune material IIRC ).

It also has a cool cover showing one of the Fremen.

Good point. I'd say that one counts. Still curious about the 'Songs' though.

 

[Klaus]

I think I have a copy of Notebooks around here somewhere, have to dig a little...

 

[Plain Simple]

I asked the same question (about "Songs" and "Notebooks") to dunenovels.com. Here is their rather vague answer:

They are peripheral works Brian Herbert put together, mostly scraps of other published material. We will be posting comment about them soon at dunenovels.com and wordfire.com.

The "mostly" doesn't help much in answering my specific question.

 

[Klaus]

Found my copy of The Notebooks of Frank Herbert's Dune at last. It is indeed a book of quotes, about 10" wide and 7" high, with several quotes on the left-hand pages and one done full-page in illuminated calligraphy facing it on the right. Has some nice quotes, as you'd expect, and an intro from Brian.

 

[Plain Simple]

I found relatively cheap copies of both books on Amazon, so I gave them a try.

"The Notebooks of Frank Herbert's Dune" are as described above. They contain quotes from the Dune books. There are no specific references to where the quotes are from, but I think most if not all are from the six Dune books. I don't think there is any new material in here, apart from a (not very interesting) foreword page by Brian.

"The poetry of Frank Herbert - Songs of Muad'Dib" does have a list of references in the back, so I can tell you exactly what material it contains. It's a little book containing poems, most of the poems less than a page (usually a couple of lines), one or two or so need a second page, and one is 19 pages long (more about that one below). The poems in total take up 108 pages, so there are probably around 85-90 poems in total.

A lot of them are taken from the Dune books. In fact, I don't think there is 'new' Dune material in this book. All the previously unpublished material seems to be not Dune related, but personal poems (and one which is credited as "from "Circle Times" film treatment").

There are also some poems from other sources: quite a few from "Soulcatcher", some from "The White Plague", some haikus previously published in the San Franciso Star in 1960 (one about Brian: Number one son play\\ His horn better every day. Still--\\Neighbors move away...) and finally there is a 19 page long poem called "Carthage: Reflections of a Martian" which was previously published in "Mars, We Love You --- Tales of Mars, Men, and Martians (a tale about a Martian posing as a human in modern times thinking back to his days as a soldier during the destruction of Carthage).

One last note about the poems: Some of these were written as poems, others (like a lot of the Dune stuff) was written as prose, but with such a good meter to it, that Brian decided to call it poetry and stick it in this book.

Conclusions: For people mainly interested in Dune, none of these books are necessary. As far as Dune goes, they only contain quotes that (as far as I could judge) come straight from the books. People interested in the wider oeuvre of Frank Herbert may want to pick up Songs of Muad'Dib for the few unpublished poems, the San Francisco Star stuff and the Martian tale (which I assume are hard to come by nowadays in their original publications). The Notebooks are not much more than fun to browse through and read some of the (quasi-)deep sayings from the Dune books, without having to go through the books themselves.