Firearms in science fiction novels...

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statelineblues, the "Realtime" series is one of the best I have ever read. I suggess you Amazon Vinge's works and find them.

___POTENTIAL MINOR SPOLERS______

There's a short novella about the "Ungoverned Lands" which is sort of a peaceful and high-tech "L. Neil Smith Libertarian/Anarchist vision of North America" that comes after the tinkerers defeat the Peace Authority in "The Peace War". There's another "war" brewing when the more traditionaly governed nation-state of the New Mexico Republic makes a move on the Libertarian "Ungoverned Lands" of Kansas and Nebraska on a trumped-up basis.

The farmers of Kansas have contracted with a security corporation that calls itself the "Michigan State Police" taking the name of the pre-Peace War institution. And they send one "cop" to stop the New Mexican Army. Fortunately some of the wealthier and more paranoid farmers are very, very, very, well armed. LOL. He was sent more as a negotiator, as the New Mexicans are unprepared for what they're getting into...

The third part of the series, "Marroned in Realtime" deals with the aftermath of "The Singularity", the point when Humanity's technology self-reinforced at an exponential rate to reach a runaway point, and humanity either evolved into abstraction from the viewpoint of normal humans, or went extinct, whatever happened dosen't really matter, as we're not smart enough to find out.

Since the time of the Peace War, various people had been "bobbled", (think like a Larry Niven'esque stasis field) for crimes, by being attacked, or to save them selves from emergencies like crashing spaceships, or even just as an easy way to travel into the future. These people are at various states of increasingly high technology depending on how close to the singularity they got bobbled.

After popping out into an abandoned and empty earth after the singularity took place, they band together to use thier bobbles to travel forward in time and collect other bobbled survivors. Some characters from the previous books come together after being bobbled, several millions of years in the future.

The higher-tech people are very, very, high tech. They have robots, nanotech that can make anything they want, AI that can design it for them, and thier "mansions" convert into spaceships that are capable of everything from near lightspeed interstellar travel to living at the bottom of the ocean. They don't really carry weapons, as they have unobtrusive robot bodygaurds following them everywhere, able to unleash God-knows-what if trouble were to start.

Then there is a "murder". When the village "bobbles up" to freeze themselves to make a jump a few hundred years into the future to collect some other survivors that are about to un-bobble, one of the leaders is marooned by being left outside, to die a natural death surviving on her own on an Earth where evolution has changed plants and animals, and even the continents have shifted...

Very cool stuff.

Vinge's "Fire Apon the Deep", and "A Deepness In The sky" are separate, and placed in the ramscoop trader galaxy of the "Queng Ho" , but they too are some of te best SF I've ever read.
 
With all the mention of Heinlein, I'm surprised that the shoulder mounted tactical warhead launcher (I think the Maurader suits were mentioned) weren't mentioned.

Also Simon Green's Deathstalker books have Disruptors that I absolutely hated until I figured out why he had written them the way he did. Also it had the "Darkvoid Device" which had been used to destroy a thousand suns.

James Alan Gardner's Expendable (and subsequent series of books) had sonic disruptors, because anyone who willfully killed another sentient would not be allowed space travel (far advanced alien races destroy muderers upon leaving orbit).
 
How could we possibly forget the still-in-beta Reason from Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash?" The Deliverator also had some sort of funky little self-defense railgun that recharged via the cigarette lighter socket of his car. It was never named, but it sounded cool.

And Raven had that H-Bomb warhead wired up in the sidecar of his bike...
 
Various comments:

Larry Niven had dart guns with anesthetic for organleggers, and stunners for dueling.

Heinlein's Beyond This Horizon had duels. Most people use "clean" energy type weapons. The main character uses a .45.

Hyunchback: Your Moon physics are inaccurate. The weapon will heat/cool depending on exposure to sunlight/open space. An enclosed holster will protect it. No atmospheric O2 is needed for propellant.

Devonai: sounds interesting, but you're running up against atmospheric friction at that muzzle velocity--accuracy crap, velocity rapidly dropping to current velocities.

The concept of the guy shooting himself in the back also assumes a great circle and no coriolis effect. It's LOW on the Moon, but it is not NONEXISTENT.

Dean Ing's "Chiller" in 7mm was awesome. Integrally silenced, CO2 cooled, CO2 breaks the mechanism, traps the finger of an unauthorized shooter.

Dune didn't have shields defeated by nukes, but by wind-driven dust.

Drake's powerguns are effectively plasma rockets--energy turning a copper disc into a light-speed blast. The problem with the physics is that the recoil would launch things into orbit. However, they are about the coolest thing out there.

No one has mentioned:

Phased plasma rifle in 40 watt range

and the pulse rifle from Aliens

ALL of Bond's movie weaponry was cool (Except the crap in Moonraker).

Tim Zahn had the "Cordon Sanitaire" story. Small projectiles, toxic to most life forms, in durable guns left lying around. Settle the planet, and anyone holding it (including apelike things) gets a chemically induced urge to shoot you. Makes settling difficult.

Niven had the gyrojet in one of his stories.

Thanks for the mention of mine. I suspect we'll still be using rifles in 500 years. We were using them 500 years ago...

I suspect we'll be using knives in 500 years. We were using them half a million years ago...
 
Sorry, but the BEST weapon in Sci-fi history wasn't a projectile thrower, or even a laser. In "Starship Troopers", Robert Heinlein introduced the thirty second talking bomb. You toss it, and in mid-air it starts squawking, "I'm a 30 second talking bomb! 29, 28, 27..." Just imagine the psychological ramifications of dropping one of those into a crowded bunker.....:what::eek: Gives me the cold-spined heebie-jeebies just thinking of it.
 
Sorry for not reading all of this thread, just had to respond:

The big question: How do you send a soldier home to civilian life with enough non-removable weapons to out-gun a company and a computer implanted in his brain that can open fire on it's own if IT feels threatened.
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How do you? Very politely?


William C. Dietz had throwaway Glocks in "Bodyguard."
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Throwaway Glocks? Whatever else would you do with them? :neener:
 
It wouldn't surprise me to learn that Glocks are recyclable.
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Heh. You know I'm just kidding around with my Glock-loving buddies. I mean, there's a lot of good that's come from the Glock line. Like a Springer XD for example...






KIDDING!
 
Devonai: sounds interesting, but you're running up against atmospheric friction at that muzzle velocity--accuracy crap, velocity rapidly dropping to current velocities.
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Thanks for the feedback. I will consider the limitations that may exist within my own parameters for the technology.
 
Devonai: I have the numbers around here somewhere, but in Earth's atmosphere (or any similarly dense), once you hit about 4000 FPS, velocity drops off FAST. Within 100 yards, it's down to 3000 anyway. So you don't gain significant range, do use a lot more propellant, and potentially disrupt the projectile with friction if it's not FMJ.

Above that velocity, all kinds of weird #@$ starts to happen. You're reaching a velocity to density curve that starts to create massive oscillations right out of the muzzle. Then the velocity drops even faster.

Base bleed can improve this a little, but also affects accuracy.

You should hear me take apart proponents of laser weapons at panels, playing Devil's Advocate (For the General Staff). : "So, for an investment of $6 billion R&D I can get a man-portable weapon that will kill an enemy soldier at up to 2000 meters...when 98% of engagements are under 300 meters, and I ALREADY have a weapon that will do that at $600/unit. No thanks.";-)

John and I cheated for The Hero and used gravity-shot beads with on board stabilization and force fields to maintain velocity/stability. Now, if we can just figure out how to DO THAT...
 
I liked the MP-35 Infantry Rifle from John Scalzi's Old Man's War.

"it can create and fore on the fly six different projectiles or beams. These include rifle bullets and shot of both explosive and nonexplosive varieties, which can be fired semiautomatically or automatically, low-yield grenades, low-yield guided rockets, high-pressure flammable liquid, and microwave energy beams. This is possible throught the use of high-density nano-robotic ammunition"

My favorite weapon in a game was in an old shooter called MDK, though it wasn't a gun. It was called The World's Most Interesting Bomb. When you threw it in the vicinity of the enemy, they would come out from cover and gather around it, jabbering and waving for others to come over. After all the enemy in the area were gathered around it, the predictable thing occured.
 
I recall a muzzle velocity of 6500 fps for US 120mm sabot ammo...

At some point you might want a heat shield to prevent atmospheric degradation of a truly high speed projectile.

Projectile weapons will be around for a very long time indeed.

I still want a few of Drake's power guns, though.
 
Let's see what nobody has mentioned....

In "First Lensman", Doc Smith had the protagonists switch guns...from Lewiston blasters to pistols. The reason being that pistols were more precise - and they were working to foil an murder attempt at a state function.

But I'm shocked that nobody has mentioned the Gun from the book version of "Logan's Run". A revolver...shooting multi-purpose rounds. Needler (knockout), Tangler (net launcher), Ripper (armor piercing), Vapor (tear gas), Nitro (high explosive), and Homer (heat-seeking...the killing round).
 
Already mentioned, the self-drawing pistols from "The Deathworld Trilogy"

The gun is worn in a "holster" attached to the forearm.
When you form your hand into a grip, the gun senses it and shoves the gun into your hand on the end of a cable.
If you hold your trigger finger in the right position, the gun fires the instant it hits your hand.
With training, the draw is instinctive. Sense trouble and the gun is in your hand before you know you need it.
The gun is also capable of full-auto.

From the series "The Man Who Never Missed", also mentioned, the hero sets out to bring down an interstellar empire.
His weapon: "Spetsdods.
These are dart guns that are glued to the back of the hand.
When you point at a target, the end of your finger is near a tube projecting out of the device.
It senses your finger and fires a dart.
The darts contain toxins that can cause death, short-term paralysis, or LONG-Term paralysis.

In the "Honor Harrington" series, Harrington looses her arm in battle. Her "paranoid" father not only builds her a new mechanical arm, this one contains a gun. In an emergency, it simply shoots her fore finger off.

In an unfinished series by David Gerrold, the soldiers are armed with assault rifles that fire needles at high velocity.
The user wears a helmet with a built-in sight that cycles through various enhancing sights that prevent the enemy from camouflaging himself.
 
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