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was on a date with a girl named Patty, and they tried their own version of the Rhine experiments, using a standard deck of fifty-two playing cards. One by one, she held cards up, and my father guessed all of them correctly. Thinking he was tricking her, she obtained another deck of cards and took great care to mix them up and conceal them from him. Again, he guessed each card correctly. Later, under different circumstances, Dad found himself unable to repeat the astounding results.
    This experience of my father’s became the basis of his short story, “Encounter in a Lonely Place,” published in 1973. A strong occult theme ran through a number of his most important works as well, including the Dune series and Soul Catcher .
    When he was seventeen, Frank Herbert analyzed the Western fiction market by reading several boxes of books and magazines he had purchased at a used bookstore. A formula became apparent to him, and he used it to write a Western story under a pseudonym. It sold to Street and Smith for $27.50, and he was elated. Confident that he had discovered a path to instant success as a writer, he spent the money quickly. Then, in only a few weeks, he wrote two dozen more stories, all using the identical formula. Rejection letters poured in. He would not make another sale for eight years.
    My father never revealed the title of that first story sale, or the pseudonym under which he wrote it. Not particularly proud of the writing, he said it was amateurish. Nonetheless, it was a sale, and he was still in high school at the time.
    Displaying literary versatility and a curiosity about what lay before him on the uncharted course of life, he wrote a poem entitled “Your Life?”—published in the September 30, 1938, issue of The Lincoln News :
    What is the meaning of your life?
    If you live close to nature, is it hidden in—
    A towering tree,
    A busy worker bee,
    A flower in bloom,
    The sun piercing the morning’s gloom?
    Or do you live in civilization?
    Does fancy people your imagination with thoughts of—
    Laborers, soot and grime,
    Youths leading lives of crime,
    Long hours and pay day,
    Night life in its hey-day?
    Are you but chaff from the Great Miller’s gleaning?
    Or wherever you live does your life have a meaning?
    Only two months later, his home life would fall apart entirely. He could no longer stand the suffering of his sister, now five, so again he dropped all of his classes, earning no credits toward graduation. With his parents drinking heavily and near divorce, he ran away from home, taking Patricia Lou with him. The pair caught a bus to Salem, Oregon, and sought refuge with Frank’s favorite aunt, Peggy (Violet) Rowntree, and her husband, Ken Rowntree, Sr. (Peggy was one of Babe’s sisters.)
    Within weeks the touchy family situation improved, and Patricia moved back home. But Frank—barely eighteen—remained with his aunt and uncle, and enrolled at Salem High. Peg and Ken had a son by Ken’s earlier marriage, Kenneth Jr., and they were also taking care of Jackie and Larry Sullivan, whose mother, Carmen Sullivan (one of Peggy and Babe’s sisters), had died in childbirth. The boys became close, particularly Frank and Jackie, who were around the same age. This was a much improved family situation for Frank, supported by an economically stable, loving marriage.
    Dad graduated from Salem High School in 1939 with no immediate plans for college. Despite past problems the young man missed his parents and sister, and now that he was out of school he had a yearning to see new places. In the fall of that year he moved to San Pedro, California, near Los Angeles, where his parents were living. F. H. was chief of the Guard Force for Los Angeles Shipbuilding & Drydock Corporation, an important shipbuilder.
    Shortly after arriving in California, “Junior” obtained a newspaper position at the Glendale Star as a copy editor, after lying about his age. He was