Frank Patrick Herbert Jr. was born on October 8, 1920, in Tacoma, Washington,[5][6] to Frank Patrick Herbert Sr. and Eileen (née McCarthy) Herbert. His rural upbringing involved spending a lot of his youth on the Olympic and Kitsap Peninsulas.

Herbert began researching his most famous novel, Dune in 1959. The novel Dune was published in 1965, which spearheaded the Dune franchise. It was also a landmark in science fiction literature.

He was fascinated by books and could read much of the newspaper before the age of five, had an excellent memory, and learned things quickly. He enrolled in high school at Salem High School (now North Salem High School), where he graduated the next year. Herbert attended the University of Washington, but never finished his college education.

He had an early interest in photography, and bought a Kodak box camera at age ten, a new folding camera in his early teens, and a color film camera in the mid-1930s. Because of an impoverished home environment, largely due to the Great Depression, he left home in 1938 to live with an aunt and uncle in Salem, Oregon. During 1942, after the U.S. entry into World War II, he served in the Navy's Seabees for six months as a photographer, but suffered an accidental head injury and was given a medical discharge.

Herbert believed that governments lie to protect themselves and that, following the Watergate scandal, President Richard Nixon had unwittingly taught an important lesson in not trusting government. Herbert also opposed American involvement in the war in Vietnam. Herbert was a strong critic of the Soviet Union.

Dune was not an immediate bestseller. By 1968 Herbert had made $20,000 from it, far more than most science fiction novels of the time were generating, but not enough to let him take up full-time writing. However, the publication of Dune did open doors for him. Dune and the Dune saga constitute one of the world's best-selling science fiction series and novels; Dune in particular has received widespread critical acclaim, winning the Nebula Award in 1965 and sharing the Hugo Award in 1966, and is frequently considered one of the best science fiction novels ever, if not the best.

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.”
― Frank Herbert

“The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

My essential question was How are people transformed by their hardships in life? I chose this question because it relates to the hardships that Herbert went through in his life, from being discharged from the navy, to having his novel rejected 23 times before being published, Herbert was no stranger to hardship, but he didn’t let it effect him too greatly, because now he is remembered as one of the greatest science fiction authors of all time.