The Fremen Way

The Fremen — Arrakis's indigenous people — have built their whole culture around water conservation. They wear stillsuits that recycle body moisture, and they treat water as sacred. Their dream is to terraform Arrakis into a green world, not knowing this would destroy the sandworms that produce the spice.

Herbert drew the Fremen partly from Bedouin culture and partly from ecological ideas about adaptation. Their tragedy is double: outsiders exploit them for the resource beneath their sand, and their own green dream would destroy the basis of their power.