Aaron's Magazine of the Week :: Analog March 1965

The Magazine of the Week is the March 1965 issue of Analog magazine. This issue contains Part III of The Prophet of Dune (really the sixth out of eight installments of the novel Dune). The stunning cover, depicting one of the giant sandworms of Arrakis, is by far the best out of the many cover images John Schoenherr did for Dune, and I am at a loss to explain why it was not used for any of the book editions.

Schoenherr was able to do a large, detailed cover image for Analog because between March 1963 and March 1965, Analog switched from digest to a glossy, oversized (8" x 11") "bedsheet" format. Bedsheet is the most common format for magazines, but is generally not used for science fiction and other literary magazines. This is because bedsheets are expensive to produce, and thus only make sense for magazines that have a large potential audience -- much larger than the small number of us geeks and weirdoes who read science fiction.

With only a few exceptions, bedsheet magazines are the largest-sized items in my collection. Next week's Book of the Week will be one of those exceptions, a book published in a format like a tabloid newspaper. This rare book is sought by collectors of both science fiction and, would you believe, punk rock paraphernalia.

Aaron's Book of the Week :: Dune by Frank Herbert (paperback)

The Book of the Week is the first paperback printing of Frank Herbert's classic novel Dune (1965).

This original paperback edition from Ace Books is a bit uncommon -- Berkley later acquired the paperback rights and sold millions of copies, so the Berkley edition (with an orange cover) is much more frequently seen. Ace was one of the leading science fiction publishers when it printed Dune, and knew enough to stick Frank Herbert's huge glossary of terms in the appendices at the end of the book, so the paperback edition begins where it should, with the immortal line, "In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an old crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Paul." (But Ace marred the line with a typo: "Arrauis" instead of "Arrakis").

Oddly, however, Ace used this rather uninspired cover by John Schoenherr, instead of his superior cover for the first hardcover edition. Even more strangely, no book edition of Dune has ever used the single best cover image Schoenherr did for Dune, which you will see next week.

Aaron's Book of the Week :: Dune by Frank Herbert (hardcover)

The Book of the Week is Dune by Frank Herbert. This is the first hardcover edition, but unfortunately not the first printing. When collectors describe a book as a "first edition," what they really mean is "first edition, first printing." The Book of the Week was not part of the very first print run of Dune in 1965, but instead a later print run (the seventh) in 1966. The cover looks exactly the same as the first printing, and the book is distinguishable from the first printing only in that (i) the price on the inside flap is $7.95 instead of $5.95, (ii) it is bound in red cloth instead of blue, and (iii) the copyright page does not have the words "First Edition" and contains a row of numbers beginning with the number "6," indicating that it was printed in 1966. What's the difference? About $5,000 on the collectors' market.

Because Dune was rejected by every major science fiction book publisher, this first edition of Dune was printed by Chilton, a small publisher best known for its auto repair manuals. As a novice SF publisher, Chilton made the foolish mistake of beginning the book with an 18-page glossary of terms used in the novel. Despite this daunting opening, Dune quickly became a huge commercial success (hence the multiple printings) and won Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel.

The cover of the Book of the Week is by John Schoenherr. This same cover art had already appeared on the cover of the January 1965 issue of Analog magazine, which contained Part I of The Prophet of Dune, the second half of the novel. This was much better than Schoenherr's original Dune artwork, but for some reason Schoenherr was asked to do a new cover for the first paperback edition, next week's Book of the Week.

Aaron's Magazine of the Week :: Analog December 1963

The Magazine of the Week is the December 1963 issue of Analog magazine (formerly known as Astounding), containing the first appearance of Frank Herbert's landmark novel Dune. In the early 1960's, before Dune appeared, Frank Herbert was regarded as a second-tier science fiction writer at best, having published only one novel and a couple dozen short stories. When he wrote Dune, it was rejected by every major SF book publisher. It was too long, too confusing and too strange, the editors agreed. The dissenting voice was John W. Campbell, Jr., who saved the novel (and perhaps Frank Herbert) from possible obscurity by purchasing the rights to serialize Dune in Analog, beginning with the Magazine of the Week.

Campbell published the first portion of the novel in three parts under the title Dune World. Even though it was only part of a novel, with no real resolution, Dune World was an instant success, receiving Frank Herbert's first Hugo Award nomination. After the readers' positive reaction, Campbell published the rest of the lengthy novel in five more installments, under the title The Prophet of Dune. The success of the magazine version helped Frank Herbert's agent to find a hardcover publisher for the book, and Dune became one of the most successful SF novels ever printed, both commercially and artistically. It was filmed with mixed results by David Lynch in 1984 and by John Harrison for the Sci-Fi Channel in 2000.

John Schoenherr's cover for the Magazine of the Week really doesn't do justice to the fascinating world Frank Herbert created in Dune, but not to worry--John Schoenherr ended up making a career out of cover art for Dune and got much better with practice. He did the cover art for the first part of The Prophet of Dune serialization, which was also used as the cover for the first hardcover edition of Dune, next week's Book of the Week.