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Firearms in science fiction novels...

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Elmer Snerd said:
It's more like a couple thousand meters per second, driven by artificial gravity technology. Military pulsers may use explosive darts. There are also flechette guns which are basically uber-shotguns that drive bunches-o'-projectiles with artificial gravity.
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I THOUGHT it was meters, but I couldn't remember offhand. Thanks for the save. All but one of my Honor Harrington books are back in the States, so I haven't read them in a while. :(


arthurcw said:
love the Honor Harrington Series as well. Best use of a weapon in there was her sneaking her Old Chemical Powered Slug Thrower (1911 replica) right by a BG casue they were only scanning for energy powered weapons.
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Yeah. :D
 
Don't know if graphic novels count, but one gun I liked was the Solenoid Quench Gun from Battle Angel Alita.

The gun is about eight feet long, and has a foot-long magazine. It's described as an "Electro-Magnetic Acceleration Launcher" firing a "Solenoid AP Round" at 5KM/Sec. The power required must be supplied by a larger supply aircraft overhead, and the gun can hover like the craft, aiding in recoil absorption and targeting.
 
William C. Dietz had throwaway Glocks in "Bodyguard." IIRC, the main character carried a 9mm BHP.
 
How 'bout some really big guns? The 200cm Hellbores mounted by the Mark XXXIII Bolo pumped out more than 5 megatons/sec. and were equal to the armament carried by a heavy battlecruiser. Gotta love those Boloes. :D They could take out spacecraft in a "medium" orbit.
 
Bolos rock - megaton/sec firepower!
Honor Harrington is fantastic...wish he'd write another one.
An odd duck weapon is in the 13 Spaceborne series, carbines that use batteries to fire snippets of wire, off spools, called "zippers". Also had Dupoy "cough guns", rocket assisted sniper rifles.

Anyone like how Brian Daley managed to slip in an antique in his excellent trilogy of Hobart Floyt and Alacrity Fitzhugh,i.e., Floyts' Webly, loaded with "Chicago popcorn"? Great sci-fi series.
 
tellner said:
Steve Perry's spetsdods...
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Bingo. Small wrist-mounted trigger-in-the-palm dart guns, loaded with an instant nerve toxin that crippled the target for 3 years. The perfect non-lethal weapon for concealment and rapid, instinctive aiming.

They are a prominent feature in a book called The Man Who Never Missed, which is an outstanding story about what one man can accomplish against an oppressive and overwhelming government.
 
Wow, this thread has longer legs than I expected! Thanks for all the great replies, tons of cool stuff I hadn't heard of. LoneCoon, good reference on "Snow Crash". "Reason" was one of the more high-concept "guns" I've encountered in a book, had I remembered it at the time would have definitely gone in my initial post. Thanks again, everyone!
 
Neal Stephenson's (Snow Crash author) gun descriptions are always great. My favorite is the long, loving description of the water-cooled Vickers machine gun in Cryptonomicon. It was a gun with "infrastructure". :cool:
 
kjeff50cal - ha! Was that in the book, or only in the 1980 miniseries? I vaguely remembered the bee gun but wasn't sure if my recollections were accurate as it was a fairly bizarre concept for a gun. It's the second-most famous bee weapon I can think of, after the dogs guarding Mr. Burns' mansion in "The Simpsons", which of course had bees in their mouths, and when they barked they shot bees at you.
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I read the book a millenia ago in middle-school but the bee-gun was in the book (I think it was used against the Second Expedition).
 
also remember, the moon doesn't spin like the earth, the bit that is facing the earth now is facing the earth all the time.

This means that whatever is exposed to the sun has a LONG time to be exposed to the sun, and hence build up to 110c, or whatever it was.

This is totally different than hopping off of a spaceship and have your gun immediately get unbearably hot or cold
 
Do wargames count?
As the Space Marines from Warhammer 40K have some awsome weapons such as Bolter that fire .75 caliber self-propeled missiles that explode on impact, and have full body armor powered by a small nuclear powerplant on their back
 
armoredman said:
Honor Harrington is fantastic...wish he'd write another one.
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Indeed. I was pleasantly surprised to see him maintain quality writing through an ELEVENTH novel. Any idea when the next one is actually due? Since "At All Costs" came out only last November I have the sinking feeling it's going to be a while.
 
Lois Bujold has a nice assortment in her "Miles Vorkosigan" stories

  • Sonic Stunner - shoot first, ask questions later
  • Nerve disruptor - fry anything coated in myelin, a horror weapon
  • Plasma Arc - when it absolutely, positively has to be french-fried in the next half second
  • Needle Gun - full auto flechette pistol
  • Gravitic Imploder - too horrible for pictures

One of the coolest things about it is that over time countermeasures are developed for each weapon. The race between offense and defense continues.
 
William C. Dietz had throwaway Glocks in "Bodyguard." IIRC, the main character carried a 9mm BHP
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Are you positive? I seem to recall them being something else, maybe Beretta? It's been a while since I've read it, and I can't seem to find the book unfortunately. I do seem to remember a reference to a .44 Magnum, though.

What I really enjoyed were the weapons of Halo and Halo 2. The M6D pistol, firing 12.7mm x 40 "semi-armor-piercing, high-explosive rounds" was quite popular. But I always thought that the M90 Shotgun would make for an interesting real-world weapon. Firing 8 gauge 3.5in Magnum buckshot, it would need a really good compensator/recoil pad, methinks, to be comfortable to shoot.
 
Do wargames count?
As the Space Marines from Warhammer 40K have some awsome weapons such as Bolter that fire .75 caliber self-propeled missiles that explode on impact, and have full body armor powered by a small nuclear powerplant on their back
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Yeah, I forgot about them. In Dan Abnett's "Traitor General", Commissar Gaunt has two chrome bolt pistols.

The nastiest 40k guns I can think of are the Tyranid guns, and the Necron Gauss Weapons.

The 'Nid's guns are living symbiotes that are part of their wielders. Each of them have nasty methods of killing people.

The Barbed Strangler fires a seed-pod that almost instantly grows into a lethal plant-like organism that rips apart almost anything in it's way.

The Deathspitter fires symbiotic creatures that are launched screaming towards the target, exploding into an extremely corrosive acid on impact.

The Fleshborer fires borer beetles that eat thier way into a target until they die.

The Devourer fires malformed Rippers that eat through neurological tissue, quickly yet painfully eating their way to the brain and spinal cords.

The Gauss guns, on the other hand, are nasty in yet another way. Each of the guns (Flayer, Blaster, Cannon, Heavy Cannon, Flux Arc), work on the same principle, pulling a target towards it on a molecular level. This effective way of killing people flays them one layer at a time, giving a vicious yet quickly-ended death.
 
Heinlein had S&W M36s, M1911s, and a .25 Beretta (can't remember if it was a M950 or a M21) just to name a few handguns off the top of my head.

H. Beam Piper featured a 10mm Colt-Argentine, and numerous other firearms up to 90mm in his stories.

Give me a powergun any day, though. 1cm SMG for preference.:D
 
In David Brin’s The Practice Effect, all weapons are a hoot-if they have had enough practice. I could go for a palmable needler that functions when fed any available scrap metal.
 
Not exactly firearms, but Frank Herbert's "Dune" featured shields being defeated by old-fashioned and out dated nuclear weapons. How silly to forget them.
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Hmm? The use of atomics against humans is a major no-no (planetary obliteration is the punishment.) The only use of an atomic I can recall is near the end of Dune when an atomic was used to blow a hole in the Shield Wall to permit a major sandstorm into the basin where the opposing forces were located to decimate their shields.
 
As I recall, in "Dune", shields would stop projectiles above a certain speed. If struck by the beam from a "lasgun", the result could be anything from the mutual destruction of the shield wearer and shooter to a blast that would, after the fact, be forensically indistinguishable from a nuclear explosion. Kind of a convoluted backdrop by the author, but it did allow him to create a plausible feudal future where martial arts and edged weapons were the state of the art, despite the existence of firearms, nuclear explosives, and powerful lasers.
 
I'm a ghosthead,and I had to mention this.

The Ultimate weapon has to be a Proton Pack from the movie Ghostbusters

Those things can go on for 5,000 years (That's the half life of the power cells)
 
Hello, My name is Kaylee and I am a geek.
Hi Kaylee
It all started so innocently. My parents took me to see The Empire Strikes Back when I was seven. Next thing I knew I had a crush on a whiny little blonde kid with a laser sword and was listening to wisdom from a little green rubber puppet. Then things got really bad...
:p

I have to admit, the "Listen to Reason" bit from Snow Crash has to be my favorite firearm discussion bit ever in a novel. :D

This is from Erma Felna - a story I found when I was like 12 once upon a time. Lots of cats and mice and foxes and suchlike whooping up on bunny rabbits. With spaceships. And guns. :)

The neat thing was, the author was giving everybody M4s before M4s were cool:

erma_m4.gif



So far as any sci-fi weapon.. I'd trade my Smith in for one of those little "cricket" phasers any day of the week. Something that can do anything from make someone a little woozy to vaporize 'em entirely, all in tiny flat little package? Talk about the ultimate CCW. :D (of course... lightsabers sound like more fun. :p )

And one of these days.. I just gotta build a "Firefly" pistol around a Smith 36, or an M41 around an SBR'd Thompson and 870. Now that would be a fun range toy. :p
 
Wes Janson,

Concerning "Bodyguard" by William C. Dietz: They were called "Glock Disposables" on page eight of the paperback. There may have been others, though. Also, a correction: the main character carried "something" chambered in .38 Super, Presumably a 1911, but I'm not sure. I doubt BHP. :p
 
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