Well, I thought that I’d talk about the novel that I’m… gradually… re-reading at the moment, namely Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson’s 1999 sci-fi novel “House Atreides”. The first book in a trilogy of prequels to Frank Herbert’s legendary 1965 sci-fi masterpiece “Dune”, this is a pretty interesting book.
It’s written in a very mildly more direct and focused style than the original “Dune”, but it still keeps a lot of the atmosphere. It’s also a bit more like a sci-fi version of “Game Of Thrones”, with more of a focus on the machinations of various noble houses who are vying for power or scheming against each other. This is also paired with more focused survival-drama segments as well, for the sake of contrast
Anyway, the 2000 Hodder (UK) paperback edition that I’m re-reading is pretty hefty. Not only is the story itself almost six hundred pages long but it is also in slightly smaller print than in a typical modern paperback novel too. And, despite reading the whole thing back in about 2006, I seem to be making slower progress with it this time around (and am maybe a quarter of the way through at the time of writing). Whilst it’s probably slightly slow-paced by modern standards, it is also far from the slowest-paced book I’ve ever read.
The edition I’m reading contains separate afterwords from both of the authors, and Brian Herbert’s one points out that he and Anderson wrote a lengthy proposal document for the prequel novels in summer 1997. This old Publisher’s Weekly article points out that the prequels found a publisher in November 1997, with an astonishing advance of $3 million as well. Wow! And, given that this old New York Times review [Edit: The page seems to have been removed between writing the draft of this article and posting it. There’s probably an archive somewhere though…] of “House Atreides” was posted online in November 1999, it’s safe to assume that this giant tome of a novel was written and edited in just two years.
I briefly wondered how this was even possible. Still, I quickly worked out what seemed like a good theory as to how it could have been done. The novel itself is split up into at least four or five different plot threads, with each chapter alternating between them. Given that there were two well-practiced authors working on the book – probably also writing full-time (eg: 6-8 hours a day) – it seems very likely that each one only wrote half of the chapters.
Although the writing style remains fairly consistent between chapters, the fact that each plot thread seems to be fairly separate from each other – often in different locations and with different characters – makes it likely that each writer maybe only handled 2-3 plot threads each. As such, Herbert and Anderson would each only have to write the equivalent of a 200-300 page novel and then just combine them.
Yes, there were probably multiple drafts as well as editing time too. Although, given the book’s sheer length, I can’t help but feel sorry for the editor. Errors are fairly minimal though – I’ve noticed a few, but not that many – so they did a reasonable job.
Not only that, this novel was also written at a time when writers didn’t have to compete with smartphones and social media for the reader’s attention, so the writing style itself seems a bit less “cinematic” or “attention-grabbing” than modern novels. Any “cinematic” elements come from the actual story itself. And, if you’ve grown up reading older novels, then this sort of writing style – ironically – feels a lot more natural and instinctive to both write and read than faster-paced minimalistic modern styles do.
The writers could relax a bit, follow their instincts and just write in a way that flowed well. With longer sentences and slightly more formal vocabulary than a typical modern novel. They could include occasional “info-dumps” or moments of “telling” narration when it felt necessary and instinctive to do so because the novel was written before they had to compete with the smartphone for readers’ attentions. Before readers had been fully conditioned to expect novels to be more like movies. And all of this probably helped to speed up the writing process.
Not to mention that another thing which probably helped with getting this giant novel finished in about two years is the fact that both authors were well-researched experts in the “Dune” universe and had made a detailed plan before they started writing as well. There was probably less “thinking about what to write” time when the actual writing process began.
So, yes, there’s probably a combination of reasons – past experience, expertise, teamwork, writing style, full-time writing etc… – why Herbert and Anderson were able to finish and publish this 598-page tiny-print sci-fi novel in what appears to be just two years. Still, it’s a pretty impressive achievement!
—————–
Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂
