—The « Institute » by Jack Vance and the ‘Bureau of Sabotage » by Frank Herbert—

Jack Vance and Frank Herbert were close friends for a long time since they first met in 1952 during an interview. They went for a while as a family to Mexico to found a writers’ workshop before returning to California where they both settled. They met often (along with their neighbor Poul Anderson) and even participated together in a boat-building project that Herbert would eventually abandon.In 1963 Herbert published Dune in two parts in Analog, and in 1965 the hardcover edition brought him success.

In 1962 Vance received a Hugo award for the Masters of Dragons and had some success with the Demon Princes in 1964 and the Tschai series in 1968.
It is hard to imagine that the meetings of Herbert, Vance and Anderson did not give rise to an exchange of ideas on Science Fiction subjects. When three giants of SF writing get together, one cannot doubt the result: ideas must have knocked together like pints of beer. It seems likely that it was the discreet Vance who acted mainly as an advice giver: both Herbert and Anderson never hid their admiration for their friend Jack.

The concept of an organized entity with the aim of undermining « progress » could be discussed at such friendly meetings, (Herbert had written in 58 a short story « A matter of Traces » on the subject) and each of them was able to derive his own idea and develop a particular world around it.

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Vance and Herbert did it each in their own way:

1964 : Jack Vance published the first volume of the Demon Princes, The Star King, followed by The Killing Machine.In these two novels, Vance introduces, in the form of quotations (epigraphs or footnotes), an elitist pseudo-governmental organization called The Institute. It is present in the whole oecumene: the « civilized » human part of an arm of our galaxy. Its action is underground, although its members don’t hide their goal which is to influence the human mentality to slow down as much as possible the excessive progress of the sciences and techniques, of the administration and of the management in order to keep the humanity in an evolution and a « healthy » natural environment and to avoid so the apparition of dictatorships and other « ideal societies ».
The Institute claims that it was the human race itself that created it as an « antibody » against the threat of the Artificial.
 At the beginning of the series the institute participates only indirectly in the intrigue, until becoming one of the principal stakes of the last volume The Book of Dreams. (1981)

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1964 : Frank Herbert published The Tactful Saboteur, a short story that introduces the Bureau of Sabotage (« Bu Sab »), a governmental entity of the CoSentience, a pan-galactic organization of several intelligent races.  It is in charge of obstructing or delaying as much as possible all technical, scientific and administrative initiatives of other parts of the galactic administration or of the various allied races.The main character is the Saboteur Extraordinary JorJ X McKie, a human, headed by Napoleon Bildoon, of the Pan Spechi race, leader of the Bu Sab.
 The first novel using the BuSab « Whipping Star » was published in 1973 and then in 1979, The Dosadi experiment in 1979.

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To conclude, both concepts are interesting: in my opinion from the literary point of view, where Herbert skillfully deploys complex plots and situations, but sometimes confused and without providing any explanation, Vance delivers an exotic and humanistic revenge fresco with his usual style: concision, irony and sense of wonder.

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THE INSTITUTE by Jack Vance (French article)