Favorite fictional or sci-fi weapon?

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What's your favorite fictional or science fiction weapon? I'm not talking things that are spawned from Hollywood foolishness, like the ceramic Glock 7 and whatnot. I'm referring to weapons that were decently thought out and appealed to you in some way. Anything cool that you've seen in a movie, or read in a book?

I've always been partial to the weapons of Aliens, myself, and the pistol of the Grammaton Clerics from Equilibrium was really cool.

I like your good old fashioned, shoots-a-blob-of-energy blasters, too, but they're not often well done on the big screen. I liked them in The Sixth Day; really cool pistols plus a short carbine variant!
 
3 things I've always wanted:

A Phaser
A lightsaber and
A Starship.

And it doesn't look like I'm gonna get any of them this time around.
:mad:
 
Well, maybe this qualifies as "spawned from Hollywood foolishness," but I kind of liked the idea.

A really bad move, eXistenZ (1999: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jude Law) had a bioengineered gun that was grown from human tissue. Since it was indistinguishable from human flesh and bone, it could get past security sensors. The bullets were bone-like hunks.

If the movie ever is on TV, watch for the gun is in the first five or ten minutes. After that, turn the movie off. It's horrible.
 
I would definatly take an M41-A pulse-rifle with an over\under pump-action grenage launcher....I'm sure Cpl. Hicks would agree too.
 
Hmmm . . . in Gordon Dickson's Dorsai-universe books, the soldiers have "spring rifles." From the description, they're deliberately simple, with no computers or electronics for an enemy to hack or detect. They apparently have BIG magazines and shoot what are essentially needles.

Some of L. Neil Smith's characters are armed with things like a .17 caliber electric pistol - a needle fired at many thousands of feet per second.

The '30s pulp novels of Lester Dent ("Doc Savage") prominently featured "supermachine pistols" with a very high rate of fire, shooting anything from "mercy" bullets (nonlethal, with knockout drugs) to demolition charges. (BTW, back in the 80's, a really, really bad movie about Doc Savage was made. Don't see it.)

But my favorites are the personal weapons from the novels of the late Edward E. Smith, one of the writers who popularized "space opera" science fiction several decades ago. In his "Skylark" series, the characters had "X-Plosive" pistol rounds, rated from from Mark 1 to Mark X. From the description, a Mark I went off about like a pound of C4. When fired at a 900+ yard target, the explosion of a Mark V was enough to stagger the shooter. After shooting a Mark V, the lead character said "I don't want to shoot any Mark X's around here!"

It's hard to find well thought-out weapons in today's sci-fi, especially in the movies. It seems like the director just says "Give the guys ray guns" or something. (A laser crossbow?) Or they take things like Ruger Mini-14's and dress them up.
 
The Starship Troopers movie is especially guilty of this. They have interstellar starships, but the best small arm they can come up with is a bullpup assault rifle with an attached shotgun, that can't even be switched for a left-handed shooter? Not to mention the lack of an aiming apparatus.

Yikes.

But then, the silly guns were probably the least stupid thing about that awful movie.
 
Gene Wolfe, who is an engineer in "real life", has posited some interesting weapons in his various novels. In particular, in his Book of the New Sun and Book of the Long Sun series', he has some really interesting ideas. Especially after having heard him speak and having read several of his essays, his ideas actually make a good deal of sense and aren't out of technological reach. Just one example: Cavalry fell from use because repeating firearms, especially machineguns, would cut down the cavalry when they would attempt a mounted charge. Armored vehicles marked the final nail in their coffin. Yet today, genetic engineering is a hot field. Suppose a mount (he calls them destriers) is developed using material from horses and cheetahs. Now you have a mount that can run 60mph. Give it kevlar barding. It can graze instead of needing motor fuel. It is far more nimble than any Humvee. Suddenly mounted cavalry isn't so outmoded...
 
You know Golgo, I'd never thought of it like that. Imagine a cavalry mount that was faster than a modern armored personnel carrier and had about the same amount of armor; it'd be a lot quieter than a diesel engine, too.

Hmm....interesting concept, if nothing else! :D
 
An old Timothy Zahn series (first one called "Cobra") involved a set of highly trained specialists who had, among other weapons, some pretty powerful lasers implanted in their pinkies. Small, easily concealable, and always at hand :)
 
What about the Cerebral Bore used in Turok 2? I'm also very partial to the shock rifle, minigun, lightning gun, and the Redeemer from Unreal. Yeah, I know, video games, but...

And the MP5/M203 was turned into an M4/M203 with the Blue Shift graphics pack, unfortunately.

What about the flame pistols from I think it was Logan's Run?
 
A couple of my favorites:

Rick Deckard's sidearm from Blade Runner

The Tribarrels from David Drake's Hammer's Slammers books....... Strike that, I want the whole tank.

An old Timothy Zahn series (first one called "Cobra") involved a set of highly trained specialists who had, among other weapons, some pretty powerful lasers implanted in their pinkies. Small, easily concealable, and always at hand
Click to expand...

Don't forget the anti-armor lasers that they had inplanted in the long bones of their left legs.
 
The ULTIMATE was something they came up with for one episode only towards end of Deep Space Nine.

This was a rifle firing plain "old fashioned" bullets, with a difference: at the end of the barrel is a teleporter device. The aiming system has an eyepiece, and there's a "depth view adjustment" that lets you look forward or backwards right through walls. Once you have it aimed and the depth adjusted, firing causes the viewfinder to send a signal to the teleporter on how far to throw it.

Upshot: you could be standing on one side of a space station and hit a target on the other side of the station through 20 or whatever walls and the bullet would never impact anything before creaming the target.

Also very late in the DS:9 series, we started to see phaser rifles with genuine sights. And in this season's episode of the newest series, one of the commandos on board fired a sniper energy weapon at a guy through dense fog/dust with a popup tubular scope that per the view through the scope (which they showed), was clearly infrared or similar (the target bad guy who was firing a big gun blindly glowed orange).

That same commando team has tonfas (police-style batons) that have an electric contact stunner on one end.
 
The space Battle axes from EE "Doc" Smith Lensmen series and the portable blasters.

The Powered Suits from The book Starship Troopers, I want a Scout suit.


There was a series that had the Heroine using a needle gun which fired a flash frozen needle powered by compressed gas. It had a dial set in the side to set the lethality of the liquid of the needle.
 
Top of the list is a Star Wars Lightsaber. Second would be the gun used in the Tom Selleck movie Runaway with the bullets that are mini-cruise missiles that track the target and chase him down before going kaboom. Also like the guns used by the judges in Judge Dread.
 
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