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Showerthoughts_Mod t1_j2464wb wrote

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Banea-Vaedr t1_j246txx wrote

More like space mushrooms, but that's what it is. The spice of life.

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Just1morefix t1_j24bkwi wrote

But cocaine doesn't allow one to fold time/space. I always envisioned The Spice like some kind of magical DMT analogue.

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cruiserman_80 t1_j24ea7m wrote

A better analogy to us would be the only source of oil, because without the spice there is no interplanetary travel or trade and no Empire so no Emperor.

And we all know what nations will do and who they will ally with to ensure the oil flows.

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Sycend t1_j24l6ik wrote

I thought spice is a common word for drugs in sci fi settings.

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MrLuxarina t1_j24q38c wrote

When you consider that the crusades were basically a fight to control spice trade routes, it's not that weird.

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randymysteries t1_j24tw9g wrote

I didn't realize "spice" was worm poop until recently. An entire galaxy dependent on worm poop. 💩

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Tanagrabelle t1_j24yax0 wrote

Replying to cruiserman_80 (#1,148,764)

Eh. I can't speak for the movie, but without spice they're stuck with going the slow way around, the Guild loses its monopoly of all travel. The Emperor can't just drop his forces anywhere at his whim (though that requires the cooperation of the Guild). The BG have to go back to less useful methods for unlocking their ability to tap into their ancestors.

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FuckinNogs t1_j2528ns wrote

Well there was deffinintly a lot of spice on the set of 1984's Dune.

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RegulusRemains t1_j254ywv wrote

The whole thing is about oil. There are tons of middle eastern references

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getawy t1_j255ey9 wrote

I think that's the most basic and low resolution way of seeing it

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Charliekeet t1_j25au9m wrote

Replying to getawy (#1,154,172)

I assume the OP was just making a joke, but I always wondered why so many people think Dune is some sort of difficult to follow, impenetrable mess. There are lots of names and competing factions to learn about, I guess?

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Leucippus1 t1_j25bm08 wrote

We all know it though, it is depicted as having addictive properties.

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getawy t1_j25cg0e wrote

Replying to Charliekeet (#1,155,257)

It's got so many layers of meaning, also it's much more subjective than lots of films, there is not much agreed upon. And I think that's intentional. There's a lot to gain from digging into it further and I only wanted to encourage this.

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Gamebird8 t1_j25f0tp wrote

Replying to cruiserman_80 (#1,148,764)

Yeah, but the spice is also extremely magical and almost acts as a sort of life source.

There is no real world contemporary analogy for the Spice Melange because it's like 10 things combined.

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Kazodex t1_j25iiz7 wrote

Replying to Gamebird8 (#1,156,103)

This is the correct answer. In addition to what the above posters pointed out, melange has a psychedelic effect as well.

Frank Herbert stated that psilocybin had a major effect on his conception of spice

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Sylvurphlame t1_j25taux wrote

Replying to getawy (#1,155,571)

Yes. And the hints of what would have happened if Frank Herbert and been able finish the series himself.

I personally subscribe to the theory that he was going to >!introduce an alien race as what the Honored Matres were running from. Not the return of the Machine Empire!<

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NexusSix29 t1_j25tgzk wrote

It’s really not, though.

It’s more like oil, plus LSD, except the LSD allows you to fold space and time.

Unless that’s what cocaine is, in which case, I need to make a call.

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Toby_Forrester t1_j25vefc wrote

Replying to Gamebird8 (#1,156,103)

Yea there's no real world analogue, but still, oil would be better than cocaine, since it corresponds to the role of spice in trade and economics which fuel the politics. The spacing guild uses the psychedelic effects of spice to travel faster than light, making interstellar travel possible = oil makes efficient global travel possible.

And if you think of about a desert world occupied by foreign powers to get their hands on precious resource for trade, it corresponds to Arrakis and Middle East. The Fremen culture of Dune have notable Arabic roots.

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SoylentJelly t1_j25yfm3 wrote

Very cool comments, this is where my fellow nerds come out and explain it’s more like crude oil analog/hyperspace gas, LSD, and wasabi ( because it requires a very specific temperature and growing condition) mixed together. ish.

1

MPMorePower t1_j25ypgj wrote

I feel we could take this a step further and say the spice was just regular Earth drugs. And the characters in the movie were actually on Earth. The stuff about giant worms and sonic weapons was just them hallucinating.

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Bretty_boy t1_j26384f wrote

Replying to RegulusRemains (#1,154,058)

There have been plenty of times throughout history where a commodity was hugely in demand, I don’t think it needs to be ‘about’ any one of them in particular. Now it’s oil, before that sugar, before that spices through India

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Ambiorix33 t1_j264ith wrote

Replying to cruiserman_80 (#1,148,764)

i mean that WAS the whole point of the book, he was talking about a desert planet with a rare resource that all the major powers wanted to control but whos extraction directly has a negative effect on the environment (not terraforming because it would ruin the spice harvests).

The analogy for the middle east's oil couldnt be more clear cut

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Ambiorix33 t1_j264met wrote

Replying to Toby_Forrester (#1,159,324)

i mean thats the whole point of the book, he was talking about a desert planet with a rare resource that all the major powers wanted to control but whos extraction directly has a negative effect on the environment (not terraforming because it would ruin the spice harvests).

The analogy for the middle east's oil couldnt be more clear cut

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RegulusRemains t1_j266mav wrote

Replying to Bretty_boy (#1,160,954)

This is from frank Herbert. Not exactly spice, but chaom controls spice too.

"All of this encapsulates the stuff of high drama, of entertainment-and I'm in the entertainment business first. It's all right to include a pot of message, but that's not the key ingredient of wide readership. Yes, there are analogs in Dune of today's events-corruption and bribery in the highest places, whole police forces lost to organized crime, regulatory agencies taken over by the people they are supposed to regulate. The scarce water of Dune is an exact analog of oil scarcity. CHOAM is OPEC."

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DizzyScorp t1_j26e6xu wrote

Bruh worm signs being bolts of lightning, the 1-2min acid trip sequence for the FTL travel.

Oh yeah it’s definitely space cocaine

1

NexusSix29 t1_j26ir6z wrote

Replying to Den-42 (#1,163,826)

Technically correct, yes. But without the spice, the Navigators wouldn’t be able to plot the jump, so you’d just be shooting blindly into space. I suppose I should have said the LSD allows you to see through time and space and make impossible mathematical calculations that mean you can safely fold time and space but that seemed like so many more words.

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SergeantChic t1_j26j1rz wrote

I'm pretty sure some normal cocaine was involved in the making of that movie.

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Den-42 t1_j26ke1f wrote

Replying to NexusSix29 (#1,164,155)

Yeah it's a long explanation, but in my opinion the first one is misleading. Cause the spice doesn't give you super powers it changes your body making you smarter to the point where you can see patterns you normally wouldn't and predict the future. That's why i think saying it is a drug describes effectively what it is

1

RegulusRemains t1_j26o5gk wrote

Replying to bigwebs (#1,164,850)

I think he was talking about the idea when he was writing the book. In the end spice was the thing that was controlled and caused the other entities to fight, scheme, and bribe over.

Edit. It might also be that if the water was unleashed upon dune the spice would end? I've barely read past the original novel so maybe something deeper lol

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Infectedd t1_j26vqkn wrote

Replying to Ambiorix33 (#1,161,258)

I think ultimately Spice is just an analogy for power, in physical form. The Spice always directly equates to power through all the books, but it becomes more explicitly clear in the later ones.

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Ambiorix33 t1_j26ybdo wrote

Replying to dlacono (#1,166,757)

No super power went to Afghanistan with the main factor being opium though, but what DID happen was multiple super powers invading the middle east for oil, see The Great Loot

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Spadeninja t1_j27028h wrote

You quite obviously haven’t read the book or watched the movie lmao

Because that’s not really what spice is at all

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QuickSpore t1_j270s8z wrote

Replying to randymysteries (#1,151,753)

Kind of. It’s sand trout (the larval form of the worms) poop mixed with a unique fungus found only on Dune mixed with water. As the fungus grows in the wet poop it transforms it into a “pre-spice mass,” and off-gasses carbon dioxide. When pressure in the mass reaches a critical point, it explodes, blowing the pre-spice to the surface and chemically transforming it. It then bakes in the sun and heat finally finishing turning into spice melange.

It’s worm poop like whiskey is rye. It’s only after pressure, water, yeast, time, and heat that rye is transformed into whiskey. It’s only after pressure, water, fungus, time, and baking that turns sand trout poop into spice melange.

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Vultures305 t1_j2712mu wrote

Just here to say I love any discussion revolving around Dune :)

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guedoankan t1_j271we9 wrote

How has no one mentioned mushrooms yet? Am I missing something? Frank Herbert loved mushrooms.

1

Tanagrabelle t1_j2724iu wrote

Replying to bigwebs (#1,164,724)

Heck, without the spice they might have to... build computers. You'd think they'd know that you can bleeping have computers without making AI. Especially the BG, who have memories that go way back.

3

QuickSpore t1_j272sa5 wrote

Replying to RegulusRemains (#1,162,022)

Probably not the inspiration though.

Dune was first published in 1965. Back then Saddam was a minor revolutionary figure in jail while the anti-Ba’athist Abdul Salam Arif was president and functional dictator of Iraq. Back then Saddam was a known, but rare, Arabic name.

Saddam Hussein wouldn’t rise to prominence until the 1968 coup where his cousin Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr became president and Saddam became vice President.

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baxterrocky t1_j2736o2 wrote

Star Wars makes a lot more sense of the force is referred to as Space Cocaine

1

bigwebs t1_j274y3t wrote

Replying to [deleted] (#1,168,585)

Yeah I meant the details about how the guild finds, recruits, and trains the navigators. And how the ships are designed and the details around how the navigators “live”.

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Alfred-Fallon-Borden t1_j27ol8y wrote

I mean it’s literally described as space cocaine that is also essential for space travel

1

Rough_Dan t1_j27svlv wrote

Replying to Ambiorix33 (#1,161,229)

Frank Herbert himself said that the point of the book was to warn against placing trust in charismatic leaders and dogma. The book is about ideologies and the struggle for meaning, it has a tiny bit about some resource and some middle eastern influence but that's far from being it's main point.

3

Tanagrabelle t1_j27ymtn wrote

Replying to Rough_Dan (#1,173,553)

Ah, that's right! Leto II got away with quite a lot, didn't he, with his thought-dictation. And they really trapped themselves with that overabundance of restrictions. Or rather, they trapped everyone else.

2

Rough_Dan t1_j27ztqt wrote

Replying to RegulusRemains (#1,154,058)

The oil analogy is important but it's not what the whole thing is about:

I wrote the Dune series because I had this idea that charismatic leaders ought to come with a warning label on their forehead: "May be dangerous to your health." One of the most dangerous presidents we had in this century was John Kennedy because people said "Yes Sir Mr. Charismatic Leader what do we do next?" and we wound up in Vietnam. And I think probably the most valuable president of this century was Richard Nixon. Because he taught us to distrust government and he did it by example. -frank Herbert

It's a warning about putting faith in charismatic leaders and personal dogmas, the oil/spice analogy is good and important but it's not the main point of the series.

2

SmokingHotHotties t1_j283l98 wrote

Not really:

Effects: totally different. We're never told of characters taking spice and manically talking/full of energy like with cocaine. It seems more akin to a hallucinogenic than cocaine and seems to relax people (not to mention see through space/time).

Form: seems to be used in a fairly natural plant form rather than produced from some highly industrial process. Sounds more like marajuana to me.

Smell: constant references to the pungent smell of spice. Seems more similar to an actual spice or maybe marajuana.

1

Dusty170 t1_j285tbh wrote

Replying to the_man_in_the_box (#1,153,417)

That sounds like the drug Luciferium from Rimworld, Its like a pill of millions of nanites that can improve everything about you, and heal 'unhealable' injuries and debilitations, but requires regular doses to refresh the nanites or you go berserk and die, real nice.

3

crazynfo t1_j295mtp wrote

In the 1984 film "Dune," based on the novel of the same name by Frank Herbert, the story is set in a distant future where the most valuable substance in the universe is "space cocaine," a powerful and highly addictive drug. The Atreides family, led by the Duke, are the kingpins of the space cocaine trade, controlling the production and distribution of the drug on the desert planet Arrakis.

However, their reign as drug lords is threatened when a rival noble family betrays and kills the Duke, forcing his son Paul Atreides to flee into the harsh desert wilderness. As Paul becomes more involved with the native rebels fighting against the tyrannical empire that controls the supply of space cocaine, he discovers that he has innate abilities that make him a powerful leader and a potential savior for the oppressed people of Arrakis.

Despite the dangers of space cocaine, the Atreides family and the empire are willing to do anything to maintain their control of the drug trade and their power and wealth. As Paul grows in power and influence, he must confront the many enemies that threaten his life and the future of the planet, including the scheming noble families, the ruthless empire, and the terrifying sandworms that roam the desert.

Ultimately, Paul must embrace his destiny and lead the rebels in a final, epic battle to free Arrakis from the clutches of the oppressive empire and take control of the valuable space cocaine trade. The film explores the themes of addiction, power, and corruption, and shows the destructive consequences of a society built around the pursuit of a highly addictive drug.

1