Melange (fictional drug)
| Melange | |
|---|---|
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| Plot element from the Dune franchise | |
| First appearance | Dune (1965) |
| Created by | Frank Herbert |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| In-story information | |
| Type | Drug |
| Function | Ingested to lengthen lifespan, improve health, and heighten awareness |
| Specific traits and abilities | Heavy powder which smells like cinnamon and glows blue; highly addictive, and longterm users acquire blue-within-blue colored eyes |
| Affiliation | |
Melange (/meɪˈlɑːndʒ/ or /meɪˈlɑːnʒ/), often referred to as simply "the spice", is the name of the fictional drug central to the Dune series of science fiction novels by Frank Herbert, and derivative works.
In the series, the most essential and valuable commodity in the universe is melange, a drug that gives the user a longer life span, greater vitality, and heightened awareness; it can also unlock prescience in some humans, depending upon the dosage and the consumer's physiology. This prescience-enhancing property makes safe and accurate interstellar travel possible. Melange comes with a steep price, however: it is addictive, and withdrawal is fatal.
Carol Hart analyzes the concept in the essay "Melange" in The Science of Dune (2008). According to Paul Stamets, Herbert's creation of the drug was related in part to his own personal experiences with psilocybin mushrooms.
Herbert is vague in describing the appearance of the spice. He hints at its color in Dune Messiah (1969) when he notes that Guild Navigator Edric "swam in a container of orange gas [...] His tank's vents emitted a pale orange cloud rich with the smell of the geriatric spice, melange." Later in Heretics of Dune (1984), a discovered hoard of melange appears as "mounds of dark reddish brown". Herbert also indicates fluorescence in God Emperor of Dune (1981) when the character Moneo notes: "Great bins of melange lay all around in a gigantic room cut from native rock and illuminated by glowglobes [...] The spice had glowed radiant blue in the dim silver light. And the smell—bitter cinnamon, unmistakable." Herbert writes repeatedly, starting in Dune (1965), that melange possesses the odor of cinnamon.
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