It’s probably safe to assume that most people who read Frank Herbert’s The Godmakers are big fans of Dune who want to expand their reading of this famous author. When I decided to read this, I thought the best approach would be to put Dune completely out of mind and encounter The Godmakers on its own. Easier said than done. This short novel introduces characters and themes that are so obviously precursors to Herbert’s well-known masterpiece that I found it impossible to separate them.
Sometime in the future, all the inhabited planets at the edge of the galaxy get destroyed in a disaster called the Rim War. The survivors spread out to other planets and begin new processes of environmental adaptation, some of them speciating away from humans. The main character is Orne, a genius rookie government agent who gets sent to a planet to look for signs of possible aggression and the kinds of warnings that might indicate the start of another destructive war. He calls his commanding officer, a grim and serious man named Stetson, to the planet because something doesn’t seem right. Orne follows his hunch and uses Sherlock Holmes style deductive logic to explain why he thinks the inhabitants might be hostile.
Stetson is so impressed with Orne’s abilities that he promotes him to a position in the I-A, a kind of espionage agency that sends agents to newly discovered planets. In the next section, Orne visits a planet with thick jungle and tree-dwelling ape-like creatures with advanced technology. The I-A wants to destroy them because they are violent and hostile, but Orne, who is inclined towards pacifism, negotiates with them to avoid war.
After Orne almost dies in an explosion, doctors reconstruct his body, possibly a bit of Christian symbolism, and send him on another espionage mission to spy on a family of politicians in order to find out if they are plotting to overthrow the government. The women in the family belong to a secret society called the Nathians and Orne finds out he was born as a Nathian too, giving him powers of second sight and precognition. Here we see a direct link with the Bene Gesserit and Paul Atreiddes, the messiah in Dune. A theme of family conflict is also introduced here. Orne had a troubled relationship with his family who were also friends with the people he is staying with. Herbert misses an opportunity here to introduce an interesting subplot, but he never goes anywhere with it after its initial entry into the narrative. These first three sections are the best part of the book.
In the fourth section, Orne is sent to a planet called Amel where he is trained in the use of psi, a type of psychic-spiritual mind force that only few people are able to master. Their intention is to train him to be a god so that he can start a new interplanetary religion. Orne is given a series of tests which prove he can control his powers. The theory Herbert uses behind all this is a mixture of Taoism, Islam, and Jungian psychology, emphasizing awareness of the shadow-shelf, developing the will, and integrating the personality. Where Dune focuses on what Paul Atreides does after becoming the messiah, The Godmakers is all about what Orne has to do to become a god. Maybe Herbert wants to say that the successful patient in psychoanalysis will become like a god. Who really knows? The meaning of this is vague.
The first three sections are exciting, even if they are a bit too short, because they are stories of intrigue with a narrative structure that builds suspense. The characters of Orne and Stetson are also well drawn so that I expected something really exciting to happen later in the novel. But that never comes to be. The fourth part just kind of drifts along without any major events or peaks in the narrative to make it feel complete or give it closure. It has a lot of half-baked psychology and theology and the tests that Orne has to pass are not that exciting. The first one, for example, involves him lying on the floor and resisting the temptation to move. Exciting? It’s a good thing his balls didn’t itch. After that it gets kind of cartoonish and flat. The worst part of it all is that Herbert never gives a clear explanation of what it means for Orne to become a god. He just becomes a god and then the novel ends.
The Godmakers is one of those novels that starts out strong with a lot of potential and then starts fading away half way through. It might be of interest to Dune fans who want to see where Herbert was coming from before he wrote his classic epic series, but beyond that it isn’t much.
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