On Creating Imaginary Weapons: Science Fiction/Fantasy

[Xelah]

On spells stopping bullets, for every defense there is a counter.

I remember once, can't remember the name of the book, but some orcs found a cache of machine guns. The wizards on the other side figured out that the guns were not magical and created a bullet stopping spell. The orcs responded by adding anti-magic talismans to their guns and mowed down the wizards.

I'm not sure what you'd call it in the UK, but here we call it one-up-manship. How much of that are you really going to have in your universe?

 

[Nik]

The Avengers', IIRC, stemmed from an episode set in Canada, where the Russian villain's super-karate skills could parry bullets fired from one gun at a time. Finally, he faced a dual attack (hat & gun), and died of it. Gambit used same tactic to deflect one (1) bullet, spent rest of that episode with bandaged hand...

Incidentally, I've read that a simple metal clip-board in the right hands beat an armed robber. Held at a grazing angle, it deflected a bullet and let the warehouse staff jump the astonished gun-man.

Don't try this at home, folks !!
==

If you want a most remarkable arms race, track down the short story by Effinger, George Alec, "The Last Full Measure"
:
Corporal Bo Staefler is a science fiction reader who is killed on Utah Beach during the invasion of Normandy—killed three times. He is snatched out of time by an alien intent on invading Earth who wants details of humanity's weapons. Staefler gives him the most ultra-modern ones he can think of from the SF stories he has read. The alien decides to wait until we have wiped ourselves out.
/
Trying to scare the hostile alien, the desperate protagonist escalates his beach battle's modest tech. He offers every outrageous weapon & counter he can imagine, ultimately side-lines Normandy & WW2 to a trivial skirmish in a minor corner of a star-smashing, pan-galactic war...

As an antidote to that romp, there's a most wicked tale by AC Clarke about the dangers of too-hastily introduced superior tech, which eventually cripples the users' ability to fight at all...

 

[Window Bar]

The old joke about Jesus possessing great offensive weaponry would seem to bear on this. Anyone who can turn water into wine would play hell with the bloodstreams of opposing soldiers.

Which is to say, that a new take on "proton torpedoes" won't entertain the reader as much as a new take on what the word weapon means in the first place.

J.K. Rowling's dementors were among the most creatively armed bad guys in literature.

 

[Xelah]

Dementors were interesting, but I didn't think they were any more creative than diagon alley. See Grool and Lanx (from RL Stein's "It came from beneath the sink"). They're similar in concept to dementors in that the Grool feeds off the despair created by the bad luck it causes and the Lanx tries to drain the life out of people, akin to a dementor's kiss.

 

[dreamhunter]

The old joke about Jesus possessing great offensive weaponry would seem to bear on this. Anyone who can turn water into wine would play hell with the bloodstreams of opposing soldiers.

That might no be so bad, actually. Even for your enemies. They'll have a fair chance.

Of dying happy.

 

[Winter Lord]

D) For fantasy, you don't go beyond swords and maces. So what is the boudary in creating weapons for Sci-fi and fantasy?

A percussion cap pistol that shoots fireballs, lightning, or ice. The powder, caps, and balls are all components of the spell. The powder and ball are standard, its the cap that changes the type of spell.

 

[Window Bar]

Almost every suggestion in this thread is a good one -- the common idea being that the author must be truly creative. Ray guns, back in the Buck Rogers days, were original; by Star Trek's time, they needed to be renamed. Today they'd simply be boring.

Old concepts, though, can be repackaged again and again, as long as the presentation is new. Love (or perhaps lust) as a weapon has a fine heritage in spy novels, but it's at least as old as the Bible. These last few years it has appeared in countless vampire stories. We never tire of the concept, we just want it to be used in an original fashion.

 

[poisonoustea]

I don't know why, but laser weapons in science fiction always turned me down. The image of rays zipping here and there in armed conflict makes it more funny than dramatic.

Yes, I'm talking about Star Wars.

A credible sci-fi weapon design should keep in mind not only firepower, but also other qualities like silence, or discreetness. This means no flashy lights and as little sound as possible.

Small-sized particle accelerator weapons that produce no visible trail nor sounds louder than a silencer's puff. Now that's what the military would use in the future, at least in my view of sci-fi future.

As for the aesthetics, I think modern weaponry has developed to be as ergonomic as it can get, at least by human standards. So I'd keep the human design for human weapons and squeeze my brains on alien weapons, which have no limits in possible design and technology. Just be careful on the same factors that count in human weaponry: bulk, maneuverability, silence, etc.

 

[Laustin]

What's this? SF has limits now? I must have missed that memo. Surely, out of all the genres available to humankind, SF should be the one that is the most free? You all talk about facts and figures here, and the constraints of physics and what could and couldn't happen, but surely you're all missing the point. As creators of SF worlds we're all completely free to do whatever we want. We shouldn't be held back by mundane concerns. If your fiction writing isn't convincing enough to have your reader willingly suspend their disbelief, then you're probably not doing it right. I don't go to the Sci-Fi section of my local library to get a dry, prosaic tome about muzzle velocities and weapons manufacture. I go to be amazed. Any writer who lacks the conviction to stand behind their ideas, no matter how outlandish, doesn't really deserve my time, and they shouldn't get yours, either.

 

[Interference]

I think we should get a bill passed in Parliament to that effect, Laustin

 

[Arthur_Connelly]

Any writer who lacks the conviction to stand behind their ideas, no matter how outlandish, doesn't really deserve my time, and they shouldn't get yours, either.

That is quote worthy. And, as a waffler and waverer, leaves me inspired.

 

[Laustin]

This is the whole 'hard sci-fi' question right here, Interference. Authors, including ones I greatly admire like Stephen Baxter (who comes from a Physics academic background) always base their fiction in what science currently knows or that they feel they can safely speculate about. This is hard SF. Other writers, more populist perhaps, throw away all pretensions of convention and engage in some mind-boggling flights-of-fancy. This is a choice they make, and I admire them for wearing their intentions on their sleeve. All I ask is that they write well. Nothing else really matters, does it?

 

[Laustin]

That is quote worthy. And, as a waffler and waverer, leaves me inspired.

Thank you. I think...

 

[Interference]

I think I said all this further up the thrad a bit, but there are many, many, many cases of a fiction writer creating a concept out of expedience or creativity that have later proved to inspired true scientific investigation. It's the responsibility of the imaginative to provoke the nerd, imo

 

[Laustin]

I think I said all this further up the thrad a bit, but there are many, many, many cases of a fiction writer creating a concept out of expedience or creativity that have later proved to inspired true scientific investigation. It's the responsibility of the imaginative to provoke the nerd, imo

Absolutely. It's no coincidence that SF is one of the most popular sources of ideas in the world of entertainment these days, and no doubt the same applies to more serious endeavour as well. On my website I say 'if you can think it, Sci-Fi makes it possible'. I should probably add 'if Sci-Fi makes it possible, shed-loads of cash can make it real.'

 

[Interference]

Cash Sheds. Hmmmm .... interesting concept ....

*runs to workshop and begins drawing diagrammes*

 

[Ursa major]

Would a cash shed have to take the form of a loan-to? (Or should that be: "never take the form of a loan-to?")


Just asking.


As other have said before, the most important thing is plausibility. Whether this is based on real science, an extension of such, or simply the skill of the author in getting the reader on board, doesn't matter. (Well, unless the author claims to be writing Hard SF and the technology doesn't fit this label.)


.

 

[Interference]

As others may have already said, whatever I was about to say has already been said, too

(and if it hasn't, then no doubt some science whizz will one day write a program that'll say it for me )

 

[Laustin]

Just remember guys, don't confuse a 'cash-shed' with that other well-known money-creating structure 'the wonga-tent'. Different kettle of monkeys altogether.

 

[Interference]

Or the Mazoola Maisonette? Or the Boodle Boudoire? Or the Dosh Doss-house