A fantasy tale was released in 1960s America, set in the distant future on an exotic, sand-covered planet called Arrakis, and featuring creepy giant worms and an indigenous population with deep blue eyes, whose actions were seemingly controlled by a psychedelic spice. That story was Dune.

Frank Herbert’s Dune is now one of the world’s most successful science fiction books of all time: it has sold over 20 million copies and has been translated into 20 languages. And it is also one of the select few books to have transcended the printed word and become embedded in our collective consciousness, recently providing the inspiration for Denis Villeneuve’s acclaimed film trilogy.

Dune has been captivating new generations of readers for over 50 years. But did you know that Frank Herbert’s book was turned down by 20 publishers before it finally saw the light of day? And that a sort of curse seemed to strike down anyone who tried to turn it into a film?

Today we’d like to retrace Dune‘s publishing history – from its first appearance in a sci-fi magazine to its successful publication as a full trilogy – focusing, as usual, on an element that means a lot to us: its covers. The most beautiful, the most vintage, and those with the best stories!

Welcome to the sand planet!

Dune‘s first covers, as a magazine

Dune first appeared not as a book, but in a magazine. Frank Herbert’s work was serialised by Analog Science Fiction and Facts (often abbreviated to Analog) – one of the longest-running sci-fi magazines, founded in 1930 and still going strong – in several volumes between 1963 and 1965, under the titles Dune World and The Prophet of Dune.

We’ve got a good reason for bending our usual rules and discussing magazine covers here: they were designed by the talented American nature artist John Schoenherr.

John Schoenherr created all the illustrations for Dune in its magazine format – receiving the Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist along the way – as well as the covers of the book’s early editions. It can’t have been easy to be the first designer to work on imagery as powerful and complex as Herbert’s, but Schoenherr did an exceptional job: 50 years on, the numerous modern incarnations of the planet Arrakis still more or less follow the American artist’s interpretations.

Frank Herbert himself was very pleased with the way his Dune was portrayed, commenting in the 1980s ‘I can envision no more perfect visual representation of my Dune world than John Schoenherr’s careful and accurate illustrations’.

Dune‘s first cover as a book

Dune was published for the first time in a single volume by the US publisher Chilton Books. And there’s an interesting story to recount here too.

Up until then, Chilton Books had mostly published car manuals and business magazines. Frank Herbert had already sent his book to around 20 publishers, all of whom had rejected it. However, an editor from Chilton Books saw it and decided it was the perfect text to launch a new fiction series.

But Dune‘s early sales figures were poor, and the editor who chose the manuscript was sacked: it took a few years for the saga to become famous.

This explains why the cover of Dune‘s first edition doesn’t look like a science fiction book: it wasn’t the publisher’s usual field! The lettering used on the cover brings to mind a fantasy novel, while the author’s name is relegated to a corner. The illustration is by John Schoenherr, taken from one of Analog’s serialised editions of the work.

Looked at with modern eyes, the cover still has a certain vintage charm… not bad for a car manual publisher!

Bruce Pennington’s psychedelic covers

Once Dune had finally achieved the success it deserved, Frank Herbert worked on expanding his universe, and created a true science-fiction saga. Starting in 1969, he published another five volumes in the Dune series, while his son, Brian Herbert, wrote another two books in the 2000s, making a total of eight.

One of the publishers that released the saga in the 1970s was the UK-based New English Library, which specialised in sci-fi, fantasy and mystery books. The covers were entrusted to Bruce Pennington, a British painter famous for his sci-fi book covers (including works by Isaac Asimov) and genre fiction.

For Dune, Pennington chose a different approach from John Schoenherr, opting for a very free interpretation of the text. His beautiful covers give the books an exotic and psychedelic feel that suits Frank Herbert’s world to a T, helped by an excellent choice of typeface.

The Dune cover also used for another book

One of Bruce Pennington‘s covers for Dune has an interesting anecdote attached to it. When the first book in the series was republished by New English Library in 1972, it featured an illustration of an inhabitant of Arrakis with their typical blue eyes (the odd colour is a side effect of Melange, or ‘the spice’, a drug that gives special powers to people who take it regularly).

Strangely, the exact same cover was used by another publisher for a completely different book just a few years later. It still isn’t clear why Manor Books, the American paperback publisher, decided to use precisely this design for The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick, the author who created sci-fi masterpieces that inspired box-office hits like Blade Runner.

Covers featuring the terrifying sandworms

As well as the aforementioned Melange, the sandworms are one of Frank Herbert’s most enduring inventions. These terrifying creatures  travel underground on Arrakis and are drawn to regular drumming on the ground, leading the planet’s inhabitants to adopt a strange gait to avoid attracting their attention.

Such an iconic image – the sandworms are over 400 metres long, with enormous mouths and razor-sharp teeth – was always going to end up on the book’s cover. We’ve dug up two examples. The first is the cover designed by Don Ivan Punchatz for a 1974 edition published by Ace Books, the oldest US publisher dedicated to science fiction.

The second is cover for the first colour and black-and-white illustrated edition of Dune, published in 1978 by Berkley Windhover Books with drawings by John Schoenherr.

Two minimalist Dune covers: one beautiful, one… less so!

Frank Herbert’s complex world is chock-a-block with exotic ideas, imaginative inventions and enigmatic concepts. And, throughout the 1980s (and indeed beyond), Dune‘s covers followed suit, with rich and evocative layouts in the era’s typical sci-fi style.

However, in the decades that followed, some publishers decided to move away from this trend and create minimalist covers for Dune – with mixed results. The cover created by Francis O’Connell for the 50th anniversary edition (published in 2015 by the London-based Hodder&Stoughton), for example, has received a great deal of acclaim. The sandworm motif is back, but here it is only hinted at in silhouette form, creating a rip in the background that offers a glimpse of the planet’s sandy landscape. The serifed font, meanwhile, is a nod to the genre’s classic aesthetics.

The 1990 Ace Books edition (re-released in 1999) was much less successful. Here the desert planet is restricted to a small frame against a predominantly black background.

Geometric covers for Dune with vertical titles

In 2018, Ace began re-releasing Frank Herbert’s six Dune books. They entrusted the covers to the graphic designer and illustrator Jim Tierney, who, under the artistic direction of Adam Auerbach, decided to opt for an unusual vertical title.

He chose a modern sans-serif font, in stark contrast to many of the typefaces used in the past. Along with the brightly coloured illustrations, it brought the work bang up to date, finally giving the Dune saga an extremely modern feel. These covers have already become classic collector’s items.

The Dune covers announcing a film version

‘Soon to be a major motion picture’ or ‘Now a movie beyond your imagination’: from the 1970s onwards, Dune‘s covers often featured a sticker announcing current or future film adaptations.

Dune‘s fantasy world has always enticed Hollywood, but for years a sort of curse seemed to strike the various directors and producers who tried their hand at creating a film about the arid, sandy planet.

As a result, many of the films promised on these stickers were never actually released, or not until many years later. In the 1970s, for example, the Chilean artist and director Alejandro Jodorowsky tried to turn the series into a feature film. His imaginative project, which even included painter Salvador Dalì in its cast, sank without trace: all that remains is a documentary about it. The Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis tried again, entrusting the film to David Lynch. However, after almost a decade of work, the film was a flop.

Today, however, Dune‘s curse seems to have been lifted by Denis Villeneuve’s successful trilogy. Naturally, the covers of the newest editions follow this long-awaited and well-deserved triumph. Here, for instance, is a 2021 edition of Dune, published by Ace Books, which features images from Denis Villeneuve’s latest film on the cover.

What do you think? Do you prefer the more vintage Dune covers or the more Hollywood-style attempts?