Science fiction planets are often modeled on Arabian desert imagery.

Evidence

It is not accidental that in science fiction movies, imaginary planets often take the appearance of Arabian deserts. The Gothic formula of the desert wasteland has continued to be a popular motif in the twentieth century-expressed here in Yeats’s famous poem “The Second Coming”: The Second Coming! — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 688

Categorization

• XREF: Shows how the desert-as-malign-terror motif from medieval pilgrimage literature persists into 20th-century SF, connecting directly to the book’s earlier chapters on desert imagery in premodern Christian texts.
• QUESTION: What specific SF films/covers actually use Arabian desert look for alien planets? Worth chasing concrete examples like Dune, Star Wars, or the desert-imagery genealogy.