Item from Dune by Frank Herbert
The most valuable substance in the universe — a cinnamon-colored spice that extends life, expands consciousness, enables space travel, and makes Arrakis the most fought-over planet in existence.
Spice melange is the axis on which the Imperium turns. The Spacing Guild Navigators require it to fold space — without melange, interstellar travel stops and civilization fragments into isolated systems within a generation. The Bene Gesserit use it to unlock ancestral memories and fuel their prescient abilities. The wealthy use it to extend their lifespans by centuries. The addicted — which includes everyone who uses it regularly — die in agony if deprived. The spice is produced by the sandworm lifecycle on Arrakis and nowhere else. Sandtrout encapsulate water underground; in the oxygen-poor environment, pre-spice mass forms; geological pressure eventually forces this mass to the surface in a spice blow. The process cannot be replicated artificially (though the Tleilaxu eventually synthesize a substitute). This gives Arrakis, and whoever controls it, a chokehold on human civilization. Every scene on Arrakis carries trace spice. It's in the air, the food, the water. Long-term exposure is unavoidable and irreversible. The addiction is the planet's final trap — come to Arrakis for any length of time and you can never truly leave.
A fine powder or crystalline granule, ranging from amber to deep cinnamon-brown in color. In concentrated form it glows faintly. The smell is distinctive and penetrating — warm cinnamon underlaid with something organic and alien. In its raw form (a spice blow), it erupts from the desert floor as a geyser of orange-brown dust that stains everything it touches. The eyes of long-term users develop a deep blue coloration — blue-within-blue, with no visible whites — called the Eyes of Ibad.
Also known as: melange, the spice, the Water of Life precursor