Sandworm (Dune)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"In the 1984 David Lynch film Dune, the sandworms and the Guild Navigator were designed by special effects modeler Carlo Rambaldi."--Sholem Stein |
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A sandworm is a fictional creature that appears in the Dune novels written by Frank Herbert, first introduced in original novel Dune (1965).
Sandworms are colossal worm-like creatures that live on the planet Arrakis, which is a hot and arid planet whose environment resembles the Sahara desert. The sandworms' larvae produce a drug called "melange" (known colloquially as "the spice"), which is highly prized across the universe for its medicinal and mystical properties. Melange is created when excretions of the sandworms' larvae react with water and sunlight. Melange deposits are found in the sand seas of Arrakis, where the sandworms live and hunt, and harvesting the melange from the sand is a dangerous activity because sandworms are aggressive and territorial. Harvesting vehicles must be airlifted in and out of the sand sea in order to evade sandworm attacks. The struggle over the production and supply of melange is a central theme of the Dune setting, so accordingly the sandworms appear in nearly all the novels and spin-off fiction.
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