The Spacing Guild is an organization in Frank Herbert's science fiction Dune universe that possesses a monopoly on interstellar travel and banking.

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.

[3] 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.

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.

[1] 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.

The plot ultimately fails, and Edric and Mohiam are executed by Fremen naib Stilgar on orders from Paul's sister Alia Atreides.

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.

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.

[6][7] 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.

[18] In House Corrino (2001), D'murr is piloting one of two heighliners which Count Fenring uses to secretly test the synthetic melange created by the Tleilaxu in their Project Amal.

Disastrously, the first heighliner emerges from foldspace at the wrong point, striking the defensive shields of Wallach IX and plummeting into the atmosphere to its destruction.

As his spice supply is replaced with genuine melange, D'murr uses the last of his strength to return the ship safely to Junction, home of the Guild headquarters, before dying.

[19] In the Legends of Dune prequel trilogy (2002–2004) by Brian Herbert and Anderson, unappreciated scientist Norma Cenva creates the Holtzman engine, which allows a ship to fold space, traveling great distances instantaneously.

Full immersion in a tank of spice gas deforms her body, but ultimately bestows on her the prescient ability to plot a safe path for a heighliner through foldspace.

However, decades after the end of the Butlerian Jihad, Emperor Jules revokes the monopoly in order to curry political favor, resulting in several rival foldspace companies springing up, such as Celestial Transport and EsconTran.

These new companies, however, are unable to provide 100% safe transportation due to their lack of Navigators, the creation process of whom is a proprietary secret tightly held by VenHold.

Josef Venport's desire for restoring his family's monopoly and thirst for knowledge put him in conflict with the Butlerians, a radical religious sect that follows the teachings of the late Rayna Butler under the leadership of Manford Torondo.

In David Lynch's 1984 film Dune, the Navigator's mutation affects his entire body, and he resembles a giant newt or worm with a heavily deformed head, V-shaped mouth and vestigial limbs.

The 2000 miniseries Frank Herbert's Dune portrays the Navigator as a withered figure with a humanoid head, blue-in-blue eyes and arms which have mutated into wings with elongated webbed fingers.

The 2003 sequel miniseries Frank Herbert's Children of Dune presents Edric as a sleek, golden humanoid with an elongated head and limbs, and feathery appendages.

[9] Though Navigators are not present in Denis Villeneuve's 2021 film Dune, Guild representatives are depicted as humanoids in white, cloaked space suits with opaque helmet visors.

[23]Writing for Screen Rant, Adam Felman opined that the limited inclusion of the Guild in Villeneuve's film helped prevent the story from becoming convoluted.