Firearms in science fiction novels...

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Carl,
Are you trying to say that a sideways thompson won't have horizontal muzzle climb?

I'm saying it won't have vertical jump, that it can be used as in the
the novel for sideways strafing.
 
Lots of good Sci-Fi weapons in Semper Mars by Ian Douglas
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0380788284/102-3979893-9530569?v=glance&n=283155

Plot: A Cold War breaks out between the US and the UN. At the same time a small number of US Marines and US scientists are part of a larger UN misson on Mars. Once the conflict breaks out, the US Marines try to take back control of the outpost even though they are out-numbered and out-gunned. This leads me to the best Sci-Fi weapon ever....

The Can Of Beer.:D

One of the Marines had smuggled several cases of beer from Earth. When they were hurled at the UN forces, they ruptured and the low pressure on Mars made the beer in to a rapidly expanding, sticky foam. The UN troops thought that they were being attacked with biological weapons, panicked and were quickly overrun.:D
 
One last gun from me. In the UK Comic series 2000AD, there was a set of stories about a man named Nikolai Dante.

During one of his stories, he was given a rifle called the Huntsman 5000. Now this is one "smart gun" you wouldn't refuse!

The Huntsman resembles a musket, with the main difference that it's a semi-automatic rifle. The Ammunition is automatically reloaded and replenished, and is for all intents and purposes, infinite. The ammunition is a special "smart" bullet that can turn itself into the most efficient way of destroying a target (in one sequence, Dante attacks a firing squad to rescue a man, killing a few of them, then his next shot destroys a gunship that was designed to pacify full insurrections).

The smartest part it the Huntsman's security. The gun is locked to a single person's gene-print, although it can be re-coded at the users' command. If an unauthorised person fires this gun, the bullet reverses direction and uses them for target practice.:evil:
 
The Black Ray Pistol from the post-apoc RPG Gamma World is nasty. If its beam hit any living thing that was not protected by a forcefield, the lifeform died.

If we expand this discussion to grenades, GW also has some nasty grenades: The Torc Grenade disintegrated anything that did not have a forcefield in its blast radius. The Photon Grenade killed every living thing that did not have a forcefield in its blast radius.

The mercenaries of Fasolini's Company in David Drake's The Forlorn Hope had tapered-bore rifles with barrels of synthetic diamond. They fired saboted osmium needles at ludicrous speeds that could penetrate APC armor. The Company also had a 7mm SP gun that worked on the same principle for antitank missions.
 
In Michael Z. Williamson's "The Weapon"
The ultimate weapon is the Operatives. Brutal men and women who can use anything to protect their planet.

A sparesly settled planet that is independant is slowly getting pressured to join the UN formally. The Operatives have been trained and sent by the the Freehold.

The UN has no clue.
 
L. Neil Smith had the "Webley Electric" fed from a wire spool, high density power source and what is called a coil gun.

Could do variable rate, variable size and variable power. At it's maxium it's 10,000 rounds per minute.

I remember a gas gun that would shoot a ball of gas that would act like a massive punch when it expanded. Very close combat weapon.
 
Sci Fi guns

Hey now, let's not forget Sheva 9, Bun Bun!! From John Ringos Posleen War series, it's a massive anti-lander mobile (just barely) artillery piece equipped to shoot a 16" smoothbore, saboted, depleted uranium penetrator round with an antimatter warhead. The Terran ACS battalions are equipped with grav rifles that fire depleted uranium "teardrops" at relativistic velocities. They also have terawatt lasers, fletchette cannons, and plasma cannons.
 
OK, here are a few more . . . remember Edgar Rice Burroughs? He's most famous for the Tarzan books, but back before WWII he also wrote a series of heroic adventures featuring John Carter of Mars and Carson of Venus. The humanoid Martians mostly hacked at each other with swords, but they did use "radium pistols" on occasion. The green martians had rifles which could be fired with deadly accuracy for 200 miles in Mars' thin air.

ERB's Venusians had "R-Ray" pistols which simply disintegrated living tissue, and "T-Ray" guns which disintegrated all matter. (OK, ok, the science is more than just fuzzy by today's standard, but the storytelling aspect was better than a lot of the drakh being published today.)

The original Buck Rogers novel had the American insurgents using rocket pistols with explosive bullets that had the force of artillery shells, whereas the evil Asian invaders used "Dis" rays that dissolved all matter into nothingness.

One of Larry Niven's novels had an tnuctipun (sp?) handweapon which would morph into any of a number of shapes . . . one of which would apparently cause a nuclear chain reaction in any substance it hit. Shooting a planet with it wasn't a good idea, at least, not if you were on the planet yourself.

(Though not a gun, I liked Niven's "Variable Sword" . . . a molecule-thin entendable wire, encased in a stasis field, which would cut through virtually anything.)
 
In Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man a guy who decides
to commit a murder in a future policed by telepaths used
an antique pistol, I believe it was one of those Parisian
Apache foldup combo pepperbox, knucks and dagger.
If I remeber correctly, he used some kind of gelatin bullet.
 
my favs are actual guns - Heinlirn mentioned a match 1903 Springfield, and another author had the protagonist carrying a Dardick tround automatic revolver. Coupl;e of authors mentioned the Gyro-Jet. Favorite ficyional gun was a firearm that shot coils of wire at high velocity - they quickly became non-lethal, and wouldn't shoot through walls, but delivered nasty wounds close up.
 
A few:
David Drake has a series about an armored mercenary company-Hammer's Slammers-they used a special copper plate that basically stored an ion charge. When activated, POP!, instant particle beam. They had them from handguns to the 20cm main guns on the hover tanks.

Piper apparently figured the 10mm would be a logical firearm for the future, most of his guns were fairly normal by our standards. He and many others wrote before rays and beams and stuff became popular. I'm personally thinking that for unaugmented(read-without power armor or a tank)troops, it'll be a while before guns as we know them become obsolete.

Needle guns are pretty generic. Everything from flechette rounds to coil gun types, I've read at least half a dozen authors that used them in one form or another.

There's the bead guns from the Weber/Ringo March to the Sea and that series. Essentially coil guns, but very nice.

Foriegn Legions By David Drake had long bows.:D Much fun.

Cyantians make use of subspace, using it to store stuff for instant retrieval. Mostly their armor:
http://www.cyantian.net/csafari/archive.php?day=20001013

Among thoughts I've had, are race at peace for so long, they're still using something along the lines of a blackpowder .45-70 for an infantry weapon when boarding another starship. You don't really have to have a technological reason to go to swords and hand-to-hand, if your materials technology keeps up to date with your projectile technology, than guns would never really catch on as anything more than support, much like the bows they replaced. Give enough peace that tactics don't absorb nuclear weapons and such, and you have a nice place to have a war when modern humans break on the scene.
 
You like guns? Try Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson.

I don't want to ruin things for anyone, but everyone should listen to REASON.
 
In 'Emil and the Dutchman' by Joel Rosenberg just about everyone uses wireguns that hold 200 silcohalcoid projectiles. The Dutchman prefers the stopping power of his Colt & Wesson .44 Magnum revolver loaded with Glaser Safety Slugs.

Piper's stuff is great. The Paratime Police carry sigma-ray needlers, neurostat guns, and neutron-disruption blasters, but when Vall hunts the nighthound in Pennsylvania he uses a Sharp's Model '37, 235 Ultraspeed-Express. He actually kills it with a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum. Kalvan carries a Colt .38 Special. The Zarthani use flintlocks but with a back-acting lock, the flint held tightly against a moving striker.
 
Love H. Beam Piper - he was one on the first to try to be accurate in depicting weapons, although I did cringe when he talked about a post-apocalyptic military unit with "M14 rifles and M16 submachine guns". "Junkyard Planet" was my favorite.
 
Skoda

Heinlein was big on Skoda brand firearms and dart pistols. In number of the Beast, there is a Skoda pistol small enough to fit in a secret pocket of a purse that holds 24 poison darts.

In The Cat Who Walks through Walls, there is a Dart gun that shoots explosive darts vice poison darts.

One of my favorite scenes involving Heinlein and firearms is near the begining of Glory Road, when Oscar is trying to decide between a Thompson and National Match Springfield('It even had the star on the barrel') before being told that firearms don't work on that world.

Stepping the 'Way Back Machine' I always kind of dug the micro Machine Pistols that Doc Savage and his gang used.

greg
 
Bolt pistol, and Bolter guns( kinda like carbines) form the Marhammer 40,000 wolrd (WH40K)

The standard weapon of the Space Marines is the boltgun, also known as a bolter. A bolter is a heavy gun that fires rocket-propelled rounds with mass-reactive explosive payloads. Bolters are made in both pistol and rifle form, as well as the machine gun-like heavy bolter.

Standard Bolts; are comprised of the following components: Outer casing, propellant base, main charge, mass reactive detonator cap, depleted deuterium core, diamantine tip. Spin stabilised at .75 calibre.
 
Check out Brian Daley's series, The Adventures Of Hobart Floyt & Alacrity Fitzhugh. It's a trilogy, First is: Requiem for a Ruler of Worlds, then: Jinx on a Terran Inheiritance, last is: Fall of the White Ship Avatar. Lots of different weapons used there. I give it an A+ for a good piece of mind cocaine to be read when needed.

Alacrity Fitzhugh carries The Captain's Sidearm, an energy weapon custom designed to be carried by the Captain of the White Ship, which was tuned to produce maximum muzzle blast/noise when fired to discourage mutineers. Also, it produces a handy short-bladed sword for hand-to-hand fighting. Unfortunately the charge indicator seems to malfunction frequently, showing full charge when the magazine is empty, or empty when not empty. Fitzhugh also carries a very Tacticool umbrella.

Good old Hobart Floyt of Earthservice wound up with a reproduction of a .455 Webley top-break revolver loaded with "Chicago Popcorn", described as "dum-dum bullets with the casings notched back to the cartridge". He also learned to shoot the classic way, one eye squinted shut, tongue sticking out side of mouth. Or, sometimes, TWO eyes squinted shut.

There are also Actijots, a micro-dot implant that is inflicted upon unfortunate victims which allows them to be tracked anywhere upon a planet equipped with a Talos Worldshield central control system, the jots are also capable of inflicting pain varying from excruciating and disabling to fatal with the push of a button either on a remote-control device or an entry of serial number into the worldshield computer. Actijots are "Small enough to lose in a pore" and horrible tales are told about unfortunate jot-slaves who tracked aches or pains for months before deciding to perform self surgery to try to remove the jot.


Brian Daley is also the guy who wrote the "Han Solo" standalone novels. Also good reads.


+1 on E. E. "Doc" Smith's books. Lensman books were actually mentioned in Heinlien's "Number of the Beast" as an alternate universe. Talk about a serious no nonsense LEO! We need more Kimball Kinnisons today.

+1 on David Drake's "Hammers Slammers" although the powerguns used a polymerized caseless ammo that was the source of the ion particles.
Hammer's aide de camp, Joachim Steuben, was demonically accurate with a 10mm powergun pistol.
Could you imagine Colonel Alois Hammer leading his regiment into Iraq? >shiver<

+1 on anything Heinliens' ever written
 
Sometimes its the weapon - other times its the ammo. I can't remember the book, but I do remember a scene where a kid is carrying a semi-auto hunting rifle with a barrel sawed off to about 10". When he fires at a group of soldiers he asks, "Did I get them all?" Seems the bullets had micro processers in them that locked onto a single target. A similar idea popped up later in a Tom Selleck Sci-fi movie.
 
I can't remember the book, but I do remember a scene where a kid is carrying a semi-auto hunting rifle with a barrel sawed off to about 10". When he fires at a group of soldiers he asks, "Did I get them all?" Seems the bullets had micro processers in them that locked onto a single target. A similar idea popped up later in a Tom Selleck Sci-fi movie.
Click to expand...

I believe it was Vernor Vinge in "The peace war"

NukemJim
 
The Peace War - Vernor Vinge.

That is probably the Peace War. A device that can create 'bobbles' is made by a 'tinker'. The established powers send a team to surveil a group and the kid sprays and doesn't have to pray. The bullets each target one of the group, seeking them by radar/heat and coordinating amongst themselves. The bobble device seals of a volume of space and stops time within it. It's later used as a sheilding device.

The sequel Marooned in Realtime deals with the people sealed in long term bobbles coming back to .... an empty earth....

Vernor Vinge can write...haunting stuff. A Fire Upon The Deep is excellent, the parallel dog mind creatures are the perfect childhood friend.

In the same universe but not a follow up is "A Deepness In The Sky" it's hard to describe but in general how do you break your enslavement from people who can turn you into a 'focused' savant which can be anything from a menial, artist, automation, or sex toy. :what:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0765308835/103-5400036-2933413?v=glance&n=283155

statelineblues
Sometimes its the weapon - other times its the ammo. I can't remember the book, but I do remember a scene where a kid is carrying a semi-auto hunting rifle with a barrel sawed off to about 10". When he fires at a group of soldiers he asks, "Did I get them all?"
Click to expand...
 
Thanks NukemJim and mrmeval! Dead on the money with "The Peace War". I must have read that book 15 - 20 years ago. Didn't know there was a sequel; I'll have to get it. I always wondered what happened to the guy that got half his fingers caught on the other side of the bubble.....
 
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