The Complete History of Spice | All Six Dune Novels
The Understory
106,742 views
Spice is the load-bearing element of the entire Dune series. Take it out and almost nothing that happens can happen. So this is the whole thing, in the order the books reveal it: where melange comes from, what it does to a body, who controlled it, and how every source of it was eventually destroyed.
Most of this comes from Frank Herbert's six original novels. Three short sections draw on the Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson books, and I flag each one clearly at the start and the end so you can take it or leave it. The origin story, the first Navigator, and the seaworms are the only places I step outside Herbert.
Chapters
00:00 Why spice is the whole story
00:52 What spice costs
02:27 The Eyes of Ibad
03:12 The Truthsayer drug and the Kwisatz Haderach
04:53 Expanded universe: where spice came from
06:33 A poison so subtle
07:39 Jessica's addiction and the two-gram threshold
08:11 Melange, pre-spice mass, and the Water of Life
09:39 The sandworm cycle
11:14 The Reverend Mother change
12:30 He who can destroy a thing
13:07 Dune Messiah and the Guild Navigator
14:41 Expanded universe: the first Navigator
16:08 Arrakis was a wet planet
16:58 What spice did to Jessica's children
17:41 Leto II and the sandtrout
18:36 God Emperor: one man, one hoard
21:51 The Tleilaxu break the monopoly
22:25 Why Rakis had to burn
23:23 Chapterhouse: no source left
25:10 Building a desert on purpose
26:13 Expanded universe: ultraspice
27:07 The full cycle, start to finish
20 Comments
No shade to Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson but their books aren't Dune. They're fanfics. I have no problem with fanfiction (I used to write it myself), but the only time information or events in a fanfic can be taken as canon is if the author of the original work comes out and says they are canon. And Frank Herbert isn't around to do that for the extended universe Dune stories any more than J.R.R. Tolkien is for Lord of the Rings stories.
"The Bene Gesserit would not exist without it."
"Nor the Guild."
"But there would have been no Tyrant, no Muad'dib. The spice gives with one hand and takes with all of its others."
The Complete History of Spice | All Six Dune Novels
The Understory
106,742 views
Spice is the load-bearing element of the entire Dune series. Take it out and almost nothing that happens can happen. So this is the whole thing, in the order the books reveal it: where melange comes from, what it does to a body, who controlled it, and how every source of it was eventually destroyed.
Most of this comes from Frank Herbert's six original novels. Three short sections draw on the Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson books, and I flag each one clearly at the start and the end so you can take it or leave it. The origin story, the first Navigator, and the seaworms are the only places I step outside Herbert.
Chapters
00:00 Why spice is the whole story
00:52 What spice costs
02:27 The Eyes of Ibad
03:12 The Truthsayer drug and the Kwisatz Haderach
04:53 Expanded universe: where spice came from
06:33 A poison so subtle
07:39 Jessica's addiction and the two-gram threshold
08:11 Melange, pre-spice mass, and the Water of Life
09:39 The sandworm cycle
11:14 The Reverend Mother change
12:30 He who can destroy a thing
13:07 Dune Messiah and the Guild Navigator
14:41 Expanded universe: the first Navigator
16:08 Arrakis was a wet planet
16:58 What spice did to Jessica's children
17:41 Leto II and the sandtrout
18:36 God Emperor: one man, one hoard
21:51 The Tleilaxu break the monopoly
22:25 Why Rakis had to burn
23:23 Chapterhouse: no source left
25:10 Building a desert on purpose
26:13 Expanded universe: ultraspice
27:07 The full cycle, start to finish