fight the approaching enemy. Development and publication Original series Herbert's interest in the desert setting of Dune and its challenges is attributed to research he began in 1957 for a never-completed article about a United States Department of Agriculture experiment using poverty grasses to stabilize damaging sand dunes, which could "swallow whole cities, lakes, rivers, and highways." Herbert spent the next five years researching, writing, and revising what would eventually become the novel Dune, which was initially serialized in Analog magazine as two shorter works, Dune World (1963) and The Prophet of Dune (1965). The serialized version was expanded and reworked—and rejected by more than 20 publishers—before being published by Chilton Books, a printing house best known for its auto repair manuals, in 1965. Dune won the inaugural Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1966, and the 1966 Hugo Award. The novel has been translated into dozens of languages, and has sold almost 20 million copies. Dune has been regularly cited as one of the world's best-selling science fiction novels. A sequel, Dune Messiah, followed in 1969. A third novel called Children of Dune was published in 1976, and was later nominated for a Hugo Award. Children of Dune became the first hardcover best-seller ever in the science fiction field. Parts of these two first sequels were written before Dune was completed. In 1978, Berkley Books published The Illustrated Dune, an edition of Dune with 33 black-and-white sketch drawings and eight full color paintings by John Schoenherr, who had done the cover art for the first printing of Dune and had illustrated the Analog serializations of Dune and Children of Dune. Herbert wrote in 1980 that though he had not spoken to Schoenherr prior to the artist creating the paintings, the author was surprised to find that the artwork appeared exactly as he had imagined its fictional subjects, including sandworms, Baron Harkonnen and the Sardaukar. In 1981, Herbert released God Emperor of Dune, which was ranked as the #11 hardcover fiction best seller of 1981 by Publishers Weekly. Heretics of Dune, the 1984 New York Times #13 hardcover fiction best seller, was followed in quick succession by Chapterhouse: Dune in 1985. Herbert died on February 11, 1986. Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson Over a decade after Herbert's death, his son Brian Herbert enlisted science fiction author Kevin J. Anderson to coauthor a trilogy of Dune prequel novels that would