Sandworm (Dune)
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The sandworm is a fictional form of desert-dwelling creature from the Dune universe created by Frank Herbert. They first appear in the 1965 novel Dune, considered to be among the classics in the science fiction genre,[1] and are iconic of the Dune series.
In the series, the sandworms — called Shai-Hulud among the Fremen of the desert planet Arrakis (Dune) — are worshiped as manifestations of "the earth deity of Fremen hearth superstitions." The Fremen believe that the actions of the sandworms are the direct actions of God, and so the worms have been given numerous titles such as the "Great Maker" and the "Worm who is God." Virtually indestructible and with indefinite lifespans of potentially thousands of years, the giant sandworms are also referred to as the "Old Man of the Desert", "Old Father Eternity" and "Grandfather of the Desert".[2]
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[edit] Sandworm physiology
Sandworms are animals similar in appearance to collossal terrestrial annelids. They are cylindrical creatures with no significant appendages, equipped with a fearsome array of crystalline teeth, used primarily for rasping rocks and sand — and more than capable of eating anything imaginable. During his first closeup encounter with a sandworm in Dune, Paul Atreides notes, "Its mouth was some eighty meters in diameter ... crystal teeth with the curved shape of crysknives glinting around the rim . . . the bellows breath of cinnamon, subtle aldehydes ... acids ..."[3]
Sandworms grow to hundreds of meters in length, with specimens observed over 400 meters long [2][4] and 40 meters in diameter, although Paul becomes a sandrider by summoning a worm that "appeared to be" around half a league (2,778 meters) or more in length,[5], although this is likely a poetic rather than accurate description, and there is no mention anywhere in any of the other books of sandworms reaching these proportions. These gigantic worms burrow deep in the ground and travel swiftly; "most of the sand on Arrakis is credited to sandworm action." [2]
Sandworms are described as "incredibly tough" by Liet-Kynes, who further notes that "high voltage electrical shock applied separately to each ring segment" is the only known way to kill and preserve them; atomics are the only explosive powerful enough to kill an entire worm, with conventional explosives being unfeasible as "each ring segment has a life of its own." [6] Water is poisonous to the worms,[2] but is in too short supply on Arrakis to be of use against all but the smallest of them.
The non-canon Dune Encyclopedia invents a scientific name for the sandworm: Geonemotodium arraknis (also Shaihuludata gigantica).
[edit] Sandworm life cycle
Herbert notes in Dune that microscopic creatures called sand plankton feed upon traces of melange scattered by sandworms on the Arrakeen sands. [7] The sand plankton are food for the giant sandworms, but also grow and burrow to become what the Fremen call Little Makers, "the half-plant-half-animal deep-sand vector of the Arrakis sandworm."[8]
Their leathery remains previously having "been ascribed to a fictional "sandtrout" in Fremen folk stories," Imperial Planetologist Pardot Kynes had discovered the Little Makers during his ecological investigations of the planet. [7] Kynes determines that these "sandtrout" block off water "into fertile pockets within the porous lower strata below the 280° (absolute) line," [7] and Alia Atreides notes in Children of Dune that the "sandtrout, when linked edge to edge against the planet's bedrock, formed living cisterns."[9] The Fremen themselves protect their water supplies with "predator fish" who attack invading sandtrout.[9] Sandtrout can be lured by small traces of water, and Fremen children catch and play with them; smoothing one over the hand forms a "living glove" until the creature is repelled by something in the "blood's water" and falls off.[9]
| “ | The sandtrout ... was introduced here from some other place. This was a wet planet then. They proliferated beyond the capability of existing ecosystems to deal with them. Sandtrout encysted the available free water, made this a desert planet ... and they did it to survive. In a planet sufficiently dry, they could move to their sandworm phase." [9] | ” |
The sandtrout are described as "flat and leathery" in Children of Dune, with Leto Atreides II noting that they are "roughly diamond-shaped" with "no head, no extremities, no eyes" and "coarse interlacings of extruded cilia."[9] They can find water unerringly, and squeezing the sandtrout yields a "sweet green syrup."[9] When water is flooded into the sandtrout's excretions, a pre-spice mass is formed; at this "stage of fungusoid wild growth," gases are produced which result in "a characteristic 'blow,' exchanging the material from deep underground for the matter on the surface above it." [10] After exposure to sun and air, this mass becomes melange.[10]
Kynes' "water stealers" die "by the millions in each spice blow," and may be killed by even a "five-degree change in temperature."[7] He notes that "the few survivors entered a semidormant cyst-hibernation to emerge in six years as small (about three meters long) sandworms."[7] A small number of these then emerge into maturity as giant sandworms, to whom water is poisonous.[2][7] A "stunted worm" is a "primitive form ... that reaches a length of only about nine meters." Their drowning by the Fremen makes them expel the awareness-spectrum narcotic known as the Water of Life.[7]
While sandworms are capable of eating humans, the latter do contain a level of water beyond the preferred tolerances of the worms. They routinely devour melange-harvesting equipment — mistaking the mechanical rhythm for prey — but they only seem to derive actual nutrition from sand plankton, sandtrout and smaller sandworms.
[edit] Leto II's transformation
In Children of Dune, Leto II's prescient visions illuminate his Golden Path, his plan for the continued survival of mankind and the sandworms. After consuming massive amounts of spice, he allows many sandtrout to cover his body, the concentration of spice in his blood fooling the creatures:
| “ | The sandtrout squirmed on his hand, elongating, stretching ... becoming thin, covering more and more of his hand. No sandtrout had ever before encountered a hand such as this one, every cell supersaturated with spice ... Delicately Leto adjusted his enzyme balance ... The knowledge from those uncounted lifetimes which blended themselves within him provided the certainty through which he chose the precise adjustments, staving off the death from an overdose which would engulf him if he relaxed his watchfulness for only a heartbeat. And at the same time he blended himself with the sandtrout, feeding on it, feeding it, learning it ... He located another, placed it over the first one ... Their cilia locked and they became a single membrane which enclosed him to the elbow ... This was no longer sandtrout; it was tougher, stronger. And it would grow stronger and stronger ... With a terrible singleness of concentration he achieved the union of his new skin with his body, preventing rejection ... They were all over his body now. He could feel the pulse of his blood against the living membrane ... My skin is not my own.[9] | ” |
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— Children of Dune
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This layer gives Leto tremendous strength, speed and protection from mature sandworms, who mistake his sandtrout-covered body for a lethal mass of water. [9] He calls it a "living, self-repairing stillsuit of a sandtrout membrane," and soon notes that he is "no longer human." [9]
Gradually over the next 3,500 years, Leto not only survives but is transformed into a hybrid of human and giant sandworm.[11] By this time he has exterminated all other sandworms, and his own transformation has modified his component sandtrout.[11] When he allows himself to be assassinated, the sandtrout release themselves to begin the sandworm life cycle anew; subsequent offspring are tougher and more adaptable than their predecessors, allowing them to ultimately be more easily settled on other worlds and thus ensuring the survival of the sandworm species.[11]
[edit] Sandworms and the spice
In Dune, the desert of Arrakis is the only known source of the spice melange, the most essential and valuable commodity in the universe. Melange is a geriatric drug that gives the user a longer lifespan, greater vitality, and heightened awareness; it can also unlock prescience in some subjects, depending upon the dosage and the consumer's physiology. This prescience-enhancing property makes interstellar travel possible. Melange comes with a steep price however: it is addictive,[12] and withdrawal is a fatal process.
A byproduct of the sandworm life cycle, sandtrout excretions exposed to water become a pre-spice mass, which is then brought to the surface by a buildup of gases and develops into melange through exposure to sun and air.[10] Liet-Kynes describes such a "spice blow" in Dune:
Then he heard the sand rumbling. Every Fremen knew the sound, could distinguish it immediately from the noises of worms or other desert life. Somewhere beneath him, the pre-spice mass had accumulated enough water and organic matter from the little makers, had reached the critical stage of wild growth. A gigantic bubble of carbon dioxide was forming deep in the sand, heaving upward in an enormous "blow" with a dust whirlpool at its center. It would exchange what had been formed deep in the sand for whatever lay on the surface.[3]
[edit] Spice mining
Collecting the melange is hazardous in the extreme, since rhythmic activity on the desert surface of Arrakis attracts the territorial worms, which are capable of swallowing even the largest mining equipment whole. Harvesting is carried out by a gigantic machine called a Harvester, which is carried to and from a spice blow by an enlarged version of the ornithopter known as a Carry-All. The Harvester on the ground has three scouting ornithopters patrolling around it watching for wormsign — the motions of sand indicating that a worm is coming. Melange is collected from the open sand until a worm is close, at which time the Carry-All lifts the Harvester to safety. The Fremen, who base their entire industry around the sale of spice and the manufacture of materials out of spice, have learned to co-exist with the sandworms in the desert and harvest the spice manually for their own use and for smuggling off-planet.
Later in the series, an artificial method of producing the spice is discovered by the Bene Tleilax, who develop in secret the technology to produce melange in axlotl tanks. Still, the technology is not fully successful in pushing natural melange out of the marketplace.
[edit] Spice cycle
Due to the value of melange, attempts have been made to transplant production onto other planets. However, placing either adult sandworms (often smuggled with funds going to the Fremen) or sandtrout into existing deserts always met with failure. The large salt flats of Arrakis indicate that it was not always a desert, but once had oceans. As spice production relies on the existence of a complete sandworm cycle, transplanting adult worms prevents the spice cycle from beginning anew with sandtrout, and transplanting sandtrout alone into existing desert denies them the necessary water to begin the cycle. Thus, placing sandtrout on a water-rich planet would allow them to start the complete spice cycle, at the cost of turning the planet into a desert, another Dune.
In Heretics of Dune, the Honored Matres destroy Arrakis and the Tleilaxu in part to eliminate spice production and thus irrevocably damage the Old Empire. However, they are thwarted by the Bene Gesserit, who escape with a single sandworm. Mimicking the devolvement of the God Emperor Leto II, they submerge the worm in spice-rich water, causing it to separate into its component sandtrout. The Bene Gesserit soon use the sandtrout to terraform their own planet Chapterhouse into another Dune, and send countless others out into space to colonize other planets.
[edit] Fremen and the worms
Sandworms, due to their size and territorial nature, can be extremely dangerous even to Fremen. Sandworms are attracted to and maddened by the presence of Holtzman force fields used as personal defense shields. Due to this, these force fields have very limited utility to soldiers on Arrakis.
The Fremen managed to develop a unique relationship with the sandworms. For one, they learned to avoid most worm attacks by mimicking the motions of desert animals and moving with the natural sounds of the desert, rather than the rhythmic vibration patterns that attract worms. However, they also developed a device known as a thumper with the express purpose of generating a rhythmic vibration to attract a sandworm. This can be used either as a diversion, or to summon a worm for the Fremen to ride.
[edit] Riding the worm
The Fremen secretly mastered a way to ride sandworms for transportation across the open desert; Brian Herbert's prequels attribute the discovery to a Selim Wormrider. First a worm is summoned with a thumper, the worm-rider then runs alongside it and catches one of the ring-segments with special maker hooks. The hooks are used to pry up the front of the segment, exposing the soft inner-tissue to abrasive sand. To avoid irritation, the worm will rotate this to the top of its body, carrying the rider with it. The worm will then safely remain above the surface until the hooks are released. Other Fremen may then plant additional hooks for steering, or act as "beaters", hitting the worm's tail to make it increase speed. A worm can be ridden for several hundred miles and for about half of a day, at which point it will become exhausted and sit on the open desert until the hooks are released, when they will burrow back down to rest. The worm-riding ritual is used as a coming-of-age ritual among the Fremen. Worm-riding was then used by Paul-Muad'Dib for troop transport into the city of Arrakeen after using atomic weapons to blow a hole in the Shield Wall during the Battle of Arrakeen.
After the reign of Leto II sandworms became un-rideable, for reasons elaborated below. There was one remarkable exception, however; a young girl named Sheeana, an Atreides-descendant possessed a unique ability to control the worms and safely move around them.
[edit] Sandworm teeth
Sandworms possess remarkable teeth inside their maws. Fremen extract these teeth and use them as knives. This special type of knife is known as a crysknife. They are usually about as long as a standard kindjal. There are two types, fixed and unfixed. Unfixed knives are raw sandworm teeth used as weapons. They need to be stored in close proximity to a magnetic field produced by the human heart or they will become brittle within a short period of time, ultimately disintegrating. This is the source of one traditional Fremen battlecry, "May your blade chip and shatter!", stating that a Fremen always keeps his weapon close to hand, while many of their enemies are rarely prepared to fight and their weapons – or at least their skills in their use – are weak. Fixed crysknives are put through chemical processes to keep them permanently intact.
Fremen tradition dictates that once a crysknife is drawn, it must not be sheathed until it has drawn blood. The Fremen "legend," as described in the 2003 Children of Dune miniseries, is that the crysknife dissolves when its owner has died.
[edit] Paul-Muad'Dib, Leto II and the sandworms
Paul-Muad'Dib and Leto II had a unique experience with melange in their high tolerances and experiences of the spice agony. In Muad'Dib even a slight exposure to melange triggered limited prescience in him, but he built up an ever increasing resistance to it. When he went through the spice agony he was given complete prescience, a complete map of the future, as well as a complete awakening as the Kwisatz Haderach.
Leto II, wishing to avoid complete prescience avoided high concentrations of melange, but was eventually kidnapped and forced to consume large amounts of it and the spice essence by Fremen Rebels. He went through the same experience as Muad'Dib, but became so super-saturated with spice that he was able to interact with sandworms and sandtrout in a different way. So saturated with spice, he was able to coax sandtrout onto his body, where they, convinced it was water, encapsulated him and buried their cilia thus fusing them into one being. The sandtrout skin enhanced his body's strength, speed and stamina, and made sandworms wary of him, as the presence of sandtrout indicated he was a mass of water. However, with the increased strength he was able to summon worms using only his foot as a thumper and ride them using his hands as maker-hooks.
The effects were not all good, though; fused into the sandtrout skin, Leto's physical development ended as a pre-pubescent child, but the concentrations of spice allowed his sandtrout-body to develop. Over 3,500 years it gradually transformed itself into a worm-body, absorbing Leto into itself. It granted him near immortality, and a special role as a half-human, half-worm monster which he used to elevate himself to the role of the pharaonic God-Emperor of the universe. However, now possessing the sensitivities of the worm he could not eat, nor drink, nor have any contact to water without extreme physical pain, as well as occasionally being reflexively taken over by the worm-body in stressful situations and generating spice essence directly in his body. He retained the notable features of highly dextrous hands, but useless, undeveloped flipper-feet as well as a brain expanded into large neural-ganglia throughout the worm-body.
Ultimately, Leto was assassinated by a ghola of Duncan Idaho and Siona Atreides, an Atreides descendant, by being thrown into the Idaho River. Due to his high spice saturation his worm body decomposed into sandtrout, which immediately began to undo the terraforming of Dune. Each one, according to Leto, carries in it a tiny pearl of his consciousness, trapped forever in an unending prescient dream. With the increased amount of neural-ganglia and human-like adaptiveness the worms would become too irritable to ride, but would also be able to finally be transplanted to a variety of worlds across the universe. Over the next 1500 years Arrakis, now Rakis, would be returned to a desert and the worms would thrive once more.
However, Reverend Mother Darwi Odrade became aware that humanity was being limited by the prescient dream of Leto, that he was still controlling humanity through his worm revenants, and thus she welcomed the destruction of Rakis by the Honored Matres, as this act freed humanity, and the one remaining worm and its descendants were not enough to restore Leto's control--perhaps the ultimate intent of his Golden Path all along. The remaining worm she took back to Chapterhouse, submerged in a spice bath to generate sandtrout which then turned Chapterhouse, and later other planets, into new Dunes, with new worms and infinite potential for gathering spice.
[edit] In derivative works
Besides film and television adaptations, the Dune franchise has been adapted into a series of computer and video games in which sandworms play a part.
[edit] Emperor: Battle for Dune
Towards the end of the real-time strategy game Emperor: Battle for Dune, it is revealed that both the Tleilaxu and the Spacing Guild have been secretly experimenting with the sandworms of Arrakis in a remote research facility in the desert as the three great Houses of the Landsraad, the Atreides, Ordos and Harkonnen are busy waging the War of Assassins amongst each other. It appears that the Tleilaxu have discovered the link between the Spice Melange and the sandworms as mentioned above. They plot to seize the Golden Lion Throne by breeding a man-worm, known as the Emperor Worm, and then fusing it with the Water of Life, mercilessly taken from the Lady Elara — who was held prisoner by the Reverend Mother (in truth a Tleilaxu Face Dancer) since the beginning of the game — giving the Worm almost god-like powers.
All three Houses fight against the Guild in a race against time to destroy the Emperor Worm before it awakens, with a different ending for each House depicting their units destroying the Worm. One such ending reveals that, from the wreckage of the Emperor Worm's scaffold, red eyes are glowing in the dark, which perhaps suggests that the Worm survives. Should the player fail to defeat the Emperor Worm, then it becomes crowned as the new leader of the Empire of Man.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ SCI FI Channel Auction to Benefit Reading Is Fundamental. Retrieved on 2006-07-13. “"Since its debut in 1965, Frank Herbert’s Dune has sold over 12 million copies worldwide, making it the best-selling science fiction novel of all time ... Frank Herbert's Dune saga is one of the greatest 20th Century contributions to literature."”
- ^ a b c d e Herbert, Frank (1965). Dune.
- ^ a b Herbert, Frank (1965). Dune. ISBN 0-441-17271-7.
- ^ Herbert, Frank (1965). Dune. "Worms of more than four hundred meters in length have been recorded by reliable witnesses, and there's reason to believe even larger ones exist."
- ^ Herbert, Frank [1965] (1987). Dune. Ace Books, 391. ISBN 0-441-17266-0. “It [the sandworm] appeared to be more than half a league long, and the rise of the sandwave at its cresting head was like the approach of a mountain.”
- ^ Herbert, Frank. Dune. "High voltage electrical shock applied separately to each ring segment is the only known way of killing and preserving an entire worm," Kynes said. "They can be stunned and shattered by explosives, but each ring segment has a life of its own. Barring atomics, I know of no explosive powerful enough to destroy a large worm entirely. They're incredibly tough."
- ^ a b c d e f g Herbert, Frank. Dune, Appendix I: The Ecology of Dune.
- ^ Herbert, Frank. Dune, Terminology of the Imperium (Little Maker).
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Herbert, Frank (1976). Children of Dune. ISBN 0-399-11697-4.
- ^ a b c Herbert, Frank. Dune, Terminology of the Imperium (Pre-spice mass).
- ^ a b c Herbert, Frank (1981). God Emperor of Dune. ISBN 0-575-02976-5.
- ^ Herbert, Frank. Dune, Terminology of the Imperium (Melange). "The spice ... is mildly addictive when taken in small quantities, severely addictive when imbibed in quantities above two grams daily per seventy kilos of body weight."
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