Hellstrom's Hive

It involves the encounter between normal Americans in the "modern day" and a strange, cultish society that has been secretly living among them since the 19th century, the Hive. A lot of major Herbert themes are here, in particular science and human genetic potential, as well as encounter with an "ali......more

A nightmarish sci-fi world by Frank Herbert, the creator of Dune. Near a small Oregon town is a "farm" which is actually an attempt to replace the human race with a kind of half-human, half-insect form of life run by one Nils Hellstrom. A quasi-governmental agency called, simply, "the agency," attem......more

This was my first non-Dune Frank Herbert novel and it did not disappoint! Herbert revisits many of the themes of Dune in this book but from a different, darker angle. The Hive is an analog to the Fremen, but where we admire the latter there's something terrifying about the former. The endings also p......more

This would be one of my more favorite of Frank Herbert's oneshot novels, though I do wish that he could have expanded a bit more on Hive-life. This book was a fun and thought-provoking read, and a bold foray into various issues. Overall I felt the story was believable, though the story would definit......more

All the summaries say the America in which this novel is set is a police state. However, I did not pick up on that in reading (or, more accurately, listening to the audio version). There are two opposing groups in the story, the most interesting, and alarming, being a population of 50,000 geneticall......more