Artist Chris Foss is known for his visionary presentation of future technology and weird vistas. He illustrated many book covers in the 70s, 80s and 90s including the Lensman series, Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, and Jack Vance's Demon Princes novels. His covers frequently feature spaceships that are sturdier and chunkier than the usual sleek space rockets you see on many other book covers of the time.

His cool vision of the future led him to be asked to work on production designs for Alejandro Jodorowsky's uncompleted Dune movie, in the mid 1970s, and later on Ridley Scott's Alien and Superman: The Movie.

As Alejandro Jodorowsky said in 1977:

And thus were born the mimetic spaceships, the leather and dagger-studded machines of the fascist Sardaukers;- the pachydermatous geometry of Emperor Padishah's golden planet; the delicate butterfly plane and so many other incredible machines, which I am sure will one day populate interstellar space. Chris Foss knows that today's technical reality is tomorrow's falsehood. Chris also knows that today's pure art is tomorrow's reality. Man will conquer space mounted on Foss' spaceships, never in NASA's concentration camps of the spirit. I was grateful for the existence of my friend. He brought the colours of the apocalypse to the sad machines of a future without imagination.

He has a website, ChrisFossArt.com, where you can see more of his work and buy signed prints of all of these images. And he has a group on Facebook, where you can keep up with his projects.

Pirate Ship, From Jodorowsky's Dune.
Harkonnen's flagship, From Jodorowsky's Dune.
Spice transport, from Dune.
Emperor's palace, from Dune.
Guild Tug, from Dune.
Breaking the Light Barrier
Awesome space image.
Awesome spaceship.
Image for ConceptShips blog.
Awesome spaceship.
Amazing space image.

The influence of Herbert's secret muse - environmentalist Rachel Carson, whose Silent Spring appeared shortly before Analog began serializing Dune - distinguishes his own from these other entertainments. Inspired by Carson's defense of the balance of nature, her criticism of man's despoliation of the planet in the name of progress, the desert ecosystem portrayed in Herbert's Dune is far more than a setting: it's a mise en scène, a worldview.

via Hilobrow

Kudless, an architect with Matsys Design, created the Sietch Nevada concept with Dune in mind, analogizing the arid planet with the American Southwest:

Although this science fiction novel sounded alien in 1965, the concept of a water-poor world is quickly becoming a reality, especially in the American Southwest. Lured by cheap land and the promise of endless water via the powerful Colorado River, millions have made this area their home. However, the Colorado River has been desiccated by both heavy agricultural use and global warming to the point that it now ends in an intermittent trickle in Baja California. Towns that once relied on the river for water have increasingly begun to create underground water banks for use in emergency drought conditions. However, as droughts are becoming more frequent and severe, these water banks will become more than simply emergency precautions.

To that end, Sietch Nevada is based on the Fremen sietches, a city consisting of man-made caverns beneath the desert. Openings in the desert floor allow water to drain into underground canals, creating a water reserve for the city. But Kudless also imagines other desert cities might be envious of the Sietch's superior water conservation:

However, the Sietch is also a bunker-like fortress preparing for the inevitable wars over water in the region.

Sietch Nevada [Mastys Design via Building Blog]

A user on LibraryThing posting under the name bookmonkey00k has set forth the theory that Dune ruined science fiction novels. It's not that Dune is a bad book — quite the contrary, the poster admits he quite enjoyed Dune and the rich universe it portrayed. His issue is that he suspects Dune's success is behind the increasing girth of science fiction novels after 1965:

Basically, people looked at it and instead of saying, "Wow – you can have this kind of massive family drama/economic intrigue/war story/mystical journey all in the context of SF", they said, "Dune must be awesome because it's really long."

So after 1965 all SF started to get really, REALLY, BIG. I mean, when I've lined up my copy of Dune with three SF books that had been written in the previous decade (Double Star and Starship Troopers by Heinlein, and Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement), all of them award winners, all of them critically acclaimed, and all of them barely adding up to the page count that is DUNE.

Gone are the days of the 200 page book, which could be devoured in a couple of days. Instead, he says science fiction novels are less interested in telling interesting stories with novel ideas than in cramming in every detail until the book is better as a doorstop than a form of entertainment. Moreover, reading these tomes can take weeks, turning what should be a simple pleasure into an onerous commitment. The poster implores Herbert-loving science fiction writers to take their cue from William Faulkner (when rewriting, "kill your darlings"), and trim the fat from their books, leaving a trimmer, more engaging story behind.

But other posters in the forum suggest some other reasons why novels started getting longer after 1965: Like, for example, the fact that novels were no longer being serialized in magazines before coming out in book form (and magazines had tended to have less space for longer books). Or the fact that fantasy books, influenced by Lord Of The Rings, were going longer and more epic, and this bled over into SF. And then there's the simplest explanation: "People like thick books. It makes them feel like they get more for their money."

Things I've noticed: Dune really wrecked Science Fiction [LibraryThing]

At least two Lego enthusiasts have used the multicolored blocks to visit Frank Herbert's Dune. The gray sandworm popping out of the dune with the detailed Fremen comes from Brickshelf member RebelRock, while the blue sandworm is the work of Flickr user - 2x4 -, whose science fiction-themed Lego constructions include the Tron lightcycles and a bevy of ships from Battlestar Galactica.

[Brickshelf via MAKE]
[- 2x4 -'s Flickr via The Brothers Brick]

Jodorowsky had a sweeping vision of Dune, planning to adapt the novel to his own psychedelic imagination (he said of the book, "I did not want to respect the novel, I wanted to recreate it. For me Dune did not belong to Herbert as Don Quixote did not belong to Cervantes, nor Edipo with Esquilo."). He planned to cast his own son, Brontis, as Paul Atreides, Orson Welles as the Baron, who would be nearly immobile at 300 pounds, and Salvador Dali as Emperor Shaddam IV, who would be insane and living on a planet made of gold. Dan O'Bannon was on board to write the script and Pink Floyd had agreed to do the music. Unfortunately, by October 1976, Jodorowsky had already spent $2 million and was working off a script that would have produced a 14-hour film.

Before working Dune, Moebius was known as the artist for western comic Blueberry, and would go on to work on films like Alien, Tron, Willowm and The Fifth Element. He would also collaborate with Jodorowsky again on the futuristic comic The Incal. Below are thousands of the character concepts and storyboard designs he created for the doomed Dune:

[Dune: Behind the Scenes via Sci-Fi-O-Rama]

The sprawling saga that loses the thread is a more common problem in fantasy books than in science fiction — think the Robert Jordan's Wheel Of Time, or Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover books. But science fiction still has its own never-ending stories that really ought to end. Here are the biggest problems:

Changing the rules: When I first read To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer, I was incredibly excited by its story of an artificial planet where everybody who's ever lived comes back to life. Until I got to the end of the book and realized it was actually Book One in a long series, and none of my nagging questions about the resurrection planet, Riverworld, would be answered for another three or four books. I was even more annoyed when a friend of mine told me that Farmer changes the rules of Riverworld after the first book, to make it easier to keep spinning out tales. I think there my have been some book-throwing involved.

The heir apparent. As I mentioned, a reviewer coined the term "Herbert's Syndrome" in 1984, when Frank Herbert was still alive and had yet to publish his sixth Dune novel, Chapterhouse: Dune. The reviewer defined it as when "a large advance induces a good writer to extend a successful series beyond its natural span." You may have your own opinions about whether six Dune books were too many — but since Herbert's death, his son Frank and his collaborator Kevin J. Anderson have already written seven Dune books, with more on the way. Say it with me: "The cash must flow."

The neat trilogy that becomes a messy tetralogy, and more. The first two Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy books by Douglas Adams seemed pretty well-rounded, encompassing more or less the same arc as the original radio series and TV series. So I was a little nervous about the third book, Life, The Universe And Everything, but it was still a fun ride and seemed to move things forward. I was less thrilled by the fourth volume in what Adams called "the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker's trilogy." So Long And Thanks For All The Fish, felt sort of anemic, as if Adams really didn't have any more ideas for the series, but he needed the Ningis. And then I think I read the fifth volume, but I have no memory of it whatsoever.

The need to explain the meaning of everything. Feminist science fiction blogger Liz Henry says this is where many series break down:

People write a series, and then they feel the need to finish it off and Explain it and they go all mystical and metaphysical. [They] try to solve every giant Burning Issue of Existence and good and evil, and why does the universe exist at all, and [the meaning of] utopia. So often, you get the underlying Manifesto or attempt to come up with a coherent philsopy of the author, but all too often, you sure wish they hadn't. By the time Herbert hits God Emperor of Dune, he has gone compeltely mad, trying to explain Everything, and there is no plot any more.

The random left turn. Isaac Asimov gave into fans' pressure, after a thirty-year gap, and started writing more Foundation novels again. And few would argue that Foundation's Edge or Foundation And Earth are in the same league as the original trilogy. One major problem: a slew of new characters, including one who's introduced right at the end of Foundation And Earth, who might have played a bigger role in a final Foundation book, had Asimov written one. But in the end, it just feels as though Asimov is floundering a bit, in the unnecessary sequels.

The miraculous save. In Suzette Haden Elgin's Native Tongue series, there's a clan of women and children who become language experts, and learn a ton of alien languages so they can serve as translators. But over time, they create their own secret language that the men don't understand. Which is great, but then in the third book, suddenly the women discover that they can eat sounds. They can survive by ingesting noises — sort of like a plant's photosynthesis, except noisier.

The shrinking protagonist. Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat books become less and less fun, as his roguish protagonist, Slippery Jim DiGriz, becomes more and more of a pussycat. But worse yet is when we get a new protagonist whose story cheapens our original hero, like Bean in Orson Scott Card's Ender's Shadow.

To be fair, why shouldn't novels go on and on and on? It's what movies do, with their endless sequels. And TV series — who really thinks Smallville deserves an eighth season? On the other hand, the thing that makes novels superior to other media is the fact that they have a single author, who puts his/her stamp on them. When that one person runs out of ideas, the novels themselves start to deflate.

With TV, movies, comics and other media, as long as the corporate copyright-holder can find another Akiva Goldsman or Roberto Orci to spin out a new idea, you can have endless installments. In theory, no TV series ever needs to go stale, as long as the writers have the grace to leave when they run out of ideas. (Which almost never happens.) It's a bit harder with books though — and I like picking up a novel and discovering a new universe for the first time.

Note: I was almost done compiling this list when I came across this helpful post from Lev Grossman at Time.com, and its equally helpful comments. (Although the person who thought the ship in Farscape was called "Moira" cracked me up.)

Mogo the Green Lantern planet, from Green Lantern. Created by Alan Moore in his classic "Mogo Doesn't Socialize" short comic strip, Mogo is a whole planet wearing a green-lantern ring and defending the galaxy against wrongdoers. He's been brought back in recent issues of Green Lantern Corps. and has actually managed to communicate with the otherLanterns, despite the whole "not socializing" thing. How does he travel around? How does he defend all the planets in his sector of the galaxy? It's not clear to me, but here are some more details, including a link to scans of his first appearance.

Ego The Living Planet, from Thor and various other Marvel Comics. Which sentient planet is bigger, Ego or Mogo? It's hard to say. But I'm going to come down on the side of Ego being more awesome, because he cruises around and acts sleazy — as in one of his most recent appearances, where he falls in love with Earth and tries to seduce the entire planet (which has become sentient). In a smackdown between Ego and Mogo, my money is on Ego, even though Mogo has the magic alien ring. You know Ego would fight dirty, because everything he does is dirty.

The Beast With A Billion Backs from Futurama, "The Beast With A Billion Backs." The second direct-to-DVD Futurama movie involves our heroes contacting another universe, and then they encounter a planet-sized tentacle monster, voiced by David Cross. And Fry becomes pope of a new religion. (There are also planet-sized creautres in Tarkovsky's Solaris and in the GWAR mythos.( Here's the trailer.

Unicron from Transformers. We can only hope Michael Bay tries to take on this concept at some point — a mechanical planet who transforms into a humongous giant robot in space. And then he goes around eating other planets. In his first appearance, he was voiced by Orson Welles. I love how, in his planet form, he has giant metal horns sticking out. Party on, Unicron. But could he beat the planet-eating Galactus?

Gaea from John Varley's Titan. A planet-sized entity orbiting Saturn, Gaea is a "sentient space habitat that may or may not be batshit insane," as Bookslut puts it. The controlling intelligence of Gaea presents itself as a middle-aged woman who's obsessed with classic movies. In the second book of the Gaea trilogy, she offers miracle cures to humans whom she deems worthy, and in the third she provides a refuge for humans fleeing Earth's nuclear war.

Marvin The Paranoid Android, from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Well, he's always reminding us his brain is the size of a planet, although we never actually see this mega-brain.

Solaris, The Tyrant Sun, from DC One Million. The "One Million" event, in which the Justice League traveled forward to the 853rd century to meet their curiously similar counterparts, was probably the 17th most demented thing Grant Morrison has written, and that's saying something. A giant artificial sun, Solaris causes his own creation in the late 20th century (thanks to a time-travel paradox) and then becomes one of Superman's arch-enemies. Finally, in the 500th century, Solaris becomes a good guy, but never quite gets over his jealousy of our solar system's "real" sun. So he plots to kill the original Superman, in a plot involving a galactic super-Olympics. To be honest, I've read this comic three times and still don't understand it.

Evil Nebula, from Captain Simian And The Space Monkeys. Half-human, half-black hole, Lord Nebula could run over Mogo and Ego and barely even notice. And the Evil Nebula thinks big — in the first episode, he decides he wants to absorb the entire universe into himself. ("It's an ego thing.") But he's not too big to come up with a monkey enemy for Captain Simian, the vicious Rhesus-2. Plus he's voiced by Michael Dorn, which is full of win.

The Behemothaurs from Iain M. Banks' Look To Windward (2000). Lev Grossman suggests these in his blog post. And StrangeHorizons describes them as "miles-long symboitic gasbags." They live in a massive drifting weightless

The Cloud, from The Black Cloud by Sir Fred Hoyle. In this classic 1957 novel, a Jupiter-sized interstellar cloud floats into our solar system and threatens all life on Earth. Scientists struggle to communicate with the Cloud — and they succeed. It turns out the Cloud has a "brain" made out of complex networks of molecules. And the Cloud turns out to be sort of size-ist towards poor limited humans:

[I]t is most unusual to find animals with technical skills inhabiting planets, which are in the nature of extreme outposts of life... Living on the surface of a solid body, you are exposed to a strong gravitational force. This greatly limits the size to which your animals can grow and hence limits the scope of your neurological activity.

The spaceship-eating amoeba, from Star Trek, "The Immunity Syndrome." An 11,000 mile single-celled creature, this huge but pretty monster has to be destroyed before it reproduces and eats the entire galaxy. There's also an episode of the Trek animated series, "One Of Our Planets Is Missing," where they go inside a similar huge creature that's draining their power and munching on planets. But in that case, Spock manages to communicate with the creature, which is another one of those size-ist jumbo sentients and doesn't believe that such tiny creatures as ourselves could be intelligent. You could also make a case that the massive planet-crusher in "The Doomsday Weapon" is sentient, although it's never made clear. And another giant Trek baddie, of course, is the "crystalline entity" who stars in some of the most boring TNG episodes. Oh, and then there's V'Ger from The Motion Picture.

Jane from the Ender's Game saga by Orson Scott Card. An artificial intelligence, Jane occupies the entire galactic ansible network and is the only one who can make faster-than-light travel possible. Her one weakness is that when the Galactic Congress shuts down the galaxy-wide internet, she shuts down too.

The Calebans, from Frank Herbert's Dosadi Experiment and Whipping Star. Huge, unimaginably advanced creatures, the Calebans manifest themselves as stars in our universe. They give humans the secret of the "jump door," which allows you to teleport anywhere in space instantaneously. As Timothy O'Reilly writes:

[T]he Calebans are as close to infinite beings as he can imagine. Their visible embodiments are stars, and on a deeper level the Calebans are one gigantic consciousness that forms the topological matrix of the manifest universe. The jump-doors are simply an expression of their pervasive existence behind or apart from space.

• Minority Report and Other Stories, by Phillip K. Dick: Keir Dullea (who played Dave in 2001) reads these short stories from Dick's library. "Minority Report" is, of course, a lot better (and different) than the movie was, but the standout here is "Second Variety," which details artificially intelligent robots that have learned how to disguise themselves as humans in order to be more deadly. This came out years before Terminator and Battlestar Galactica, and is worth the price alone. Collection also includes "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" which became Total Recall, and "Paycheck," which became a terrible Ben Affleck movie of the same name.
• The Dark Tower Series, by Stephen King: King's science fiction meets sorcery Dark Tower series has been coming out in dribbles for decades, and the last volume finally came out in 2004. I found that the best way to catch up with these was by chucking them onto my iPod while I was stuck in the car in Los Angeles all morning and evening. Some of the seven books in the series are expertly read by Frank Muller, who has narrated a huge share of King's novels. Tragically, he had a motorcycle accident several years ago, and has been unable to resume his narration work as a result. George Guidall picked up the reins and does an equally impressive job.
• Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card: In 2002 a 20th anniversary edition of Card's novel about the extensive training of young boy by the military to be the savior of all mankind was issued with a full cast production reading the story, and a bonus epilogue tacked on by Card. The project was extremely successful, and they also released the sequel Ender's Shadow with the same cast members. If you've never picked this book up, this is a great way to get into it.
• Neuromancer, by William Gibson: Gibson himself reads this audiobook version of his classic novel, and U2 provided a track for the book, with the group Black Rain contributing music and sound effects throughout the reading. It's moody and atmospheric, great for listening to while the rain is hammering down outside. Sometimes it can (oddly) be a mixed bag when the author reads their own work, but Gibson does a fantastic job.
• The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson: Jennifer Wiltsie not only reads both the abridged and unabridged versions of this book about a nanotechnology-built learning "illustrated primer," but she also provides different voices and accents for all the characters. Not many readers can pull this off without being distracting, and she does a great job with this, particularly with the Primer and the young Nell character.
• Idlewild, by Nick Sagan: This book by Nick Sagan, the son of Carl, is read by a cast of characters and features a superb robotic female monotone as the voice of one of the A.I. taskmaster programs in this story about a virtual reality school for rich kids. It owes a lot to The Matrix, but the ending opens up a whole new world where the sequel Edenborn takes place. Immersive narration takes you deep inside the VR world in the novel.
• A Scanner Darkly, by Phillip K. Dick: Paul Giamatti does an excellent job of reading this novel and capturing the frenetic apathy that the world of Substance D brings on. I listened to this not long before the animated film came out, and I vastly prefer the audiobook version. Giamatti's range as an actor shows off even when you can't see his face.
• Transmission, by Hari Kunzru: Kunzru reads his own novel about a hacker from India who thinks he's found paradise in the United States, until he realizes he'll never escape his slave labor job as a database engineer for a temp firm. He unleashes a powerful computer virus that infects your computer with a dancing video of a Bollywood starlet so he can appear to step in and save the day with a "cure," but it doesn't go as planned. A great listen, and a wonderful read.
• Dune, by Frank Herbert: Clocking in at 21 hours long, this unabridged version of Herbert's classic novel about desert planets and space-folding spice drugs is read by a full cast and will require a serious time commitment. However, you'll get more satisfaction out of listening to this than you will watching the movie or the miniseries again. Perfect if you decide to drive across the continent, or through a desert somewhere.
• Idoru, by William Gibson: I didn't want to have two Gibson novels on this list, but Idoru was the first science fiction book I ever listened to, and it got me through my first year in Los Angeles. I have probably listened to this thing at least ten times, and it never gets old. Actor Jay O. Sanders does a superb reading job, providing different voices for all of the characters, and captures this book perfectly. Plus, it's a great starting point for Gibson if you missed out on the whole Neuromancer cycle.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams: This series has appeared in multiple formats: read by the author, read by the full cast, read by Simon Jones (who played Arthur in the TV and radio versions), read by Martin Freeman (who played Arthur in the movie version), the BBC Radio versions, and even a Live in Concert version, featuring Douglas Adams giving live readings from his works in front of an audience. With multiple readers and multiple books, there is a ton to choose from here. In my opinion, the Douglas Adams and Simon Jones (and full cast version, including Simon Jones) editions are the best. Sorry, Martin. Technically, this gives this list a lot more than 11 books, but who's counting?