Frank Herbert was an American author, and the creator of the Dune novels and its vast fictional universe.

Herbert was born in Tacoma, Washington in 1920. From an early age he had literary ambitions, and worked as a journalist and a photographer before pursuing a career as a writer. His early work consisted of short science-fiction stories.

In 1959 he began research for his novel Dune, which he completed in 1965. As with his earlier work, he extended his science-fiction writing beyond the superficial predictions and plots that were common at the time, and adopted complex psychological, social and environmental themes that resulted in greater depth and subtlety.