The Godmakers (novel)

The Godmakers (1972) is a science fiction novel by Frank Herbert. The title of early editions was sometimes styled The God Makers.

This article is about the science fiction novel. For the anti-Mormon film/book, see The God Makers.
The Godmakers
AuthorFrank Herbert
Cover artistVincent DiFate
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
GenreScience fiction
PublisherPutnam
Publication date
1972
Media typePrint (hardback & paperback)
ISBN0-399-11006-2
OCLC534343
813/.5/4
LC ClassPZ4.H5356 Go PS3558.E63

Summary

It explores the concepts of war and peace, good government and religious belief. It can be seen as a bridging novel between the all-human Dune universe and the ConSentiency universe series.

It is a novel expanded from four short stories:

  • "You Take the High Road". Appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, May 1958
  • "Missing link". Appeared in Astounding Science Fiction February 1959
  • "Operation Haystack". Appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, May 1959
  • "The Priests of Psi". Appeared in Fantastic Science Fiction Stories, February 1960

The story focuses on Lewis Orne, an agent for a government agency which develops 'lost planets.' After correctly identifying a warlike civilization on the planet Hamal, he is drafted into Investigative Adjustment (I-A), which manages dangerous planets. Under the auspices of I-A, he travels to various planets in order to maintain peace throughout the galaxy. At the same time, the priests of the planet Amel, who practice 'religious engineering', set about creating a god, something they have done numerous times before: " 'We do not know from what creature or thing the god will be born', the Abbod said. 'It could be one of you.' " After resolving a number of dangerous situations, Lewis is injured and has a near-death experience. Following this, his psychic powers develop, and after passing a series of tests he becomes a god.

gollark: The UK had to rename a company because of fear of XSS issues in applications using Companies House data, funnily.
gollark: Fonts are Turing-complete.
gollark: Unicode *already* has ways to do really weirdly specific drawing.
gollark: I have talked about the inevitable merger of Unicode and SVG before.
gollark: I feel like we should use more of Unicode.

References
    "The Priests of Psi" was the cover story for the February 1960 issue of Fantastic


    This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.