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"I realized there was a heavy-duty change coming in biology, and I could write a really compelling novel about catastrophic evolution, punctuated equilibrium."
- Greg Bear
 |
| Spice (Melange) | ||
| The spice must flow. |
The most important substance in the Dune universe.
| Anything the Guild will transport, the art forms of Ecaz, the machines of Richesse and Ix. But all fades before melange. A handful of spice will buy a home on Tupile. It cannot be manufactured, it must be mined on Arrakis. It is unique and has true geriatric properties. |
| Technovelgy from Dune,
by Frank Herbert. Published by Putnam in 1965 Additional resources -
|
The people of Arrakis, or others who use a lot of spice, develop the Eyes of the Ibad, in which the whites of the eyes turn a deep blue. Huge harvester factories are carried to spice blows in the desert to process the spice in situ.
Compare to young blood - new blood for old from Methuselah's Children (1941) by Robert Heinlein, the
Sprung-Samser treatment from This Immortal (1966) by Roger Zelazny, the
anti-Tri-D shot from The Morning of the Day They Did It (1950) by E.B. White and the
anti-agathic drugs from Cities in Flight (1957) by James Blish.
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'The king, an old hand in the running of tyrannies, instantly grasped the directions...'
'...a hemispherical force field enclosing his head.'
'Then he became aware of a gentle pressure pushing him away from the ship.'
'And now they wre busily transforming all their companions, and so on, and so on...'
'Why, a clockwork dancer, or, better still, one that would go by electricity and never run down...'
'Maybe the individual intelligence of each Cubic pools into a group intelligence...'
