Photos are Courtesy of UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES & SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, FULLERTON. Willis E. McNelly Science Fiction Collection: Frank Herbert papers (Collection)

On the first floor of the CSUF Pollak Library, I recently noticed a glass exhibition display case, curated by Patrisia Prestinary, Valerie Christy, Kathy Spennato, and Natalie Vandercook, located next to the elevators (on the south side of the original building) showcasing a wide array of items from the University’s Archives & Special Collections (UA&SC).

Lisa Mix, Director of the University Archives & Special Collections

Within the bottom section of the display, I saw three pages from Herbert’s working papers of Books I & II of Dune. The pages were heavily marked up with Herbert’s handwritten notes and annotations and were positioned alongside his address book, various notepads, a finalized copy of the 1965 science fiction novel Dune, as well as tapes containing audio interviews between Herbert and CSUF English professor Willis McNelly. Given the release of Dune: Part 2 earlier this year, I wanted to discover what other rare treasures from the Frank Herbert archives the UA&SC had within its catalog, so after digitally searching through the library’s database, I scheduled an appointment to interview Lisa Mix, Director of the University Archives & Special Collections, to discuss Herbert’s connections to CSUF, and his personal papers and items housed in the Willis McNelly Science Fiction Collection.

Mix said, “Willis McNelly felt strongly that science fiction should be considered as literature. He was a member of the Science Fiction Writers of America and the Science Fiction Research Association. So, in 1967, he spoke at the Science Fiction Writers of America meeting in Berkley, where he met Frank Herbert, Ray Bradbury, and a number of science fiction writers. He and Herbert were particularly close. Herbert lectured in some of McNelly’s classes, and McNelly wrote the Dune Encyclopedia, which is kind of a reference guide to the Dune universe.”

According to Mix, McNelly visited Herbert at his home in the Bay Area and convinced him that Cal State Fullerton could take care of his archives and his papers. McNelly realized that science fiction authors, such as Herbert, had papers that were just sitting around in their basements or garages and that these documents were important and belonged within a university setting, where they could be researched and studied by students and scholars. Herbert was one of the earliest authors to donate his papers. So, in the late Sixties, McNelly drove home with boxes of Frank Herbert’s manuscripts.

“Throughout the years, Frank Herbert would give more things as he had them,” explained Mix. “Herbert passed away in 1986. His widow donated more items in 1991. The Frank Herbert papers now make up 91 boxes.”

The Frank Herbert archives within the Willis McNelly Collection provide further insight into Herbert’s life as a writer and his legacy. The collection includes original Dune manuscripts, unpublished works, correspondence, critical studies, reviews, rejection letters, and more ephemera covering his career. Mix thinks Herbert’s research notes and materials are the most interesting because “you can just see how these things formed the basis of his writings.”

She discussed how he was really concerned about the environment and helped popularize the term “ecology” within Dune. In the novel, there’s a planet named Arrakis that’s now a desert because the water’s gone. There’s a character who happens to be a “planetary ecologist.”

For the landscape of Arrakis, he was inspired by the sand dunes in Oregon, as evidenced in his file of notes from 1957. Dune first appeared as a serial in a 1963 issue of the SF magazine Analog and, after many rejection letters, became a bestselling novel worldwide.

“He was trying to pitch an article about this: that these dunes were just kind of consuming, shifting, swallowing things, which is what you see in the movies,” Mix said. “He had a lot of trouble getting that article published because people weren’t as interested in it then.”

She has used Herbert’s research materials to help out a variety of classes at CSUF. In an American Studies class about science and culture, they were interested in the environment and climate change and how that’s portrayed in literature, so Mix brought out Herbert’s notes on ecology and the Oregon sand dunes to show them how you can see the writer’s process. The same thing applied to religion and world-building since there was a class that did an exhibit on the anthropology of religion and used several different items from the library’s special collections, not just the Herbert papers. Part of Dune played a part in that exhibit because Herbert invented so many different religions.

“A lot of people like to see his manuscript for Dune,” said Mix. “I think that’s interesting as well, and I’ve used that in classes, too, where people are interested in the process. It is something you wouldn’t see from a writer today in that it is a typed script on a page, and you can see where he has crossed things out or written things in. You probably wouldn’t see that with an author’s papers today. I mean, do people save their in-between drafts?… It’s really cool to see the evolution of the story.”

My dad remembers going to Willis McNelly’s office when he was a CSUF student in 1984 and giving him a paperback copy of Dune for Herbert to sign. He also asked McNelly about Frank Herbert’s opinion of the David Lynch film and was told that Herbert hated the movie but couldn’t say so publicly because of contractual obligations.

From a Dune board game to film production stills, posters, and publicity materials from David Lynch’s 1984 film adaptation of Dune to storyboard sketches made for the Sci-Fi Channel’s TV mini-series version of the story, the CSUF Archives and Special Collections has a rich repository of science fiction items related to Frank Herbert’s stories, and 91 boxes of Herbert’s papers to explore and research.

For further information about the CSUF Archives and Special Collections, visit libraryguides.fullerton.edu/uasc