It’s common for fans of Frank Herbert’s Dune and the many film adaptations to quote the famous line “Spice must flow,” bit the strange substance is rarely well defined.Spice Melange, usually shortened to simply “Spice,” is the primary McGuffin of the Dune universe. It is what drives all interstellar travel, and so whoever controls Spice controls the galaxy.
In the events of the first book/film, Duke Leto Atreides and his family are sent to the planet Arrakis, the only location in the known universe where Spice is found, to take over colonial rule and Spice collection operations. This substance is mined from the sands of the planet, where attacks from Sandworms, sabotage from the local Fremen tribes, and machinations of rival Houses constantly threaten their lives. Oftentimes McGuffins such as this have little purpose in the larger narrative, serving only as a catalyst for the main characters’ interactions (Hitchcock famously believed they were all but meaningless in their own right). But in Dune, Spice is more than just that, it is intrinsically linked to every facet of the world, characters, and story.
What Is Spice?
Spice Melange isn’t a spice in the conventional sense, not valued for any flavor or medicinal/preservatory properties (although it is called Spice because it carries a taste and smell reminiscent of cinnamon). Spice is a naturally produced awareness spectrum narcotic (generated by the metabolism of the planet’s sandworms), which can affect the user’s perception of time and reality. In short, depending on dose, anyone who consumes Spice can see the future.
In very small doses, like sprinkled over a meal, it has a very slight intoxicating effect akin to a glass of wine. In larger doses one can catch glimpses of future events, ranging from the immediate to the distant depending on amount taken and the user’s mental acuity; some Fremen use spice as a combat enhancement to predict opponents’ movements. In very large doses, such as the Fremen Water Of Life, the user experiences full-on visions of future events (a ritual occasionally performed by the Bene Gesserit Order). And in the largest doses, humans warp into slug-like mutations with inky blue eyes. These individuals are so immersed in future vision they can no longer relate to normal human experience.
Why Is Spice Melange So Important?
In the world of Dune, humans have discovered Faster-Than-Light (or FTL) travel using a method known as Fold Space. Similar to Warp Drive in Star Trek or Hyperdrive in Star Wars, Fold Space bends spacetime to allow a ship to travel between locations almost instantly. But because this travel is so fast, even large objects like stars become hard to avoid and present a major obstacle to a vessel. This is where the Spacing Guild comes in.
That final stage of spice consumption is used by the Guild. People are chosen to become Guild Navigators and trained in how to use Spice visions to chart courses through the stars. They consume unthinkable amounts of Spice and are even immersed in tanks filled with Spice gas. Over time their bodies atrophy and the exotic chemicals cause their limbs to distend, muscles to bulge and warp in strange ways, making them appear more like grotesque fish hybrids than anything recognizable as human. Once they reach this point, Navigators need a constant supply of Spice not just to perform their function, but to survive, as their bodies have become utterly dependent on the drug. This is the Spacing Guild’s most closely guarded secret, and nobody outside of the highest echelons of the organization know that FTL travel is achieved with a living heart of the ship (like Farscape‘s Leviathan and Pilot symbiosis).
Why Do Dune’s Humans Need To Do All This?
With the realities of space travel being so disturbing, it’s easy to ask why anyone would go through all this when it would be easier to simply use a computer to chart their courses. Surely if technology has progressed to the point where ships can make the physical journey, computing will have matched it in its ability to extrapolate astronomical data. The answer is that computers in the world of Dune have been outlawed due to an event called the Butlerian Jihad.
10,000 years before the events of Dune, humanity created a sentient AI that controlled nearly all aspects of life and enslaved all living things (similar to the machines in The Matrix). A group of humans rose up against the computer overlords, and for over 100 years machines and humans slaughtered each other by the billions. After the war, humanity outlawed use of all computers to prevent it from ever happening again. So computers were replaced with Mentats (people trained to turn their minds into living computers) and ship navigation with the Spacing Guild Navigators.
Frank Herbert noted that the reason he initially did this was because he was far more interested in the sociopolitical aspects of the story than the technological, and this seemingly convoluted arrangement of spice, worms, guilds, and governments gave him the means to do it. But as the story progressed, particularly through its sequels and prequels, Spice came to represent far more, serving as an effective allegory for imperialism, environmentalism, capitalism, and any other aspect of politics or philosophy he wished to explore.
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