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    Whipping Star
    Whipping Star
    Whipping Star
    Audiobook6 hours

    Whipping Star

    Written by Frank Herbert

    Narrated by Scott Brick

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In the far future, humankind has made contact with numerous other species-Gowachin, Laclac, Wreaves, Pan Spechi, Taprisiots, and Caleban (among others)-and has helped to form the ConSentiency to govern between the species. After suffering under a tyrannous pure democracy that had the power to create laws so fast that no thought could be given to the effects, the sentients of the galaxy found a need for the Bureau of Sabotage (BuSab) to slow the wheels of government, thereby preventing it from legislating recklessly.

    In Whipping Star, Jorj X. McKie, a "Saboteur Extraordinary," is a born troublemaker who has naturally become one of BuSab's best agents. As the novel opens, it is revealed that Calebans, who are beings visible to other sentient species as stars, have been disappearing one by one. Each disappearance is accompanied by millions of sentient deaths and instances of incurable insanity.

    Ninety years prior to the setting of Whipping Star, the Calebans appeared and offered jump-doors to the collective species, allowing sentients to travel instantly to any point in the universe. Gratefully accepting, the sentiency didn't question the consequences. Now Mliss Abnethe, a psychotic human female with immense power and wealth, has bound a Caleban in a contract that allows the Caleban to be whipped to death; when the Caleban dies, everyone who has ever used a jump-door (which is almost every adult in the sentient world and many of the young) will die as well.

    The Calebans have attempted to remedy the error, but Mliss Abnethe refuses to cancel the contract, and the Caleban sense of honor makes breaking the contract from their side unthinkable. To save themselves, all the Calebans are handing over the time-like history lines of the sentients who used jump-doors to one Caleban, Fannie Mae, and withdrawing from ConSentiency space. McKie has to find Mliss and stop her before Fannie Mae reaches, in her words, "ultimate discontinuity," but he is constrained by the law protecting private individuals by restricting the ministrations of BuSab to public entities.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMay 12, 2008
    ISBN9781400175666
    Whipping Star
    Author

    Frank Herbert

    Frank Herbert (1920-1986) created the most beloved novel in the annals of science fiction, Dune.  He was a man of many facets, of countless passageways that ran through an intricate mind.  His magnum opus is a reflection of this, a classic work that stands as one of the most complex, multi-layered novels ever written in any genre.  Today the novel is more popular than ever, with new readers continually discovering it and telling their friends to pick up a copy.  It has been translated into dozens of languages and has sold almost 20 million copies. As a child growing up in Washington State, Frank Herbert was curious about everything. He carried around a Boy Scout pack with books in it, and he was always reading.  He loved Rover Boys adventures, as well as the stories of H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and the science fiction of Edgar Rice Burroughs.  On his eighth birthday, Frank stood on top of the breakfast table at his family home and announced, "I wanna be a author."  His maternal grandfather, John McCarthy, said of the boy, "It's frightening. A kid that small shouldn't be so smart." Young Frank was not unlike Alia in Dune, a person having adult comprehension in a child's body.  In grade school he was the acknowledged authority on everything.  If his classmates wanted to know the answer to something, such as about sexual functions or how to make a carbide cannon, they would invariably say, "Let's ask Herbert. He'll know." His curiosity and independent spirit got him into trouble more than once when he was growing up, and caused him difficulties as an adult as well.  He did not graduate from college because he refused to take the required courses for a major; he only wanted to study what interested him.  For years he had a hard time making a living, bouncing from job to job and from town to town. He was so independent that he refused to write for a particular market; he wrote what he felt like writing.  It took him six years of research and writing to complete Dune, and after all that struggle and sacrifice, 23 publishers rejected it in book form before it was finally accepted. He received an advance of only $7,500. His loving wife of 37 years, Beverly, was the breadwinner much of the time, as an underpaid advertising writer for department stores.  Having been divorced from his first wife, Flora Parkinson, Frank Herbert met Beverly Stuart at a University of Washington creative writing class in 1946.  At the time, they were the only students in the class who had sold their work for publication.  Frank had sold two pulp adventure stories to magazines, one to Esquire and the other to Doc Savage.  Beverly had sold a story to Modern Romance magazine.  These genres reflected the interests of the two young lovers; he the adventurer, the strong, machismo man, and she the romantic, exceedingly feminine and soft-spoken. Their marriage would produce two sons, Brian, born in 1947, and Bruce, born in 1951. Frank also had a daughter, Penny, born in 1942 from his first marriage.  For more than two decades Frank and Beverly would struggle to make ends meet, and there were many hard times.  In order to pay the bills and to allow her husband the freedom he needed in order to create, Beverly gave up her own creative writing career in order to support his.  They were in fact a writing team, as he discussed every aspect of his stories with her, and she edited his work.  Theirs was a remarkable, though tragic, love story-which Brian would poignantly describe one day in Dreamer of Dune (Tor Books; April 2003).  After Beverly passed away, Frank married Theresa Shackelford. In all, Frank Herbert wrote nearly 30 popular books and collections of short stories, including six novels set in the Dune universe: Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, and Chapterhouse: Dune.  All were international bestsellers, as were a number of his other science fiction novels, which include The White Plague and The Dosadi Experiment.  His major novels included The Dragon in the Sea, Soul Catcher (his only non-science fiction novel), Destination: Void, The Santaroga Barrier, The Green Brain, Hellstorm's Hive, Whipping Star, The Eyes of Heisenberg, The Godmakers, Direct Descent, and The Heaven Makers. He also collaborated with Bill Ransom to write The Jesus Incident, The Lazarus Effect, and The Ascension Factor.  Frank Herbert's last published novel, Man of Two Worlds, was a collaboration with his son, Brian.

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    Reviews for Whipping Star

    3.5/5

    234 ratings12 reviews

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    • 2/5
      Monster is the story of Steve Harmon, a young man from the Harlem neighborhood who is facing a charge of felony murder. The book opens with the gripping image of Steve crying quietly in his cell while a fellow prisoner is being beaten and raped. Steve tells his story through a series of journal entries and a move script. The script is especially used for Steve to process the situation that he is going through. In his journal entries and film sequences, Steve ponders his own perceived innocence, shares scenes from life in the prison, and recounts events that led to his accusation. The journal entries as well as the interwoven court scenes are well crafted. However, the close reader notices the discrepancies between Steve's testimony in court and the facts that he relates in his journal. This might lead the reader to pass a "guilty" verdict on Steve Harmon. However, throughout the story, the author has created so much ambiguity and nuance in the terms "guilty" and "innocent', that it is hard to make a resolute judgement. Prisoners speak of their crimes as "mistakes", and out of delusion believe themselves to be innocent. Others quibble about "truth", and feel that telling their own version of the story is acceptable in light of the true horrors of life in prison. These conversations take place right before Steve's testimony in court, leaving readers wondering what the truth really is. This question haunts the reader even after the story is over, in the same way that Steve is ever after haunted by his identity as a "monster".I liked this book because of the mystery that it maintains, and the question marks that it leaves you with. I think that this book speaks to young people because it deals with decision-making, acquaintance choices, helplessness, and identity crises.The book gives plenty of room for teachers to discuss the difference between perception and actual truth with their students. This would be a great book to teach to a classroom full of tough customers, and it is short enough and an easy enough read to assign to young people with the expectation that they read it on their own.
    • 4/5
      I think this was my second favorite of Herbert's books, following Dune. It didn't go exactly where I expected.
    • 3/5
      Bizarre world building featuring a Bureau of Sabotage to ensure government doesn't function efficiently. An enjoyable quick read if you're a fan of science fiction from this period.
    • 3/5
      What I liked: the cover art and the font chosen for the titleWhat I didn't like: the storyI'll be a little more charitable: I do like Herbert's writing style, even when I don't like what he's writing about. It was very easy to whiz right through this book but finishing left me totally unfulfilled.A downright silly story, the plot is right out of a comic book. And I'm not talking a "Days of Futures Past" or "Dark Knight" style classic, I'm talking a throw-away "Marvel Two-In-One" plot line.
    • 4/5
      I read Herbert's Dune Messiah when I was 11 (it was what I could afford at a school book fair), not realizing it was a sequel. It was confusing to a 5th grader. A few years later, I read The Dosadi Experiment, also not realizing that it was a sequel...of sorts. Also confusing. What a Mind Herbert had! Creating the alien concepts...alien interactions .. much more challenging than straight up human-only science fiction. I wish he had written more of these rather than churning out the drivel of the later Dune chain, which jumped the shark for me halfway through God Emperor...
    • 4/5
      This book really deserves 3.5 stars, but since Goodreads doesn't allow that level of granularity.... Anyway, worth a reading. Not mind blowing, but there are definitely some very interesting ideas in here.
    • 2/5
      Basically drivel. Some interesting ideas, but quite poorly written. I had sympathy for the main characters, but lost patience with the writing.
    • 4/5
      Mind-blowing.

      Like a lot of Herbert fans, I was introduced to Frank Herbert through Dune and its original quintet of sequels. And like a lot of Herbert fans, I kind of stopped there. It was only later, years later, that I bothered to read some of Herbert's other stuff. And while the Dune saga still represents his most complete vision and best storytelling (at least through the first four books), and is deservedly his best-known work, I've started to realize that some of his most truly impressive feats of imagination and intelligence lie within his books outside of the series. Destination: Void, with its penetrating insights on the nature of consciousness, is one such book. The Dosadi Experiment (actually a sequel to Whipping Star, but which I accidentally read first), which takes a much more detailed look than Dune at exactly how humans might evolve in a hyper-hostile environment, is another. And Whipping Star is absolutely in that same class.

      Here's just one example of Herbert's genius: One thing that was shocking to me, in reading Whipping Star, is how deeply Herbert approached the idea of communication between humans and aliens. Extraterrestrial contact is such a basic staple of science fiction that it's amazing how little some SF authors seem to think it through. On the low end of the depth continuum you have the Star Trek and Star Wars universes, where the vast majority of aliens are just humans with weird bumps on their heads, and most of them happen to speak English as a second language for your convenience. Certainly there are cultural disconnects as humans deal with Klingons, or Wookiees, but they're roughly on a par with "Crocodile Dundee making his way through New York City" in their severity. Slightly better thought through than those examples might be Larry Niven's aliens in Known Space: clearly, they think differently than humans, and understanding is rarely perfect, but everyone seems to have magic translator boxes and once again, the real problem of interspecies communication is hand-waved away. Closer yet to a realistic treatment would be Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, where the Mars-raised human, Valentine Michael Smith, knew the words and syntax of English, but that was no guarantee of clear communication because his whole way of thinking and set of experiences was so vastly different to an Earthling's.

      Heinlein is the first SF author who appears to have honestly thought the thing through, and Herbert takes it to a whole different level in Whipping Star. As the protagonist, Jorj X. McKie, attempts to communicate with the mysterious Caleban, the basic breakdown in understanding is evident, and the characters' frustration is palpable and believable. Herbert makes the reader think of what it would be like to deal with a creature that's as intelligent as a human, maybe more so, but not at all human. The dialogue between McKie and Fannie Mae alone makes this book worth the price of purchase, and the book is filled to bursting with other ideas besides that, in spite of being short and fast-paced. For one, it takes a unique and plausible stab at FTL travel and time travel.

      An enormously impressive and enjoyable book. I give it four stars instead of five only because, much like Destination: Void, the story is a ramshackle thing, mostly meant to convey Herbert's ideas from Point A to Point Z. It's still more than worth the read, though, if you're into science fiction that makes you think.
    • 4/5
      Basically a 'simple' crime story but set in an interesting and intelligent environment where humanity have to share the world with so alien intelligent creatures they hardly can communicate with. The best (and the most comlpex) parts of the book are the conversations between McKie the saboteur and the Caleban...
    • 4/5
      Fantastically deep. It was so refreshing to finally read a well written novel. It's hard to find an equivalent in today's modern authors, although they are out there.
    • 3/5
      Huh. I’m not sure what to make of this book. It is interesting, but it seems to be bogged down in its discussions about language and communication. In this novel a crazy billionaire-ess is trying to kill every sentient creature by killing an anthropomorphic star that has given people technology. In the end she is destroyed by her own madness when her self created world collapses. This is a weird book written by a man who was equal parts smart and bat shit insane.
    • 4/5
      Not one of his best, but interesting and keeps you thinking about it when you put it down. Most of the book consists of conversations between "people" who can't quite understand each other due to their alien nature.