Dune Messiah: United Kingdom 1972

Quick Quiz: How many international Amazon.com sites are there? Answer: Too many ;-)

To the right is the cover for the United Kingdom edition of the second book in the original Dune trilogy, Dune Messiah. This edition was originally released in 1972 and published by Hodder & Stoughton Ltd.

This Dune Messiah cover, and actually most of the Dune covers in Great Britain, use a much lighter, earthier color pallette mixing in some much lighter blues and greens creating a fairly lush tone. Even after having read this novel twice, it is hard to identify just what exactly that thing is flying in the center of the cover... spice harvester? Imperium ship? Arrakeen flying mollusk?

This remain just another of the many mysteries left unexplained in the Dune-iverse, but I reckon this one won't be addressed in the forthcoming final novels of the original Frank Herbert planned series...

Here lies a toppled god--
His fall was not a small one.
We did but build his pedestal,
A narrow and tall one.
--Tleilaxu Epigram