Portent was published by Hodder & Stoughton in 1992. A series of increasingly catastrophic natural disasters — floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, extreme weather — afflicts the planet, and climatologist James Rivers discovers that the disasters are connected to a group of psychic children who can sense the Earth’s mounting distress. The planet is fighting back against human environmental destruction, and the children are its messengers.
The novel was remarkably prescient — published in 1992, it anticipated the climate-crisis fiction that would become a major literary genre two decades later. Herbert’s version was characteristically more visceral than most ecological fiction: the disasters were rendered in graphic, physical detail.
Climate Fiction Before Its Time
Published in 1992 — the year of the Rio Earth Summit — Portent anticipated the climate-crisis fiction (or “cli-fi”) that would emerge as a major literary genre in the 2010s. Herbert’s version is characteristically more visceral and more overtly supernatural than later entries in the genre, but the core anxiety — a planet driven to violent response by human environmental destruction — remains powerfully relevant.
Collecting Portent
First edition (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1992): Boards with dust jacket.
Approximate market values:
- Fine in dust jacket: $15–$40
- Very good: $5–$15
Projected values (2026–2036): Moderate appreciation. The novel’s environmental prescience gives it growing relevance.
Frequently Asked Questions
How prescient was Portent about climate change? Remarkably so. Written in 1992, the novel describes escalating natural disasters, melting ice caps, and extreme weather events caused by environmental damage. While the supernatural framing is Herbert’s invention, the underlying climate science was ahead of public awareness at the time.