Spacing Guild
The Spacing Guild is an organization in Frank Herbert's science fiction Dune universe that possesses a monopoly on interstellar travel and banking. Guild Navigators use the drug melange to achieve limited prescience, a form of precognition that allows them to successfully navigate "folded space" and safely guide enormous starships called heighliners across interstellar space instantaneously.
The power of the Guild is balanced against that of the Padishah Emperor as well as of the assembled noble Houses of the Landsraad. Essentially apolitical, the Guild is primarily concerned with the flow of commerce and preservation of the economy that supports them. Although their ability to dictate the terms of and fees for all transport gives them influence in the political arena, they do not pursue political goals beyond their economic ones.
Overview
In the Dune series, enormous starships called heighliners employ a scientific phenomenon known as the Holtzman effect to "fold space" and thereby travel great distances across the universe instantaneously. Navigators are able to use a limited form of prescience to safely navigate interstellar space. Navigators are humans who mutated through the consumption of and exposure to massive amounts of the drug melange, also known as the spice. Control of these Navigators gives the Spacing Guild its monopoly on interstellar travel and banking, making the organization a balance of power against the Padishah Emperor and the assembled noble Houses of the Landsraad. In the 1965 novel Dune, Paul Atreides seizes control of the desert planet Arrakis, only known source of the spice, turning the Guild's reliance on the spice into leverage over them. Paul demands that Emperor Shaddam IV relinquish the Imperial throne to him, but looks to the Spacing Guild agents present for the answer. Paul's ability to threaten, or destroy, the flow of spice has rendered Shaddam powerless, and the Guild forces him to capitulate.Navigators
To enable their prescience, Guild Navigators not only consume large quantities of the spice, but are also continuously immersed in highly concentrated amounts of orange spice gas. This level of extreme and extended exposure causes their bodies to atrophy and mutate over time, their heads and extremities elongating, and causing them to become vaguely aquatic in appearance. The first external sign of melange-induced metabolic change is visible in the eyes, as the drug tints the sclera and iris to a dark shade of blue, called "blue-in-blue" or "the Eyes of Ibad," which is "a total blue so dark as to be almost black." This is a common side effect in all spice addicts.In Dune, Duke Leto Atreides notes that the Guild is "as jealous of its privacy as it is of its monopoly," and that not even their own agents ever see Navigators. Leto's son Paul wonders if they are mutated to the point of no longer appearing human. At the end of the novel, two self-identified Guild Navigators accompanying Emperor Shaddam IV are described as "fat", but not otherwise non-human. The Guild Navigator Edric, introduced in the first chapter of Dune Messiah, is called a "humanoid fish," and described in his tank of spice gas as "an elongated figure, vaguely humanoid with finned feet and hugely fanned membranous hands—a fish in a strange sea." The Navigators' "elongated and repositioned limbs and organs" are noted in Heretics of Dune. In 1985's Chapterhouse: Dune, Lucilla notes that "Navigators were forever bathed in the orange gas of melange, their features often fogged by the vapors," that they possess a "tiny v of a mouth" and "ugly flap of nose" and that "mouth and nose appeared small on a Navigator's gigantic face with its pulsing temples." She also notes that their mutated voices require translation devices, describing "the singsong ululations of the Navigator's voice with its simultaneous mechtranslation into impersonal Galach."
In an unused passage by Frank Herbert from Dune Messiah published in The Road to Dune, Edric is described as surviving without spice gas once a hole is opened in his tank, though his prescient abilities are practically useless in this state.
Plotlines
Original series
''Dune''
In Dune, the Spacing Guild enjoys a profitable monopoly on interstellar travel and commerce. Though powerful, the Spacing Guild has never actively tried to openly seize power over all of humanity and rule directly, instead sharing power with the Emperor and the Great Houses, and influencing events from the shadows. Paul Atreides concludes that the Guild does this out of a belief that any political empire is finite, ending sooner or later. The only way to guarantee their continual existence is to be a "parasite", propping up one imperial dynasty until it collapses, then simply switching to support the next one. At the end of the novel, Paul deposes Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV by seizing control of Arrakis, the only source of the all-important drug melange. Paul has learned the extent of the Guild's dependence on spice, and that without it they are "blind" and unable to navigate interstellar travel. The Guild is forced to side with Paul, threatening to strand the Emperor and his troops on Arrakis if he does not relinquish the throne.In 'Appendix A' of Dune, Herbert wrote that the Guild, along with the Bene Gesserit order, had been responsible for the standardization of religion in the universe by promoting the adoption of the Orange Catholic Bible and offering protection to the dissenting theologians who created this book. Nonetheless, in the same appendix, Herbert held that the Guild members themselves were atheists, and only promoted this move to promote a stable societal order from which they could profit. Houses of the Imperium may contract with the Guild to be removed "to a place of safety outside the System". Some Houses in danger of ruin or defeat have "become renegade Houses, taking family atomics and shields and fleeing beyond the Imperium". The Guild controls a "sanctuary planet" known as Tupile, intended for such "defeated Houses of the Imperium... Location known only to the Guild and maintained inviolate under the Guild Peace".
''Dune Messiah''
In Dune Messiah, the Navigator Edric engages in a conspiracy to dethrone Emperor Paul Atreides, joined by the Tleilaxu Face Dancer Scytale, the Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, and Paul's embittered consort, Princess Irulan of House Corrino. With their endless need for melange, the Spacing Guild has a vested interest in breaking Paul's stranglehold over the spice supply. Edric's involvement also protects the conspirators from discovery, as his prescience hides the activities of himself and those around him from other prescients, like Paul. The plot ultimately fails, and Edric and Mohiam are executed by Fremen naib Stilgar on orders from Paul's sister Alia Atreides.In Chapterhouse Dune, a "very powerful" Navigator is described as "one of the Edrics", suggesting a possible breeding plan or use of gholas.
''God Emperor of Dune''
In God Emperor of Dune, God Emperor Leto II has secured complete control over of the scarce melange reserves through hydraulic despotism, making the Guild completely dependent on him. He also notes in the novel that though history has attributed the design of the first Guild ship to Aurelius Venport, it was actually Venport's mistress Norma Cenva who designed it.''Heretics of Dune'' and ''Chapterhouse: Dune''
The fifth and sixth novels of the series, Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse: Dune, are set 5,000 years after the reign of Paul Atreides, a period that includes 3,500 years of Leto II's reign and 1,500 years following his death. The warlike Honored Matres have seized control of , the old Spacing Guild complex above Gammu. The technocrats of Ix develop technology that the Ixians and the Administrative faction of the Spacing Guild refer to as "compilers". These compilers perform calculations very similar to computers, nearly violating the prohibitions against "thinking machines" that were imposed following the Butlerian Jihad several millennia before. These compilers eliminate the need for the Navigators, and the strategic disadvantage that this aspect of melange dependency has become, because the Navigators' abilities are slowly being compromised by the severe reductions in the availability of spice resulting from the destruction of Dune and the sandworms on that planet, and the strict control by the Bene Gesserit, who maintain a monopoly over the largest stockpiles of melange. The prescient rule of Leto II that lasted 3,500 years has shown the universe the perils of prescience, namely that the entire universe can be locked into the vision of a single entity, giving that entity absolute power. The Guild, facing obsolescence and suspicion, couples itself with Ix in decline; Navigators continue to exist, but their importance in the universe is severely diminished. As Paul Atreides notes in Dune, it was the Spacing Guild's obsession with the "safe path" that led them "ever into stagnation", and brought on their eventual obsolescence.Sequels
After publishing six Dune prequel novels, Frank Herbert's son Brian Herbert and author Kevin J. Anderson released two sequel novels, Hunters of Dune and Sandworms of Dune, which complete the original series and wrap up storylines that began with Frank Herbert's Heretics of Dune. The works were based on a 30-page outline by Frank Herbert for a sequel to Chapterhouse Dune he dubbed Dune 7.In Hunters of Dune, the Navigator Edrik fears his kind's obsolescence when the Spacing Guild itself begins funding the development of superior Ixian navigation technology that would not require Navigators. Seeking an alternative source of spice to break the Bene Gesserit monopoly, Edrik meets with Uxtal, the last of the Lost Tleilaxu, hoping that he can rediscover the method of producing melange in axlotl tanks. However, Uxtal is in the forced service of the Matre Superior Hellica, and her price for his expertise is Edrik's help transporting a certain cargo. He agrees, delivering by heighliner the Obliterators that destroy the planet Richese, where the Bene Gesserit are mass-producing weapons and armed battleships. Uxtal is ultimately unsuccessful, but the ghola he creates of deceased Tleilaxu Master Waff later offers Edrik something better in exchange for sanctuary—the genetic knowledge for the Guild to create their own, optimized sandworms to produce melange.
In Sandworms of Dune, the sequel to Hunters and finale of the original Dune series, the Spacing Guild has begun replacing its Navigators with the more cost-effective Ixian navigation devices and cutting off the Navigators' supply of melange. More and more Navigators are dying from withdrawal of the spice—including Ardrae, "one of the oldest remaining Navigators"—and many defect and disappear into space rather than allow the devices on their ships. All are unaware that Face Dancer infiltrators are behind the plan, plotting their own takeover of the universe. Waff works in secret, hidden on Edrik's own heighliner, on genetically engineering his "advanced" sandworms. He accomplishes this by altering the DNA of the sandtrout stage and creating an aquatic form of the worms, which are then released into the oceans of Buzzell. Adapting to their new environment, these "seaworms" quickly flourish, eventually producing a highly concentrated form of spice, dubbed "ultraspice." Edrik and the ultraspice are later intercepted by Face Dancer leader Khrone, who seizes the valuable optimized melange. He incapacitates Edrik by damaging his tank and releasing its spice gas, soon destroying the entire heighliner to rid himself of the Navigator altogether.