Favorite fictional or sci-fi weapon?

From Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land"

Valentine Michael Smith and presumably most or all Matrians, could, by the power of the mind, twist an object or person through one or more dimensions, causing them to disappear/cease-to-exist.

I think, therefore you aren't.

Register, permit, or regulate THAT!

The Sun Crusher. No doubt about it, one of the coolest weapons ever built (in the Star Wars universe anyway).

A close second would be a lightsaber. A silver one. With adjustable blade. Cool.

REAL SF only, please, no Star Trek, Star Wars or suchlike "SciFi"

I want a laser finger like the one Mandella had in "Forever War". Those tachyon rockets were really cool too.

Does anyone know the formula for duodecaplylatomate? Doc Smith had that particular chemical explosive badder and louder than some nukes.


Of course what I really want is a Lens from Arisia. Don't think I could pass the background check, though.

Ngu Departure 10mm

The David Drake Hammer's Slammers series has a couple neat guns - "flechette" rifles with diamond lined bores firing finned needles at 20,000 fps, the "powerguns", that take a plastic wafer impregnated with metal ions and turn it into a plasma burst - a way of having a plasma rifle that takes actual ammo instead of energy packs. Power sized with the size of the plastic wafer, pistols took 1 cm disks, rifles and the tribarrels (gatling style guns) take 2 cm disks, up to tank cannon sized guns, though I don't remember what there "caliber" is.
Then there is the sword in CJ Cherryh's Morgaine novels, sort of a wormhole generator that can send an entire army to somewhere else with one good swipe - though it doesn't necessarily kill anyone doing it.
Then the ultimate weapon - in an early Star Trek episode Kirk and Spock find a pistol sized device that turns out to be a matter to energy direct conversion device. At the minimum setting it was like setting off a nuclear device, Spock theorized the max setting would cause suns to go nova. They had to destroy it to keep the bad guys (Klingons?, memory fails) from getting it.

I do not want a light saber but from the Ringworld series by Niven I want a Sinclair molecular chain sword. It had a blade of "sinclair molecule chain", some molecule attached to each other in a chain could be any length stiff or flexible. It could slice thru anything cause it was only 1 molecule wide and made out of scrith. So thin it had a light on the end so you knew where the end was.

I like the gun from the movie "Eraser".

M41-A Pulse rifle

Marauder,
I too agree that the m41-a is one of the best. Both due to realism due to real firearms that are used to make it and that it sure is Coool!
There is even a site that tells you how to make one! For your enjoyment here is the link. Use the navigation at the left to view process. It's a tommy gun and an spas-12!! Neat huh?

http://home.pressroom.com/philips/pulser/pulse.htm

I'm surprised nobody mentioned Reason

ultima ratio regnum

now that's a gun! Need something to keep the power source cool, though...

(from Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash )

Then the ultimate weapon - in an early Star Trek episode Kirk and Spock find a pistol sized device that turns out to be a matter to energy direct conversion device.

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I don't remember that episode, but this sounds like Star Trek stole an idea from a Larry Niven story. IIRC, humans and Kzinti found what they thought was an old Slaver weapon, but it was a Tnuctipun artifact - a morphing handgun. One of the things it did was convert matter to energy . . . you really did NOT want to be anywhere nearby.

Niven's characters also had the "Variable Sword" a device that sent out a thin wire - thin as in one molecule wide - encased in a stasis field. It would cut through anything.

If we're looking at things beyond handguns, E.E. Smith had some doozies in his "Lensman" and "Skylark" books. In the former, he had the Sunbeam - a ray that harnessed ALL the output energy of a star, which could then be directed against an enemy. His guys also used planet-sized chunks of negative matter against enemy planets - sometimes warped out of a parallel universe where the rest state was 15x lightspeed in our universe. (Even the Arisians couldn't figure out what would happpen beforehand.) And in his Skylark books, fourth-dimensional translation was used to take stars from one galaxy and drop them on all the suns in the galaxy of the evil chlorine-breathing amoeboid monstrosities threatening humanity, wiping out a whole galaxy full of them ("Doc" Smith wrote on a grand scale.)

Heinlein had a book in which his characters had a "tunable" death ray, so you could set it to kill, say, only Orientals. Which was handy since the USA had been invaded by Pan-Asians. (Heinlein took this idea from an earlier John W. Campbell novel titled "All.")

And of course, John W. Campbell came up with the ultimate weapon in his book, The Ultimate Weapon. Basically, when fighting a losing battle against aliens, a human scientist had an idea that, when he computed it out, always reduced to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Unable to resolve this, he figured he'd build the machine anyway . . . and he ended up with a device that generated uncertainty. Contact with the top level of uncertaintly caused matter - and mankind's enemies - to cease to exist.

Niven's characters also had the "Variable Sword" a device that sent out a thin wire - thin as in one molecule wide - encased in a stasis field. It would cut through anything.

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Thanks HankB I could not remember what it was called, but IIRC the fight when it was used wrecked a lot of stuff

In no particular order...

M41-A pulse-rifle (Aliens)

2 cm Powergun (Hammer’s Slammer’s)

Squeeze Bore Rifle (Forlorne Hope)

.17 Webley Electric or 50 cal. Gabbet Fairfax (Probability Broach)

Anything from the Weapon Shops of Isher

Speaking of sci-fi guns, who can identify what these are supposed to be?

#1 Deckard's pistol from Blade Runner
#2 M41A Pulse Rifle from Aliens
#3 Noisy Cricket from Men In Black
#4 Scout Blazer rifle from "Armour"
#5 Storm Trooper's blaster rifle from Star Wars
#6 Zork Industries weapon pod thing from 5th Element
#7 Leon's pistol from Blade Runner
#8 Grammaton Cleric's pistol from Equilibrium
#9 "Weirding Module" from Dune
#10 "Smart gun" from Aliens

Special props to supporting technologies:
#1 Lightsabers: Star Wars
#2 Personal Shields: Dune
#3 Scout Suits: "Armour"
#4 Tricorder: Star Trek
#5 Transporter: Star Trek
#6 Speeder Bikes: Star Wars
#7 Taxis: 5th Element
#8 Drop Ships: Aliens
#9 "Seakers": Dune
#10 Star Destroyers: Star Wars

SPACE:1999 Stun Gun. They just look cool. I actually had a watergun version when I was a kid.

http://space1999.tv-toys.co.uk/replica-stun.jpg

Vulcan Raven's cannon in Metal Gear Solid.

Excuse me??? (Or what part of "fiction" did I miss?)

REAL SF?

By real SF, I presume meeting your, or perhaps some larger groups, standard of acceptability. Won’t you please post the rules so we can get it "right"?

Powered Armor from Heinlein's "Starship Troopers".

Retractible claws from Gibson's "Neuromancer".

Both of those guys have been imitated so often it's amazing.

Well, that particular weapon is not a good example of something that was imitated.

The entire 'Matrix' universe is, though. An entire genre (cyberpunk) was created with Williams' first work.

Somebody up-thread mention 'Reason' from Snowcrash. Now that is a gun!

I forgot to add:

Power Holsters, from Harry Harrison's Death World trilogy. They basically as strapped to your forearm and whip your pistol into your hand when you make the right gesture.

As I recall, those power holsters beath the daylights out of your hands during the learning process.

First and foremost...in a book by an author named Daniel Keys Moran

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I think that book is "Emerald Eyes", if I remember correctly.

I would really like another copy of that book.

So this character from Neuromancer...was he the inspiration for Marvel Comics' "Wolverine" character, then?

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No, Wolverine was introduced first (1974). Neuromancer was published in 1984.