Whipping Star Audiobook By Frank Herbert cover art

Whipping Star

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Whipping Star

By: Frank Herbert
Narrated by: Scott Brick
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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 Fantasy Fiction First Contact Science Fiction Space Opera

Featured Article: The Best Audiobooks for Fans of Dune


Ever since its publication in 1965, Frank Herbert's Dune has set the bar high for epic science fiction. In fact, Herbert's beloved novel is considered to be one the best sci-fi books of all time. Dune was the recipient of multiple awards, including the inaugural Nebula Award for best novel in 1966. And in October 2021, more than 50 years after the novel's initial release, fans of Dune are being treated to a film adaptation, directed by Denis Villeneuve.

Featured Article The Best Audiobooks for Fans of Dune
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Great thought provoking story . What an imagination. Sentient stars, alien psychology, and an interesting government.

I love Frank Herbert

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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.

My favorite Frank Herbert

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

Crazy twist

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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.

A novel about ideas vs. thrill action

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

Among my favorites

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On par with Frank Herbert's other work. Very enjoyable. Wish there were more stories about BuSab and Jorge x. McKee.

Very entertaining

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Star Wars crossed w A Clockwork Orange and much more. The book is truly unique and all the subjects Herbert folds into this tiny novel is mind blowing. Worth the listen.

It's like Star Wars mixed with A Clockwork Orange

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Previously unknown to me, this Frank Herbert novel embeds him further my own personal pantheon of authors.
I struggled, the characters did, to understand the plot, characters and bureaucracy!
If you push through to understanding, you’ll be rewarded with a great twist and reveal at the end. Don’t give up. There is a prize inside.

Reality as an illusion or is it ?

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This book doesn't even deserve the one star which I've given it. It seems like at least half the book is human characters communicating with aliens telepathically, yet the conversations get hung up on English words with multiple definitions. If that's not enough to make you avoid the book, try this: the main characters are hunting a villain who is going to end all sentient life in the universe within days, yet they keep tip-toeing around what the villain's lawyers might do in response to their actions. Since it's a relatively short book, I decided to finish it, hoping there might be some interesting twist at the end, but I was disappointed once again.

Zero Star

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Any additional comments?

I love Dune, but this book felt like it was written by a different author. It was campy, cheesy and the women where all cardboard cut outs that habit all of Asimov's stories. Maybe Asimov wrote it, as it feels like one of his books, I like Asimov but his stories are either really good or really bad in an over the top cheesy way. This one followed the later pattern.

It gets star for the time period it was written in, that's the only reason it's 2 stars.

Campy and Cheesy

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