The sleeper must awaken

On Fridays I have been invited to write a piece of flash fiction consisting of 55 words, no more, no less-flash 55 at mister know it all's-. Blow the 55 is my continuation of my favorit authors series.

I wasn’t running away….

There is this thing about running away; I thought I wasn’t fast enough. My troubles always seemed to catch up to me.

“We both know I’m gonna kill ya”

“Yeah I know”



What I didn’t see was that I wasn’t running away from a pile of crap, I was running towards a mountain of shit.

By Chris McQueeney 2/3/12   9:16 PM

Favorite author series #4



A later paperback edition of Dune, with cover art by John Schoenherr.



Ok so the last author I wrote about was Tolkien; today I want to write about Frank Herbert. Like Tolkien, Herbert was a master of world building. I think the first time I read Dune was around my eighth grade year. I had the good fortune of finding good authors without trying.

There was this little used book store in in Nampa Idaho across from the Albertsons. I loved the smell of that place. At one point in time it was a doctor’s office, but the doctor retired and the book store came into being. I am not proud to say this…I probably stole my first copy of Dune; I lifted quite a few books from that store, being without money and possessing a flexible character, this didn’t bother me at the time. Now I wish I could go back and give twenty or thirty dollars to the owners (used books were cheap in the 80’s) but they haven’t been in business for about fifteen years.

I got my first copy of Dune there; I don’t remember stuffing it in my pants. but I do remember pulling it off the shelf and looking at the cover, the cover shown in the picture with this post. I had seen the movie and thought it was cool, and I loved the music playing at the end where Paul was kicking some imperium ass, I had to have it.

Like The lord of the rings, and some of the Pern books, I have read Dune about two dozen times, if not more.

Herbert was a brilliant author. He, like Tolkien, could drop hints of a vast history in his stories, and not have it confuse the reader. Where he differed was that he laid an outline in story form for his world and it’s past to be written as a saga even after his death. Tolkien saw into a world where magic and valor and horror was the norm; Herbert saw way into a future where non thinking machine technology, genetic manipulation on a grand scale, and imperial machinations are the norm.

By Chris McQueeney

"Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens.

The sleeper must awaken."   Frank Herbert

"He who controls the spice controls the universe"    Frank Herbert