Weapons from Science Fiction

[DreadPirateMurphy]

I was thinking back on Niven's Known Space stories, and about some of the weapons described. He had flashlight lasers that could work as either a torch or a lightsaber. The Ringworld was protected by an x-ray laser made from focused solar flares. One superweapon fired bullets of pure neutronium. The setting also featured disintegrators, fusion drives used as weapons, monomolecular blades, and projectiles made of antimatter. There were a lot of creative destructive devices for a series that wasn't inherently military in nature.

What other TV shows, movies, or writing had a wicked diversity of high-tech death?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

As the Trek universe expanded, so did the weapons. I still remember the cool-factor of ST:NG introducing the Ferenghi Neuro-Whips.

Dune had some nasty weapons, though most were best used by assassins, like the flying poison needle with the force-field on it.

Dr Who has had an amazing number of weapons- manufactured and improvised- over the decades.

Many weapons have popped up in a variety of settings. Mass-Drivers are popular (grab a big rock w/force fields and throw it); Gauss/Rail weapons (take a ferrous projectile and fire it at high fractions of C); and flechette/hand rocket weapons (many based on the RW Gyrojet hand rocketlaunchers Gyrojet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).

Also popular are a variety of electrical/neural weapons, monofilament weapons.

And face it, nowhere are you going to find a wider variety of sci-fi weapons than in comic books, videogames and sci-fi/superhero RPGs.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Doc Smith was the grand-daddy of introducing super weapons on a fairly regular basis. Negaspheres, smashing planets, sunbeams, etc., etc., etc.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Ender's Game introduced the "Little Doctor". Kind of foretold red matter in the most recent Star Trek movie.

Chronicles of Riddick had some nifty weaponry among the Necromongers.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

To paraphrase Jay-Z:

Negaspheres...

Nega-wha?

...Necromongers.

Necro-who?

But seriously...I know that the smashing planets thing has been done more than once, like in Edmond Hamilton's 1934 short story, "Thundering Worlds."

Just shows you- great minds think alike.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Just out of curiosity, what inspired you to make this thread? Got something planned? Brewing up a campaign?

 

[DreadPirateMurphy]

Just out of curiosity, what inspired you to make this thread? Got something planned? Brewing up a campaign?

I wish...sadly, it was just a review of the TV Tropes links for Known Space, and seeing all of the references to various ingenious weapons. It got me thinking about a variety of different "neat" concepts, and wondering if there were concepts that I would find novel after a lifetime of reading and watching sci-fi.

Dan Simmons Hyperion Cantos in one of the early novels has a multi-purpose assault weapon that manufactures a variety of ammunition or energy sources using nanotechnology. There were also starship mounted C-beams, and the Archangel class ships, which literally killed the crew with each jump to FTL, then reassembled them using a combination mind recorder/parasite.

David Brin's Uplift books was an all-inclusive space opera where almost anything was possible, from psi bombs to hyperspace mines. In one book, an entire town of aliens is encased in a smothering gel of some type. Some weapons even altered the nature of local reality in unpredictable ways.

The webcomic Schlock Mercenary has weapons based on gravity manipulation, teleporting smart missiles, and large-bore handheld plasma cannons that make an ominous hummmm.

The Nights Dawn series by Peter David featured AI-driven, antimatter powered combat drones, a supernova superweapon, cyborg mercenaries and a handheld device that would, for lack of a better description, erase your soul.

I've read or watch stories with people mangled, exploded, disintegrated, turned into technozombies, irradiated, ripped from the fabric of the universe, sent through or frozen in time, melted, and driven insane. Still, there has got to be an idea out there that is novel to me.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Well, as I pointed out before, you can find a LOT of gear in comic books, especially those with tech-oriented characters: Iron Man, Dr. Doom, Mr. Fantastic, Cyborg, Robot Man and the Metal Men all spring to mind. And don't forget Japanese contributions like AstroBoy, Big O, Voltron, and Robotech...as well as their American counterparts like Iron Giant!

Characters like that inspired my HERO character, Pax (latin for "Peace"), who favored non-lethal combat. Essentially, he was an anti-Power-suit Power-suit pilot. Not as singularly powerful as a true Iron Man ripoff, he took down other Power suits with EMP pulses and nanobot-delivered hacks to make them go haywire or to override their pilot's commands with his own. In addition, he had a special weapon that would super-heat one side of a target while super-cooling the other side- goodbye armor!

And for taking down the normals, he had a special autofire weapon with less-than-lethal rounds comprised of a high-velocity highly-cohesive gel in which spent uranium was suspended. IOW, imagine being hit by a piece of jello with the mass of a bowling ball.

He could also launch a mini-drone that could lay down circular patches of supercold ice. If you've ever used the Grease spell in D&D, you know what happens when someone charges through that.

 

[DreadPirateMurphy]

In addition, he had a special weapon that would super-heat one side of a target while super-cooling the other side- goodbye armor!

That's actually interesting -- I wonder what the real-world physics of that would look like? I know we're talking comic book hero, but if you took a conductor, dumped one end in liquid nitrogen, and applied a blow torch to the other, what would happen? Would it shatter? How would the energy transfer affect the structure of the conductor?

And for taking down the normals, he had a special autofire weapon with less-than-lethal rounds comprised of a high-velocity highly-cohesive gel in which spent uranium was suspended. IOW, imagine being hit by a piece of jello with the mass of a bowling ball.

I guess that counts as "less-than-lethal" if you don't take into account the long-term health effects of exposure to depleted uranium. My understanding is that absorbing that into the body isn't exactly a health tonic. Still, better than lead poisoning (in either the literal or euphemistic sense).

One idea that occurred to me that I can't recall seeing -- what if you could somehow interrupt a foe's ability to go into deep sleep. Over time, their readiness and even general ability to function would suffer dramatically, and it would be subtle. (Of course, keeping somebody awake with things like loud music is relatively common in the real world -- I'm talking about something more insidious.)

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I guess that counts as "less-than-lethal" if you don't take into account the long-term health effects of exposure to depleted uranium. My understanding is that absorbing that into the body isn't exactly a health tonic. Still, better than lead poisoning (in either the literal or euphemistic sense).

The round doesn't enter the body: it deforms along the target's surface, transferring the force over a large surface area. IOW, little danger of the depleted uranium entering the target's system.

One idea that occurred to me that I can't recall seeing -- what if you could somehow interrupt a foe's ability to go into deep sleep. Over time, their readiness and even general ability to function would suffer dramatically, and it would be subtle.

I've seen that done as a hit & run tactic (Battlestar Galactica), a side effect of a device (Stargate SG-1) and as a comic book arch-villain's long-term scheme (usually as some kind of energy field), but never as a pure sci-fi weapon.