No, no… that’s what I’m saying. The importance of a thing is not completely… hmm… completely inherent in the thing itself. There’s a dormant potential, and there’s an outside activator — like fire hitting an accelerant. Take Arrakis.

Imagine you’re an ancient explorer. You find this speck of nothing floating in infinite nothing. It’s got breathable atmosphere, near ideal gravity, and the dominant life in the barren desert are these terrible worms. Back in the Old Empire, the only value of Arrakis was the various labs and testing stations experimenting on God knows what. They discover the spice mélange, that it keeps folk alive longer. A little interest is sparked.

But then… the Butlerian Jihad! Death to thinking machines. The accelerant! We discover the real secret of spice, that it grants the prescience needed to navigate fold-space tech. Ha! Then this speck of nothing floating in the infinite nothing soup suddenly becomes the one and only source for the most valuable commodity in all of human history.

Once the true value of spice was realized, many interested parties wanted to find a way to have it without relying completely on one little planet. Over the centuries, several attempts have been made recreate the environment of Arrakis on other worlds.

However, transporting live sandworms offworld has never proved feasible. Most of the beasts died almost immediately. I have read of one notable flight that managed to keep the worm alive for some time, but the creature’s subsequent rampage cost many lives in deep space. Imagine that scene… Not many thoughts occasion me to shiver, so I’ll be sure to hold onto that precious image.

Once again, the universe reasserts the unlikely value of Arrakis. And so one might imagine just how many interested (and vicious) parties might react to anyone with the foolish notion of transforming Dune into a paradise.