Melange

Description

Melange is a substance that extends lifespan, sharpens vitality and awareness, and can trigger prescience—a genetically rooted form of precognition—in certain users. The Spacing Guild employs humans who have been altered by heavy melange consumption, granting them limited prescience to guide heighliner ships through folded space. In high doses, the spice acts as a potent psychotropic and entheogen for the Bene Gesserit and the Fremen of Arrakis, enabling clairvoyant and precognitive trances, access to genetic memory, and enhanced abilities. The Fremen also craft paper, plastics, chemical explosives, and items like spice-cloth and spice-fiber rugs from melange. It can be added to food or made into beverages such as spice coffee, spice beer, and spice liquor.

By the time of Dune, melange is used across the universe and signifies wealth. Duke Leto Atreides remarks that among all valuable commodities, melange outshines them all, with a handful buying a home on Tupile. Jon Michaud of The New Yorker compared its power to combining the global value of cocaine and petroleum. Because melange is rare, valuable, and essential for interstellar travel, the Padishah Emperor’s authority rests on controlling Arrakis, balancing him against the Landsraad and the Spacing Guild. Paul Atreides seizes the planet to tighten this hydraulic despotism, dominating both factions. Alia, in Children of Dune, calls melange the secret coinage: without it, the Guild’s heighliners cannot move, and life expectancy for the wealthy drops by at least four times. Even the Imperium’s middle class consumes diluted melange with at least one meal daily.

Prequels and sequels

In the Prelude to Dune prequel trilogy, Project Amal was an early attempt by the Bene Tleilax to create synthetic melange to eliminate dependence on Arrakis. They presented the idea to Padishah Emperor Elrood Corrino IX, who granted them the right to occupy the planet Ix by force with Sardaukar help, remaking it into a laboratory station. The old Emperor wanted to restructure the spice monopoly to control the Spacing Guild. The Tleilaxu renamed Ix "Xuttuh" after their founder.

Tleilaxu Master Hidar Fen Ajidica created an artificial melange called ajidamal, or amal, that seemed to have the original's properties but did not work properly. Test-sandtrout exploded when exposed to it, and a test by Guild Navigators ended in catastrophe, destroying one heighliner and its passengers and killing the Navigator of a second. When Duke Leto Atreides invaded Xuttuh and reestablished Prince Rhombur of House Vernius as ruler of Ix, Fenring destroyed all records of Project Amal.

Shaddam denied participation, claiming it was his senile father's doing. The Tleilaxu Masters involved were executed, and Ajidica died from side effects as the synthetic melange ate his body from the inside out.