Giger’s grotesque work on Jodorowsky’s Dune, especially his nightmarish vision for Baron Harkonnen’s castle, would become the basis for the Xenomorph and the alien space ship in Ridley Scott’s Alien. Alejandro Jodorowsky, the avant-garde filmmaker behind El Topo and The Holy Mountain, tried to adapt Herbert’s book in the ’70s, and while that movie never got made, many of its ideas and designs would later make their way into other sci-fi films thanks to the legendary storyboard the filmmaker sent to Hollywood studios while pitching his movie. If you’ve watched the excellent documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune, you know how the story goes.

In fact, you can easily track how Herbert’s creation led to some of the biggest blockbuster franchises of all time. When Frank Herbert published “Dune World,” the first part of what would become the novel Dune in Analog Science Fiction and Fact in 1963, it was a moment that would reverberate through modern science fiction for decades to come, especially on the big screen, where the story’s influence can still be felt to this day. This article contains spoilers for Dune and Star Wars.