994. This week, I sat down with the prolific "Dune" author Kevin J. Anderson and the famed "Dune" narrator Scott Brick to explore the language challenges in the "Dune" series. Learn how Kevin and Scott navigated Frank Herbert's original vocabulary, stayed true to the cultural influences of the names and terms, and created an extensive pronunciation guide. Whether you're a longtime fan or are new to the series, you'll love Kevin and Scott's stories about the language of "Dune" and its quirky history.
994. This week, I sat down with the prolific "Dune" author Kevin J. Anderson and the famed "Dune" narrator Scott Brick to explore the language challenges in the "Dune" series. Learn how Kevin and Scott navigated Frank Herbert's original vocabulary, stayed true to the cultural influences of the names and terms, and created an extensive pronunciation guide. Whether you're a longtime fan or are new to the series, you'll love Kevin and Scott's stories about the language of "Dune" and its quirky history.
Links mentioned in the show:
| Edited transcript with links: https://grammar-girl.simplecast.com/episodes/anderson-brick/transcript
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References for the Aging segment
van Boxtel, W, Lawyer, L. Sentence comprehension in ageing and Alzheimer's disease. Lang Linguist Compass. 2021;e12430.
Payne, B. R., Gao, X., Noh, S. R., Anderson, C. J., & Stine-Morrow, E. A. (2012). The effects of print exposure on sentence processing and memory in older adults: Evidence for efficiency and reserve. Aging, Neuropsychology and Cognition, 19(1–2), 122–149.
MIGNON: Grammar Girl here. I'm Mignon Fogarty, and today, I have a double "Dune" extravaganza because I'm here with both Kevin J. Anderson and Scott Brick.
Kevin is the author of more than 180 books including Star Wars novels, X-Files, Batman, and Superman novels; and his own original works — the "Saga of the Seven Suns," Terra Incognita," and the "Dan Shamble Zombie PI" series. But he is best known for his work on more than 20 "Dune" novels with Brian Herbert.
And Scott —Scott Brick — has narrated 1,100 books in every conceivable category. Since 2016, he's also taught the nation's first fully accredited course in audiobook narration at UCLA.
And he, too, is best known for his work on the "Dune" series.
And before we start, I have to tell you a funny story. After we finished the interview, Scott emailed me and said he had told his wife he was going to be on a podcast, but didn't say which one, and when he told her later, he said she "about lost her freaking mind," her jaw dropped, and she said [and I quote] “Oh dear God, you were on Grammar Girl!?! I listen to it all the time, Why didn’t you tell me?!?” which just cracked me up, and he thanked me for giving him street cred at home. So I want to give a big shout out to his wife, Suzanne Elise Freeman, who is an accomplished audiobook narrator herself. In fact, she and Scott won an Audie Award last year for a book they narrated together called "Intergalactic Exterminators, Inc," which I'm now going to go check out. And Suzanne … thanks for listening.
And now, on to the show.
MIGNON: Kevin and Scott, welcome to the Grammar Girl podcast.
KEVIN: Great to be here. Thanks, Mignon.
SCOTT: Yeah. It's really wonderful to be here.
MIGNON: No, thank you. Thank you for being here. So I put out a question on social media, you know, what people would want to hear you two talk about. And I got so, so many questions about the pronunciations of the words in "Dune." So can you start there just talking about how you deal with this vast number of difficult-to-pronounce words?
KEVIN: Well, there are different versions out there, as you've seen from different versions of the movies. And you know, the David Lynch movie has the "Hark-cone-ans" and the other versions call it "Hark-a-nins." And a lot of it, you read it in your own head. And, oh this is Kevin, by the way … for podcast listeners, I suppose I should say that.
And it was always a challenge because when I read Frank Herbert's "Dune" when I was like 11 years old, I had the pronunciations in my own head. And it wasn't until I started working with Brian Herbert that we found several recordings that Frank Herbert had made. He read passages of his, of "Dune" and I think one or two of the other books.
So we got to hear in his own voice how he pronounced the character names and some of the words. And we used Frank's as our gold standard — that Frank pronounced it "Harkonnen." So I don't care what the David Lynch movie says. It's "Harkonnen," not “Hark-cone-an." Although I do have to say he pronounced Paul's beautiful Fremen lover as "Chaney" instead of "Chani." And I think everybody says "Chani."
So kind of going back to that. But then Scott has to tackle pronouncing not just Frank's words, but our words, too. And we make up some crazy ones.
SCOTT: Yeah, I'll tell you. I, like Kevin, I had him, the way I was pronouncing them in my head because I read the books back in college, all six of them. And when I was asked to do ... I was hired to do "The Butlerian Jihad," "Dune the Butlerian Jihad." And they said for the library market, “We want to do the original "Dune" as well.
Can we do those two back to back?” And I was wet behind the ears, brand new in the industry, you know. And here I was throwing my weight around, and I said, “I won't do it unless I can check with the authors.” Because I have a dear friend of mine who did one of the audiobook versions decades ago. And he guessed all the pronunciations of the words.
And I said, “This series is too important.” And that they initially put me in touch with Brian, the publisher, Macmillan, put me in touch with Brian. Through Brian I got to know Kevin…
MIGNON: Brian Herbert, right? Frank Herbert’s son.
SCOTT: Brian Herbert. Yes, exactly. And he shared with me those notes that he and Kevin had collated together.
And me being such a "Dune" fanatic, Brian says, “Yeah, here, give me a minute. I'll fax you the notes.” And I'm looking at my old thermal paper fax — that's how long ago this was — it’s rolling out of the end of the machine. And I'm staring at it going, just open mouth going, “Oh my God, I've got Frank Herbert's notes coming out of my fax machine.”
I actually still have it. Those pages fade, but I Xeroxed it before it faded too much. And I keep it in the hardcover, the hard copy of the glossary that I maintain for the series. And those notes were really a guiding star because talking with Brian and Kevin, and I'm being let in on more of the background, things I may not have noticed while reading them in college.
Okay, the Fremen are an Arabic culture, the Atreides are obviously Greek, and the Harkonnens, they're Scandinavian. So, how would, you know if there's a word or a name from that culture, from any of those cultures, even if it's not a name that Frank himself read aloud in those old Caedmon recordings, which are wonderful, even with him not reading the name aloud, we're still able to go to that culture and look at their rules.
Every language has them. You know how you know, “I before E except after C,” right? Every language has things like that. And that's become our principle as we've all moved forward and adding more and more words to the glossary every year.
MIGNON: Did those recordings of Frank Herbert exist anywhere that people can hear them?
SCOTT: They're on YouTube.
KEVIN: Yeah, they’re Caedmon recordings. In the old, old days, back when Scott and I were young, we could go to the library and check out these big LP albums where authors or dramatic readers would read books, and Frank Herbert did section, I know he did the banquet scene from "Dune." I can't remember what other specific scenes he did, but these were his recordings on big vinyl LPs that you could check out at the library and take home and listen to Frank Herbert for like 20 minutes at a time before he had to flip over the album.
MIGNON: Cool! Well, Scott, you said those are on YouTube?
SCOTT: Yeah, if you're going to look them up, Caedmon, I believe it's spelled C A E D M O N.
MIGNON: I'll put a link to that in the show notes to that for people who are listening or watching.
KEVIN: It was really eye opening to me because I had read "Dune" so many times. And I'm starting to work with Brian and it, you know, before it was always in my head, and it didn't really matter. But then when we really started taking on the mantle, it was a whole different level of importance to hear how Frank pronounced it.
And my biggest shock was like right away, he says, "Hark-a-nin," we had all seen the David Lynch movie over and over again. And it was "Hark-cone-an." And I went, “Wait, wait a second, that's … Frank's pronouncing it wrong.” I realized, no.
MIGNON: Do fans ever try to correct you about the pronunciation, or have you ever had any interesting interactions with fans about the way words are pronounced?
SCOTT: I gotta be honest. I don't hear a lot of pushback, let's say. But we had something very interesting happen between us. Just less than a month ago, Kevin was out in California for WonderCon, and it was about an hour south of where my wife and I live. And so we drove down and we all had a wonderful meal together in Anaheim.
And we started talking about the pronunciations, you know, the way that we have determined based on Frank's … the work that he left us, it's supposed to be this way. And we started noticing that sometimes in the movie, things sounded a little different, and we actually specifically talked about "Chaney," Paul's Fremen lover, and we had never talked about it before, but he said, “You know, Brian and I, whenever we're talking about her, we've always said 'Chani.'” It seems more Arabic, frankly, but Frank said "Chaney." So I always, I remember I was initially talking to Brian about it, and I said, “I feel like I really want to defer to Frank.”
Anytime, if there's a word that he said aloud, I'm gonna do it this way, and it's okay if it's different in the movie. Language is fluid. It evolves.
MIGNON: And you have this documented now. You have a pronunciation guide or at least a document that you use. How many words now are in that spreadsheet?
SCOTT: Whoa. Well, there were 598 in the original "Dune," and now in the comprehensive, in the complete glossary, I want to say, to be honest, I don't think I've collated in the stuff from "Princess of Dune" yet, but I wanna say we're up above 1300, 1,400 words now. Words, names, and phrases.
MIGNON: Wow, and one of the fans wanted to know if you've shared this with other people. Did you share this with the people who made the movie so that they would get it right?
SCOTT: Well, I always share it with Brian and Kevin every time, every couple of years, not every volume, but when I do an updating and make sure that the most recent books are now represented. I'll send them copies. I believe, Kevin, you would know better than I, but I seem to recall Brian saying that he was going to share it with the film's producers.
KEVIN: Yeah, Brian was the one interacting directly with Legendary. He's executive producer. I'm co-producer. So we're involved in the movies, and we are happy to provide anything that they need, and we have all these resources. I mean, that's our role is to kind of put the guardrails up.
Now, whether they listen in every case, I couldn't guarantee it, but they do have the information that they have on hand. Although one very minor thing that came up when I was watching, I don't know if I noticed it in "Part One," but in "Dune: Part Two," I noticed they were talking about Duke "Leh-to." And I've always been "Lay-to" in my head, and I…
SCOTT: Frank was "Lay-to" as well.
KEVIN: We all referred to him as Duke "Lay-to" instead of "Leh-to," but now it's in the movies as "Leh-to." So it's…
MIGNON: I think the vast number of words in this guide speak to the fact that Kevin, now you have written, you and Brian have written a lot more "Dune" books than Frank Herbert ever did. And a lot of those words are words I'm sure that you came up with. Can you talk about how you go about adding these new words to the canon, the world?
KEVIN: Blindfolding and typing at random on the keyboard is what Scott probably thinks when he's reading some of them. But similar to what Scott was saying earlier, that these concepts or the genetic heritage or the familial lines, they come from certain Earth cultures. They're based on Scandinavian, Greek, Turkish, African, anything like that.
So we sort of feel the vibe and what would a future Germanic noble house sound like? What would a future Indian-Pakistani house sound like? And even that's kind of simplifying because it's hard for a lot of us to read Shakespeare now because his English is 300 years old.
Well, we're talking about 18,000 years in the future. So we wouldn't be able to understand a word that any of them are saying, but as writers and storytellers, we have to convey that flavor to the reader. So they think, “Ah, I can see that Viscount Moritani sounds like an Eastern European kind of Russian Slavic.”
That's where the names come from, and that's kind of where their culture, their clothes, their architecture, everything comes from. But it's all just ingredients that we use to tell the story. And we always have to fall back on, “Guys, remember this is millennia in the future, and it will have evolved greatly.”
SCOTT: It's 10,000 years since the Butlerian Jihad, and the Butlerian Jihad was thousands of years after our own year. Yeah, it's a great distance between, a lot of blue sky between our language of today and their language in the "Dune" universe.
MIGNON: Yeah. We have to suspend our disbelief not only about the sci-fi elements, but about the language too. So we're going to take a quick break for our sponsors, and we'll be right back.
OK, welcome back. So while we were on the break, Kevin mentioned that there's a book that you absolutely should read before you see the movies, if you haven't seen the movies yet. So Kevin, what's that book that you think is essential?
KEVIN: Well, Brian and I wrote two different prequels to "Dune." We wrote a new trilogy called "The Caladan Trilogy" that starts out with the Duke of Caladan. And that's all the year before the events in "Dune." So Paul Atreides is about 14, and this is kind of when everything falls apart for House Harkonnen.
But the first trilogy that Brian and I wrote was called "The House Trilogy" or "The Prelude to Dune." "House Atreides," "House Harkonnen," and "House Corrino." And that, boy, of all the "Dune" books we did, that's just one of my very favorite trilogies.
That's the generation before. It's young Duke Leto, how his father's killed in the bullfight, and how he meets Lady Jessica, and their first battles with the Baron Harkonnen. But also, it's the planetologist Kynes who is sent off to investigate Arrakis, and what's up with these big sandworms, and how do we get spice mining better?.
And to me, I just felt that that one fills in so many blanks and gives you such a great foundation to go right into Frank Herbert's "Dune."
SCOTT: I'm so nostalgic about those books. I'm literally, if you're watching this, I'm staring at them right now. I've got an entire "Dune" hardcover bookshelf here. Those made me happy because I remember so clearly in, when did Frank pass? I want to say it was ‘86.
KEVIN: ‘86, I believe.
SCOTT: Yeah. And I had gone into Walden Books at the Beverly Center in Beverly Hills, and I picked up a copy of "Chapter House Dune," the last one that Frank completed, and I remember the guy behind the counter hands me the book, he puts it in my hands and says, “Well, enjoy it. There's not going to be any more. The author passed,” and I remember at the time thinking, “Wait, no! No, come on! The author, he must have a family! Surely there's somebody else that can take up the mantle!” This is my first thought in 1986. And I'm just so nostalgic for those, because those were the first time I got to revisit the "Dune" universe.
Not professionally, I just got them because I love "Dune," but they still make me smile every time I look at them.
MIGNON: Yeah, and you've spoken about how the family dynamics in "Dune" are really meaningful to you. The father-son relationship in the book, and how it relates to Brian and his father.
SCOTT: I actually said something to Brian once, and he put an allusion to his parents into the two-parter that was essentially "Dune 7." I want to say it was "Sandworms of Dune" and
KEVIN: "Hunters of Dune" and "Sandworms of Dune."
SCOTT: Yes, got it. "Hunters" and "Sandworms." So I was recording both of those and we had, I want to say the, all three of us, Brian, Kevin, and myself — we were on a phone call that was being recorded in the studio where I had done this, we patched the phone line in, and I told Brian that something about these two characters, I don't want to give anything away, but they were gardening.
And I said, “You know, I have to be honest, they really remind me of your parents,” and he gasped, and a long pause, and he said, “Oh my God, my parents loved gardening,” and he came to realize that he had put in this stuff he and Kevin had put in this stuff unconsciously. That essentially they were writing Frank and Beverly in these two characters.
And I just, I love that because yes, to me, I view "The Dune Saga," I view "Hamlet," I view "Superman" all in terms of these fractured relationships between parents and children. I think it's what has driven some of the greatest drama, some of the best stories in the history of language, of any language.
So, yeah. It's a very meaningful story.
MIGNON: And I can hear the emotion in your voice, and it actually reminded me of a question that a listener asked about the Bene Gesserit voice. Like, there's so much pressure, I would imagine, to get that right in the audiobooks, this dominant voice that makes people do what you command, like how many times did you play around with trying to find the right voice for that?
SCOTT: Well, that's a great question. The voice, oh, that's tough. I one time, was working on a series. It was by Stephen R. Donaldson and it was the" Gap Series," and they had an alien race, and the way Donaldson described it, the sound of their voices was their voice sounded like the accretion of rust. Okay, I'm sorry. There's only so much I could do. When it comes to doing the Bene Gesserit voice, you know what? If I had the Bene Gesserit voice, I would be making a lot more money than I am. But basically, you don't want to do too much because you don't want to take the listener out of the experience. And what I was really struck by was when Benedict Cumberbatch played Smog or Smaug, or however it was pronounced in the film. I've always, whenever I read it, I always thought of Smog, the dragon. They didn't have to do anything to his voice. What he did was he leaned in very close to the microphone. So, I'm going to lean in close to the microphone here on my computer, and he would take these deep breaths, and say like three words at a time.
So if, in using the Bene Gesserit voice, you know, “No more, get down on your knees.” I would use one full breath for each of those phrases. I would lean close to the microphone, and I would say, “No more, get down on your knees.” And I would do it actually kind of soft, because I don't think any of the Bene Gesserit ever yell.
They don't have to. It's a command. So I don't want those breaths to be in there. So what I will do is I'd go in later in my digital audio program, and I would trim it just a little bit. So it sounds, so you don't hear me going *breathes* before saying, “Get down on your knees.” But that's what they did with Benedict Cumberbatch in those films, and it worked wonderfully. So mine is kind of a variation on that.
MIGNON: And Kevin, how has the language changed? I think you said you've written 21, 27, some "Dune" books now, obviously those are different from the originals and over just the number of years that you've been writing them, for any author, the structure of the books might change some.
How do you see the evolution of the books, particularly the language or the structure of the books, over that time that you've been doing it?
KEVIN: Well, Frank Herbert was a huge influence on me when I was a kid. I mean, I read "Dune" when I was 10 or 11 and then I just went, “This is great.” And because I was reading Edgar Rice Burroughs and Andre Norton, and all of a sudden "Dune," that's a whole different thing. It's not just dinosaurs on Venus.
This is like a whole culture, a whole universe. And I studied all of Frank's, now I read everything, not just the "Dune" ones. I read "The Eyes of Heisenberg," and "The Saudi Experiment," and "Soul Catcher," "White Plague," and "Direct Descent," and I mean everything. And so I just studied how he wrote. And in fact, I sold my very first novel, I was writing my first novel like in the mid-'80s, and Frank was such a huge influence on me I joined the Science Fiction Writers of America.
And when, because I had sold enough professional stories and things, and when you're a full member, you get the membership directory, and I got Frank Herbert's home address, and I had made up my mind I was going to send Frank the very first copy of my very first novel because he was such an influence on me, and he passed away in 1986 before I could publish it.
So I never got to send it to him, and I never got to meet him, but he was a huge influence on me. And I kept reading everything, even as collaborations with Bill Ransom, and Scott, you remember, I think it was San Diego Comic-Con. We had one of these Zoom calls where Bill Ransom came on with us.
And we were all just kind of doing the, “We're not worthy. We're not worthy,” because Bill Ransom was on this call.
SCOTT: And because we had done those, we did those books on audio, and he got built, you know, again, I'm sitting there going, “I can't believe I'm on a panel with this guy. I cannot believe that I'm virtually meeting him.” And he got really choked up when he talked about hearing the words he and Frank had written together, said aloud.
And he's thanking me. And I'm like, “What? This is crazy. I should be thanking you for all the pleasure you've given us over the years.” That was a humbling, a humbling event.
KEVIN: That was a great panel. But as I often do, I got off track and didn't really answer your question. So when Brian and I first got together to start writing our books. And Brian, even before then, Brian had published, I don't know, seven or eight novels of his own, and I had published a bunch of novels on my own.
And one of our very first discussions, it was, well, “If we're going to be writing new "Dune" books, should we try to imitate Frank Herbert's writing style?” And that was an instant, “No.” That would have just crashed and burned really fast because I had my own writing style. Brian had his own writing style.
And Frank had such a distinctive writing style that if we thought we were going to copy how Frank wrote, it just wouldn't have worked. It would have been doomed from the start. So we just made up our mind. We were going to write the absolute best "Dune" book that we could. And we wanted to deliver what readers want in a "Dune" experience with big story, lots of politics, and philosophy, and ecology, and all kinds of different story threads. And that's what we tried to deliver. But now, so "Princess of Dune," which came out last fall when "Dune: Part Two" was supposed to hit the theaters, except for this minor thing called the writers strike and the actors strike.
Anyway, that was our 21st "Dune" book, but there were two short story collections in there. There was "The Road to Dune," which is sort of, that's Frank's notes and some other things. So what does that come on to like 18 novels? "The Caladan Trilogy" and "Princess of Dune," it was unconscious, but when I look back at the "House Atreides" books and "Princess of Dune," now there's a quarter century between those books that we wrote.
I think Brian and I are more focused on just the more intimate character interactions and developments of the subtleties and the cultural things and like, who really is Duke Leto? And, because he knew he was doomed when he got assigned to go to Arrakis. I mean, he was aware of that. So what goes through his head and all that stuff?
And Paul looking up to his father, and he's got to leave his childhood home of Caladan and all of that. So the "Caladan Trilogy" is sort of a more close in and personal set of stories, and "Princess of Dune" is the backstory of Princess Irulan, and also of Chani, or Chaney. So it's those storylines.
But, when we first started out the "House Trilogy," those were gigantic epics, like 25 different characters, storylines, and huge canvas of planets, and the big galactic empire. I mean, I love those too, but it's two different things. I mean, one is the IMAX experience, and the other one is more of the personal experience.
Still they're big stories, but I think we focus more on the character interactions.
MIGNON: Well, I have what I think is actually a funny question from a fan. So someone asked about the words. Someone asked, “Is there a word that is, I think they mean so troublesome that you never want to see it in another 'Dune' book ever again?”
SCOTT: Oh, God. I'm trying to remember which one it was. A friend of mine was listening to one of the audiobooks, one of the early ones, and so I believe this was from "The Butlerian Jihad" trilogy, the trilogy that began with that book. There was a line in there, the Zen Hekiganshu of Omicron Theta 3, something like that, of a planet. Oh, no, III Delta Pavonis. the Zen Hekiganshu of III Delta Pavonis, III Delta Pavonis…
KEVIN: See? We don't do that too often.
SCOTT: Right. Well, what was so funny was, he calls me from Africa. He was on a missionary trip, and he's listening on a cassette player, and he goes, “How?” And he plays my voice saying, "the Zen Hekiganshu of III Delta Pavonis." And he's like, “How the hell did that come out of your mouth? How?” And then he goes back and I hear the squeaking you're rewinding of the tape And then he plays it again and he goes, “Seriously. I don't get it!” And this was on my, I’m hearing my voice on my message machine in my old apartment, and that's a word that sticks out. That was a mouthful.
KEVIN: Well, I think we gave you some tough, Tleilaxu or Tleilaxu.
SCOTT: Yes, the Bene Tleilax, and I'm like, really? You gotta put an L after the T. Really?
KEVIN: Well, I didn't. Frank did. That’s who created those, not me. So, remember, I wrote three "X Files" novels too when I was working with the "X Files" people. And one of them is Mulder and Scully are down in Central America, and the Mayan culture, and Mayan pyramids, and I do all that, and I met my audiobook narrator on those was Mitch Pileggi, who is Director Skinner on "The X Files."
SCOTT: Skinner. Yeah.
KEVIN: And when I first met him, I introduced myself, and I said, “I'm the author of "Ruins" that you just narrated,” and the first things out of his mouth, as he looked at me and said, “I hated you for a lot of those words.” It's "Quetzalcoatl" and all these Mayan words that I put in there, which are fine to type, but pronouncing them are a whole lot different.
MIGNON: That's hilarious. And Scott, during the break too, you said there might be an app to help people with pronunciation.
SCOTT: Well, Brian, Kevin, and I have had a discussion about sharing the glossary for almost as many years as the glossary has existed. We keep it really tight to the vest. But it's Frank's work, it's their work, and we want to share it with the fans. That's the most important thing. The only difficulty thus far has been, well, I mean, what if we put it in a book, somebody would have to get the audiobook to hear them all being said out loud, and they couldn't just go right to the section that they wanted, you know, there's 1,300 words. What if you want number 1,299? But when we were at dinner recently, I told him, I told Kevin that I had just in the previous week heard from a fan who had heard me talk about possibly doing it as an app.
I think I was talking at a convention, possibly another podcast. And he got in touch through my website and said, “I'm a coder. I make apps for a living. I wouldn't even charge you guys. I'm just a huge 'Dune' fan. I would just love to see that happen.” So we haven't made any kind of deal yet, but I think that would be certainly a really elegant way of presenting it.
You can see it on the screen. You can see the phonetic spelling, you know? But then if you click a button, you could hear my voice saying it, and I think that would certainly help.
KEVIN: That's always been a problem with this, that we'd love to get it out there, but how do you deliver it? And as a publisher myself, just looking at Scott's spreadsheet, just the sheer proofreading nightmare that this thing would be.
SCOTT: Oh, I know!
KEVIN: Well, and you said yourself, Scott, that this is just written in your kind of pidgin phonetic pronunciation. None of it is with the, the diacritic symbols and everything, which, that would be a nightmare.
SCOTT: But I tell you I've already figured that out because in my work as an audiobook narrator, I have a full time researcher. The person, his name is George, George Weisberg, wonderful guy, and he looks up all of the phrases that I have to, phrases from foreign languages or names. God, I did a book yesterday, and it referenced a young Arabic boy who threw himself on a bomb to save his schoolmates.
And this had happened, I want to say in 2014, he was able to find the kid's name, the actual way to pronounce it. And I've spoken to him, and he's excited about the idea. I said, “You and I can spend a couple hours on the phone, George. I can say all of these things aloud. I can just record it into my microphone. I could read the whole thing. You translate all my pidgin phonetic spelling into actual diacritic, diacritical, writing.”
And he was excited about the idea and wouldn't take that long.
KEVIN: I guess I’m thanking George too, because, your listeners don't know, but right now I'm re-listening to three big fantasy books of mine that Scott narrated, the "Terra Incognita Trilogy," I wrote a dozen years ago or so, and these are all, historical nautical fantasies, and everything's on sailing ships and stuff, and I'm listening to his narration, and he's using, he's pronouncing the "beau-spri" and I always thought that was "beau-sprit." I guess not.
So he, you've got all these pronunciations of all these bizarre, strangely pronounced nautical terms that, I got the words right because I did my research, but I didn't know how to pronounce all these things, and Scott's reading them like he's an old salty sailor like himself.
That must have been George telling you how to pronounce all of those.
SCOTT: George, absolutely. I think that's right when I first started working for him. Yeah.
MIGNON: Nice. This is so much great…
SCOTT: Do you mind if I share a short little anecdote? It was, Brian will remember there was a short story that took place between the first two books of "The Butlerian Jihad trilogy." It was…
KEVIN: Whipping Mek. Whipping Mek.
SCOTT: Whipping Mek.
Okay, so, I had to go inside, I had parked out front of a recording studio in Woodland Hills about a half an hour from where I live, and we were recording this "Dune" short story, which, what I love about their short stories is they tend to bridge their novels, give you just enough to tide you over.
And I called Brian. It was last minute. And I said, “Hey, I got these six words, these six names, words, you know, I need your help with, and I'm sorry I didn't call before, but you would really help me out if, you know, if you could give these to me now.” And he said, “Sure.” And so I'm frantically writing them down in my notebook. And I told him, this was at the dawn of the glossary. At the very beginning, I had just assembled the first version.
And I said, “Well, thank you. I'm going to make sure to add these six words to the glossary.” And he goes, “Well, tell me about it. How does that work?” I said, “Well, it's an Excel spreadsheet and yada, yada, yada.” And he said, “Scott, Kevin and I had no idea that you were putting in this much work on the franchise,” and I said, “Are you kidding? It's fun.” This is easily the hardest series I've ever worked on, but I don't look at it as work. I look at it as fun. Hell, I would do these books for free, but please don't tell the publisher that because I like money.
But he said, “I just want you to know all of this effort, you have become a pillar of the 'Dune' universe.” And I gasped, and I said, “Oh my God, Brian, I feel like you just dubbed me with a sword.” And he pointed out to me that in the Fremen language, the Fremen have their own, they don't call Paul just Paul.
They, you know, his title is Muad'Dib, but among themselves in the CH, he's referred to as Usul. And Brian said, "Scott, just remember, Usul means pillar." I just got chills.
That's honestly one of the coolest things that's ever happened to me in my life, let alone my career.
MIGNON: Amazing. It did strike me in the books that you brought that up. Kevin, I know you're such a great guiding coach to a lot of fiction writers. And when I was reading the books, I thought, “Paul, Usul, Muad'Dib, he has three names,” and that sounds like something that I have been told not to do in fiction writing, that you would not want to take a character and give them three different names that then your readers had to keep track of.
You know, I think that, but it works in this. What are your thoughts about people having multiple names in this book, even though that seems like something, I feel like it's something I've been told not to do.
KEVIN: Well, if you look at "Dune," just as "Dune," and the things you're not supposed to do, everything about the novel "Dune" was just a checklist of, “Frank, don't do this. Frank, don't do this. Frank, don't do this.” I mean, he wrote "Dune" when it was an utterly unpublishable book. I mean, it was three times longer than any book that was published in science fiction at the day.
And it was filled with all kinds of weird names and words and stuff. And look, I've read it, I think 26 times now. I love it. It's my favorite science fiction book of all time. But nothing happens for the first 80 pages. I mean, it's just like all world building and all stuff like slowly going on.
And we mentioned our book, "The Road to Dune" earlier in that book, we gathered and put together a bunch of the rejection slips that Frank Herbert got for "Dune." I think there was 27 of them he got for "Dune" and including one of them from a big editor who said, “I may be making the biggest mistake of my career by rejecting Frank Herbert's 'Dune,' but I just can't get through the first 80 pages.”
And Frank was not a guy that tailored to the market. He wrote the book he wanted to write. And you know, we're just lucky that some publisher — and it was Chilton Books, which is an auto repair manual publisher — who decided that “I like 'Dune.' I'm going to publish this.” I mean, otherwise this novel would never have been published. It was…
MIGNON: What? Was it their first novel they published?
KEVIN: Oh, there's a whole long story behind that. Frank's agent had sent this to every publisher out there and nobody wanted it. And like, the last publisher was this auto repair publi …. I mean, I’m trying to get my head around what the agent was thinking. Was he drunk at the time? Why would you send to an auto repair manual publisher?
SCOTT: Brian told me a story one time, forgive me for interrupting Kevin, but he told me a story one time. He said, “Yeah, there were 27 rejection letters, but there were only 20 publishers at the time." So it seemed as though some of them were writing him back to make sure he got the point.
This story actually is recounted in "Dreamer of Dune" if anybody wants a closer look.
MIGNON: Amazing! Well, thank you so much.
KEVIN: A weird coordination of circumstances that Frank Herbert's "Dune" got published, and it took a long time for the readership to build up. Now he had published pieces of it in "Analog Magazine," so it was serialized in pieces. So it actually won the Hugo and Nebula award for one of the first pieces. So the science fiction readership found it, but it was not a bestselling book by any means.
It took a long, slow time to build up. So to answer your question about whether you should break the rules or not, well, maybe you shouldn't have three names for your character, but you shouldn't do a whole bunch of the things that Frank did in "Dune" and it worked. So here's the answer.
Yes, you can do it if you're as brilliant as Frank is.
MIGNON: Right. Always. That's always the answer when someone breaks the rules and then is wildly successful. Well, gosh, thank you so much for all this wonderful, delightful inside information about your processes in the franchise and the history. It's been just wonderful to hear all these stories. Kevin J. Anderson and Scott Brick, where's the one place you'd like people to go if they want to connect with you or learn more about you online?
KEVIN: My website is wordfire.com. So word fire, like words on fire. And, uh, dunenovels.com is where we have all of our "Dune" stuff.
SCOTT: My website is, scottbrick.com. And I've got stuff up there. It's kind of a multipurpose site because I teach audiobook narration, and so I post appearances, classes that I'll be teaching, but I also have a listing of all the audiobooks I've done and where people can find them. So, yeah, that should be able to…
KEVIN: Only 1,100 of them, so…
SCOTT: Right. Yeah, exactly.
MIGNON: Get ready to scroll. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you again, so much.
SCOTT: This has been fun. Thank you for having us.
MIGNON: I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. I'll catch you back here on Tuesday when I have a segment about the difference between parentheses, dashes, and commas and a segment about some especially fun words, including one of my favorites: "kerfuffle."
That's all. Thanks for listening!