Whipping Star

By: Frank Herbert

Narrated by: Scott Brick

In the far future, humankind has made contact with numerous other species - Gowachin, Laclac, Wreaves, Pan Spechi, Taprisiots, and Caleban (among others) - and has helped to form the ConSentiency to govern between the species. After suffering under a tyrannous pure democracy that had the power to create laws so fast that no thought could be given to the effects, the sentients of the galaxy found a need for the Bureau of Sabotage (BuSab) to slow the wheels of government, thereby preventing it from legislating recklessly.

In Whipping Star, Jorj X. McKie, a "Saboteur Extraordinary," is a born troublemaker who has naturally become one of BuSab's best agents. As the novel opens, it is revealed that Calebans, who are beings visible to other sentient species as stars, have been disappearing one by one. Each disappearance is accompanied by millions of sentient deaths and instances of incurable insanity.

Ninety years prior to the setting of Whipping Star, the Calebans appeared and offered jump-doors to the collective species, allowing sentients to travel instantly to any point in the universe. Gratefully accepting, the sentiency didn't question the consequences. Now Mliss Abnethe, a psychotic human female with immense power and wealth, has bound a Caleban in a contract that allows the Caleban to be whipped to death; when the Caleban dies, everyone who has ever used a jump-door (which is almost every adult in the sentient world and many of the young) will die as well.

©1970 Herbert Properties LLC (P)2008 Tantor

I love Frank Herbert

Great thought provoking story . What an imagination. Sentient stars, alien psychology, and an interesting government.

Crazy twist

Took a bit to get the irony in the beginning but well worth the effort. Not at all what I expected.

My favorite Frank Herbert

I am a great fan of Dune, but Whipping Star is my favorite book by Frank Herbert. It should be required reading for everyone working cross-culturally.

A novel about ideas vs. thrill action

Novel possabilities has and is why I've feasted on hard Sci-Fi 60 of my 73 years.
A not quite tangsble, or even understandable life form offers an enticing gift to the sentiment life forms of this arm of our milkeyway. The gift is a passageway from any known where to any othern; on request of any of these odd lifeforms of energy. A plot to end the existence of all adult beings who have used these gates through inteddtellar space.
To tell more would steal the story from you. If you are a thinker this is as fine a story as "Dune" for your pleasure in novel concepts.

Among my favorites

Shorter than most, but an interesting premise and very entertaining I would recommend it