Attention Dune Fans

[Leto]

If I understand well Foxbat's post, that's what will going to happen. I supposed Brian wanted to established him first as a writer in the serie. Or the book needed more editing.

 

[Foxbat]

It wasn't so much a manuscript that was found - it was a heavily annotated copy of Chapterhouse Dune. It apparently held so much information that they've decided to produce to books as a sequel to the events of Chapterhouse.

As to why they did not work on these right away - who can say?

The story goes that Dune fans requested prequels but I suspect the reason was probably somewhat more contractual than that - if you get my drift.
I'm hoping that the results of the sequels will be better than the prequels but only time will tell.

 

[Leto]

It wasn't so much a manuscript that was found - it was a heavily annotated copy of Chapterhouse Dune. It apparently held so much information that they've decided to produce to books as a sequel to the events of Chapterhouse.

More details, taken from the postface of House Atreides (just received by Pocket editions PR), by Brian Herbert himself.
Two weeks after his first work reunion with Kevin J Anderson (in 1997), a lawyer called Brian Herbert to tell him they found in a Seattle bank some of his father's notes for a Dune 7. As he speak on another part of the annotated copy of Chapterhouse Dune, I understand that's two differents things.
On the cautionous side, there's a mistake of translation in the term "Honoured Matres" - translated in the previous novels by Honorées Matriaches (feminine) but in the postface by Maîtres Honorés (masculine). Maybe there's more mistakes in the transcription of this postface.

 

[Foxbat]

Curioser and curioser. As long as something good germinates from all this I'll be a happy bunny

 

[guthrie]

Actually, I could neverget past "Dune" as a standalone. It always seemed to myself that the work was written to be a sole masterpiece, but that commercial pressures made Frank Herbert extend the series. Heck, Dune Messiah, so far as I can tell, isn't even written in the sme narrative style and brings into being constructs that seemed misplaced beside Dune. I've tried touching the sequels but was always somehow repulsed from them. I just have difficulty seeing them properly connecting with the first great "Dune".

As far as I have read, Herbert intended the first 3 books as one, but the story grew too large for one book. The differences in style and substance in them can in part be ascribed to being written over several years, and also in trying to bring in different elements of a universe whilst trying to make it both nearly infinite and yet comprehensible. You have to see the 2nd and 3rd Dune books as a resolution of the problem that Paul Atreides finds himself in at the end of "DUne".
Heres my source:
http://tim.oreilly.com/herbert/

 

[ykb]

My friend has an early copy of either Children of Dune or Dune: Messiah, on the back said something about completing a trilogy. Though i cannot remember if it said "the second book in the Dune trilogy" or something along the lines of "completing the Dune saga". Hope that helps. here is a link to an interview with Brian Herbert. http://www.ugo.com/channels/filmtv/features/brianherbert/.
I only skimmed though it, but i have already heard about the notes of Frank herbert on another site. They were sopposidly found in a lock box, ten years after Frank Herbert died. As far as I know it wasn't an unfinished novel but simply lotsa notes on the Dune universe, and Dune 7.