Melange (fictional Drug) - Origin

Origin

In Dune, there is only one source of melange: the sands of the planet Arrakis, colloquially known as Dune and millennia later called simply "Rakis". Herbert notes in Dune that a pre-spice mass is "the stage of fungusoid wild growth achieved when water is flooded into the excretions of Little Makers," the "half-plant–half-animal deep-sand vector of the Arrakis sandworm." Gases are produced which result in "a characteristic 'blow,' exchanging the material from deep underground for the matter on the surface above it." This blow is explosive in nature, erupting with enough force to kill anyone in the vicinity of it. Frank Herbert describes such a spice blow in the following passage from Dune:

Then he heard the sand rumbling. Every Fremen knew the sound, could distinguish it immediately from the noises of worms or other desert life. Somewhere beneath him, the pre-spice mass had accumulated enough water and organic matter from the little makers, had reached the critical stage of wild growth. A gigantic bubble of carbon dioxide was forming deep in the sand, heaving upward in an enormous "blow" with a dust whirlpool at its center. It would exchange what had been formed deep in the sand for whatever lay on the surface.

Herbert writes that the pre-spice mass, "after exposure to sun and air, becomes melange." He later indicates its color in Children of Dune (1976), when Leto II passes "the leprous blotches of violet sand where a spiceblow had erupted."

Collecting the melange is hazardous in the extreme, since rhythmic activity on the desert surface of Arrakis attracts the worms, which can be up to four hundred meters (1,300 feet) in length, and very dangerous, capable of swallowing a mining crawler whole. Thus, the mining operation essentially consists of vacuuming it off the surface with a vehicle called a Harvester until a worm comes, at which time an aircraft known as a Carryall lifts the mining vehicle to safety. The Fremen, who have learned to co-exist with the sandworms in the desert, harvest the spice manually for their own use and for smuggling off-planet.

Within the 1500 years between the events of God Emperor of Dune (1981) and Heretics of Dune (1984), the Tleilaxu discover an artificial method of producing the spice in their axlotl tanks, previously only used to create gholas. It is noted in Heretics of Dune that "For every milligram of melange produced on Rakis, the Bene Tleilax tanks produced long tons." The technology "had broken the Rakian monopoly on the spice" but is not fully successful in pushing natural melange out of the marketplace.