Frank Herbert’s Whipping Star is the first installment of the ConSentiency novels and I took it up a couple of weeks ago mainly because I wanted to read the pre-quel to Herbert’s The Dosadi Experiment. It’s a quick read – the mass market paperback amounts to a mere ~180 pages so there is not much to talk about. However, in providing my thoughts on this book I am going to make some overarching assumptions – I’m going to blatantly present the hypothesis that the majority of Whipping Star readers consumed a subset of the Dune novels prior to picking this one up. It doesn’t seem likely that this would be a reader’s first Herbert novel – mainly because the majority of his non-Dune books didn’t get a lot of exposure and were not award winners (Dune won the Hugo for Best Novel in 1966 and Children of Dune was nominated for the same in 1977). Thanks to the tremendous success of Dune in the mid-60s, all of Herbert’s pre and post Dune works were able to piggyback on Dune’s success. You can see this very clearly on the paperback covers of all the non-Dune books – they clearly mention Frank Herbert as “Author of Dune and <insert-another-dune-chronicle-book-name-here>”.
That being said a big chunk of non-Dune book readers could be placed in the “Herbert Fan” bucket – readers who hungered for more ideas and universes beyond Dune and who hoped that Herbert could replicate the success he achieved with Dune somewhere else. I think Herbert did pretty good with the WorShip and ConSentiency universes in general, however, I expected a little bit more from Whipping Star as the first installment of the ConSentiency series – this small work was supposed to set the stage for The Dosadi Experiment, but it lacked in certain key areas that could have been improved to achieve some first-class world building.
Whipping Star is a short conceptual work with the following background – in the future humanity has been able to co-exist peacefully with other sentient species such as the Gowachin, Laclac, Wreaves, Pan Spechi, Taprisiots, and Caleban. To bring order to this hot pot of civilizations, a federated government called the ConSentiency is established. However, this new government brought its own challenges – they were so efficient at government that laws were passed faster than you could change your underwear so another organization had to be created to slow down the pace of government and add red-tape – the Bureau of Sabotage (BuSab). In addition, humanity has been able to travel to any point in the universe thanks to the gifts of the Calebans, who are able to open “Jumpdoors” to travel from point A to point B anywhere in the universe.
The novel’s story deals with the attempt to save a female Caleban called “Fannie Mae” from the hands of Mliss Abnethe, a sadist woman with a penchant for plastic surgery who has a binding contract with Fannie Mae. The contract stipulates that Fannie Mae can be physically hurt by Abnethe and that they get some sort of mutual benefit from it (however I’m not sure what benefit Fannie Mae gained from it). The narrative centers on Jorj X. McKie’s (a BuSab agent) efforts to track and stop Abnethe, who is using jumpdoors at random intervals to get next to Fannie Mae and hurt her. A big portion of the book centers on dialogues between Fannie Mae and McKie, who interrogates the Caleban to find more information on Abnethe’s intentions and whereabouts.
Whipping Star reads like a classic non-Dune novel in the sense that it doesn’t have any of the philosophical heaviness or atmospheric bleakness that Herbert is known for. In fact, it even has some comical dialogues that you will not find in any of his Dune novels (for example all of the conversations with Tuluk). The pace is quick and it centers mainly on dialogues, events and actions performed by the characters, not on character’s thoughts, ideas or moral dilemmas. The conversations between McKie and Fannie Mae are particularly interesting – these exchanges are thought-provoking because McKie finds communication with the Caleban excruciatingly frustrating due to world-view differences between humans and Calebans. With these dialogues Herbert offers some examples of the inherent difficulties faced when different sentient species try to communicate – this is the central theme of the Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris, however Whipping Star seems to emphasize more of the semantical difficulties and less the philosophical ones.
In terms of world-building, I expected the text to explore a little bit more the different cultural and societal aspects of the co-existence between all the sophonts of the ConSentiency. However I only found bits and pieces of it due to the short length of the book (a total of 188 pages). Had the book been longer, Herbert would have had better luck setting the stage for this universe. Just to keep in mind – Herbert is not here to hand-hold you. He is very infamous for this habit. That is why the first ~100 pages of Dune make for very difficult reading. Beginning with page 1 of Whipping Star Herbert throws at the reader terms, names and concepts that are relevant to the ConSentiency universe but which have no context for the reader. This is what makes Herbert’s books both frustrating and enjoyable – you need to put in the leg work in the very beginning to gather all the bits and pieces. Once you break through this barrier you basically unlock the wonders of the book’s universe – this makes for a very rewarding reading experience.
I recommend this book if you are looking to venture into The Dosadi Experiment of if you want to explore a Herbert novel with a somewhat lighter touch. However, if you want to read something with Herbert’s usual brutal tone and mood, stay away.