The San Francisco home the place ‘Dune’ was born

This story was originally published on September 21, 2021.

The year is 1959, and the writer and journalist Frank Herbert is doing a quick research into what would become one of the most popular science fiction novels of all time.

It all started in a now beige house on a steep hill on Mississippi Street in Potrero Hill. Today, viewed from 412 Mississippi, the city unfolds before your eyes. The Salesforce Tower rises carefree into the blue, cloudy sky. The Millennium Tower rests – wobbly – on its foundation. And Highway 101 cuts both of them a horizontal line.

But before that, long before young Paul Atreides put his hand in the pain box (the first scene of the novel) and told the story, Herbert was sitting behind a rolltop desk in the 412 Mississippi dining room under a large skylight, writing. At that time it was a “one-story white stucco house, built around 1930, with continuous hardwood maple floors and a red tile roof” on Potrero Hill, writes Brian Herbert – Frank’s son – in the biography “Dreamer of Dune”.

WASHINGTON, DC – DECEMBER 3: Author Frank Herbert attends the “Dune” Washington DC Premiere on December 3, 1984 at the Eisenhower Theater, Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. (Photo by Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)

Ron Galella / Ron Galella Collection via Getty

A new adaptation of the book will be released on October 22nd as a major feature film starring Timothee Chalamet and Zendaya from Oakland in the leading roles. David Lynch is known to have directed and produced an earlier iteration of “Dune” which has been hailed as a flop, both financially and otherwise.

But far from Hollywood, the red tiles are still there. Likewise the literary spirit, according to the current owners Paul Herman and Gayle Keck, who are both writers themselves.

412 Mississippi Street in San Francisco, where Frank Herbert wrote ‘Dune’, is for sale.

Courtesy Paul Herman

“It’s a convenient place to write,” Herman said on the phone. “It feels like creative energy is being passed through them.” And the back yard is big and green, the kind of place where you can imagine giant man-eating worms squirming, Herman said.

The Herberts lived in the Bay Area for years. They first moved to a small apartment on Potrero Hill before moving next door to 412 Mississippi, where Brian Herbert says his father wrote most of “Dune”. Brian Herbert, now a writer himself, declined an interview request for this story.

Starting in the summer of 1960, Brian recounts in “Dreamer of Dune” that his father was a night photo editor at the San Francisco Examiner, which was then owned by Hearst, the parent company of SFGATE. Herbert wrote his novels during the day before trotting to his job in the Examiner building on Third and Mission Streets downtown at 4 p.m. He finished by midnight and spent a lot of time in what the newspapers call the “morgue” or archive.

412 Mississippi Street in San Francisco, where Frank Herbert wrote ‘Dune’, is for sale.

Courtesy Paul Herman

“By writing in the morning, I gave my best energy for myself,” Brian quotes his father. “The ex has the rest.”

In San Francisco, the Herberts socialized with the elite of science fiction writers, including Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein, who wrote “A Stranger in a Strange Land”. Mrs. Herbert worked downtown at the White House, the city’s first department store. (Banana Republic is now in its old building.)

The same year the White House closed, 1965, Chilton Books published Dune. It would be such a huge hit that four more novels were spawned, all as bulky as their predecessors (and sometimes difficult to get through).

412 Mississippi Street in San Francisco, where Frank Herbert wrote ‘Dune’, is for sale.

Courtesy Paul Herman

From there the adaptation attempts began. In particular, the filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky tried in vain to make his cinematic version of “Dune” in the 1970s. The film “Jodorowsky’s Dune” records his failed attempts.

Finally, in 1984 filmmaker David Lynch tried to capture the “Dune” universe with a film starring Kyle MacLachlan. The $ 40 million film flopped at the box office.

“This film is a real mess,” wrote the critic Roger Ebert, “an incomprehensible, ugly, unstructured, pointless excursion into the darker realms of one of the most confusing scripts of all time.” Lynch himself called the film “a total failure”.

We’ll see if things change for Denis Villeneuve’s 2021 adaptation of “Dune”. If anything, the frequent adaptations of the novel prove the longstanding appeal of “Dune”, which deals with questions of ecology and climate, gender dynamics and philosophy. The world cannot shake “Dune” and its overwhelming influence.

412 Mississippi Street in San Francisco, where Frank Herbert wrote ‘Dune’, is for sale.

Courtesy Paul Herman

But back to 412 Mississippi. Herman and Keck, who bought the house in 1986 “without knowing that Frank Herbert lived here,” are selling their long-standing house – for $ 1.595 million. The two-bedroom, one-bathroom home is sunny, bright, and bursting with literary spirits, according to the owners, who are moving to Chicago to be close to the family. They hope that the future owner will have respect for science fiction.

“We hope that someone will buy it who appreciates its history and its creative atmosphere,” said Keck.

Herman and Keck only discovered the history of their house about ten years ago when they saw two people standing in front of their house and taking photos.

“What are you doing?” asked boldly.

“Don’t you know that this is the house where Frank Herbert wrote ‘Dune’?” Replied the visitors.

Herman and Keck didn’t. So they emailed Brian Herbert to confirm. (SFGATE has checked the emails for accuracy.)

Brian Herbert confirmed that “most of ‘Dune’ was written here”. He added that his wife had never seen the house and asked “to come over when we pass through San Francisco”.

It hasn’t happened yet. But it’s only a matter of time.

“You will always be welcome,” said Keck.