Frank Herbert interview on the origins of Dune (1969)

The interviewer is Willis E. McNelly, a professor of English (specializing in science fiction). Herbert discusses artistic as well as conceptual decisions made in the writing and background world building for Dune. Highly recommended for any fan of the book.

See also Dune and The Butlerian Jihad and Darwin Among the Machines.

The Bene Gesserit program had as its target the breeding of a person they labeled "Kwisatz Haderach," a term signifying "one who can be many places at once." In simpler terms, what they sought was a human with mental powers permitting him to understand and use higher order dimensions.

They were breeding for a super-Mentat, a human computer with some of the prescient abilities found in Guild navigators. Now, attend these facts carefully:

Muad'Dib, born Paul Atreides, was the son of the Duke Leto, a man whose bloodline had been watched carefully for more than a thousand years. The Prophet's mother, Lady Jessica, was a natural daughter of the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen and carried gene-markers whose supreme importance to the breeding program was known for almost two thousand years. She was a Bene Gesserit bred and trained, and should have been a willing tool of the project.

The Lady Jessica was ordered to produce an Atreides daughter. The plan was to inbreed this daughter with Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, a nephew of the Baron Vladimir, with the high probability of a Kwisatz Haderach from that union. Instead, for reasons she confesses have never been completely clear to her, the concubine Lady Jessica defied her orders and bore a son. This alone should have alerted the Bene Gesserit to the possibility that a wild variable had entered their scheme. But there were other far more important indications that they virtually ignored ...

"Kwisatz Haderach" is similar to the Hebrew "Kefitzat Haderech", which literally means "contracting the path"; Herbert defines Kwisatz Haderach as "the Shortening of the Way" (Dune: Appendix IV).

Another good recording of Herbert, but much later in his life.