MovieChat Forums > Dune (2000) Discussion > Can someone explain the purpose of spice...

Can someone explain the purpose of spice to me?

posted 16 years ago by PazuzuTheLeper
25 replies | jump to latest

Not how it's made, but what exactly it is used for. After watching the films I think I understand that it helps the Benny-Jezzerit (sp?) Witches see the future. I also think I understand that it is used by the Space Guild navigators to help fold space and thus transport commerce between the great houses of the lansrod (sp?).

But if spice can only be found on Arrakis, how did they find it to begin with? I mean isn't there another way of space travel? If so it can't be too hindering if it connected houses before they even discovered spice. Or did space travel develop on Arrakkis?

I concede that using spice is a much more efficient way of doing things, but what's an extra week on space travel?

[–] tylerisfat 15 years ago

space travel was invented long, long, long before computers were outlawed, and thus before spice was necessary.

[–] NoahBody 15 years ago

Who said it's only an extra week?

[–] noplay 14 years ago

Computers navigated spaceships before the spice (*spoiler* and in later novels). It's only because computers are banned that the spice is needed for space travel.

[–] jimmyzimms 13 years ago

>Computers navigated spaceships before the spice (*spoiler* and in later novels). It's only because computers are banned that the spice is needed for space travel.

Demonstrably not if you go back and re-read them. In the books the humans lose an avg of 1 out of every 10 or so war ships on each jump so they know it is very very dangerous but allows them unparalleled mobility against the thinking machines and therefore is utilized. The people that become the Guild (norma and her crew) find advanced cognative functions that are possible in the human mind that can be used to provide the ability to navigate the various potential outcomes in the flow of time (think the Many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics). Navigators use the spice to help see the future threads of time and select one in which the ship will make it to the destination safely.

There's nothing about lack of computers that causes it to be needed. In fact it's not COMPUTERS that are banned but AI ("Though shall not make a machine in the image of man's mind"). However the selective breeding of humanity has led to humans that far exceed any machine ability and frankly AI is not needed anymore. It is described in Dune that the Baron himself has far more cognative abilities than the ancient thinking machines.

[–] 13 years ago

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[–] Cassandra_Speaker 12 years ago

The spice doesn't give them their ability to travel interstellar distances, the ships themselves have FTL drives that do that. The thing is, they needed advanced computers to do the navigating for the ships or they'd crash into something or miss their destination. It's still all done with machinery, but they no longer are allowed to use advanced navigation computers.

The spice augmented the human Navigators' minds to the point they could do the navigating themselves and also see the future. The reason they never took over Arrakis for themselves was because (I think) it created a future so out of control they couldn't "see" anything in it, their power of future sight was lost to them.

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=bL6IwVKuAoQ

[–] 9 years ago

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[–] calmeilles 8 years ago

But if spice can only be found on Arrakis, how did they find it to begin with?

There are two possibilities that you might guess at from the books but which are not elucidated in either the film or the miniseries.

First there was a time when "thinking machines", computers, were allowed. It's conceivable that they enabled space exploration.

Second — and in my view more likely — someone says of the Bene Gesserit that there were other poisons they could use for their tricks but the spice was better, and once they used the spice no other would work. One can imagine the same being true of the Spacing Guild too.

But it remains a potential anomaly in the books. Another is the time scale. It is implied that knowledge of the Spice and even the presence of Fremen on Arakis is rather recent, at least for an empire more than 10,000 years old. But this does not fit well with the all pervasive use of the spice for so many things and the way it is ubiquitous in the economy of that empire.