Ready, aim, pew pew! This week the A Star to Steer Her By hosts are packing heat, and some of them are super hot. Weapons across the science fiction genre are some of the most powerful, most creative, most futuristic devices ever thought up, and they come in all shapes and sizes. We’ve got handheld weapons, implanted weapons, characters with special powers, and the occasional overpowered nuclear device to annihilate everything in our path, so choose your weapon wisely.
Strap on your shoulder holster for these bad boys. Read on below for our favorite methods of fucking up our opponents, and listen to the full death match over on this week’s podcast episode (zap on over to 50:18). En garde!
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Ames’s picks
I’ve brought up The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy a whole bunch of times (and I’ll probably do it again!), so you won’t be surprised that I am so tickled by the idea that Vogon poetry is effectively used as a torture weapon. It’s such a hilarious concept that there is poetry out there in the universe that is SO BAD that it actively hurts people. I’ve also got the softest spot for the original Doom videogame, which has some pretty fun weapons options, but none greater than the OG BFG9000 that packs an immense wallop! This plasma gun on steroids takes huge bites out of all the monsters (and you know I love those monsters) even if it guzzles your energy cells, but how can you not love the game’s notorious “Big Fuckin’ Gun”? An even bigger fuckin’ gun (possibly the BIGGEST fuckin’ gun) is the whole damn Death Star from Star Wars. This moon-sized mobile battle station is entirely dedicated to its one massive superlaser, capable of vaporizing entire planets. Alas, poor Alderaan. We hardly knew ye.
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Jake’s picks
After he put the Ecto-1 from Ghostbusters on his favorite forms of transportation list, Jake does not disappoint in choosing the Proton pack for his favorite weapon. With their colorful streams of charged ions giving a nearly uncontrollable lightning effect, these kludgey-looking ghost blasters are iconic and enthralling to see in action. As long as you don’t cross the streams, at least. Let’s also hear it (literally) for the Weirding module from David Lynch’s Dune. It is just peak Lynch to introduce such a bizarre weapon into an already bizarre canon, allowing the characters to attack each other with sounds and gifting the audience with some absolutely over-the-top yelling sequences. And we’ve got more from the Star Wars universe to highlight (pun intended only if you like it), with the classic Lightsaber. Chris already did a whole post on lightsabers a while back after The Rise of Skywalker came out, which speaks to how instantly recognizable this futuristic sword replacement is, providing audiences with action-packed swordsplay in a science fiction setting for decades to come.
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Chris’s picks
All the types of cyberware you can upgrade your character with in the game Cyberpunk 2027 are so imaginatively advanced that no one would ever think to develop them, but specifically the Mantis blades are absolutely trippy. In a world where people augment themselves with all kinds of tech, having blades implanted into your forearms to use as melee weapons is somehow one of the most visibly noteworthy in its badass weirdness. The whole joke surrounding the Noisy cricket in Men in Black plays so well. After seeing all the massive firearms that the agents have at their disposal, it seems infantilizing to give Agent J this wimpy little toy… until we see what this miniscule firearm can do! We don’t talk comics a lot here, but Chris would like to consider the Power ring from the Green Lantern series. These overpowered pieces of jewelry are more magic wand than traditional weapon. It’d be quicker to tell you what they can’t do than to list all the ways these things can be used as weapons, generate weapons, and probably order you a coffee all at the same time.
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Caitlin’s picks
Caitlin’s gotta agree that the Lightsaber is a top-tier science fiction weapon. What kid hasn’t played with a toy version and done the sound effects themselves? These space swords are ubiquitous but also so specifically emblematic of the Star Wars franchise that no other media can even hold a candle. Here’s also more agreement on the absolutely perfect gag that is the Noisy cricket in Men in Black. Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith just play that reveal so well that it is laugh-out-loud funny for something you’d expect to be underpowered to knock Agent J off his feet. Even the name of it is *chef’s kiss*. The final weapon to get its fair shake (though not literally, cuz it looks damn sharp) is the Glave from the seriously underrated Krull. We may have a soft spot for this flick because of our affection for Ken Marshall, who plays Michael Eddington in DS9, but this entirely impractical five-bladed weapon is just too eye-catching to pass up!
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Don’t worry, y’all. It’s just a flesh wound. We’re putting our weapons back into their lockers for now, but we’ve got more great sci-fi content on the way, so make sure you’re practicing your quick draws. You can also keep up with our rewatch coverage of Star Trek: Discovery on the podcast over at SoundCloud or wherever you listen. And challenge us to a duel over on Facebook and Bluesky. Them’s fighting words!
This is a public domain concept from the short story The Black Lamp by Sterner St. Paul Meek, originally published in the August 1931 edition of Astounding Stories of Super-Science magazine, which you can read for free here on Project Gutenberg.
This weapon concept is 100% free to use for literally anything you want. That's what Public Domain means.
It's a black light(?) that acts like a shroud or something and covers up electrical lights so you can't see, compared to putting black ink a bottle that had red ink. The red ink is still there, but you can't see it anymore.
It also causes "paralysis of the brain" as well as making you unable to talk while you're under its effect. The "paralysis of the brain" will make you comatose if exposed long enough.
It is cured by exposure to sunlight or other ultraviolet lights.
A small exposure makes you a little confused and makes you not able to talk above a breathy whisper and requires around an hour of standing under a UV light before you can talk audibly again. The confusion fades as soon as you have protection in the form of a vitriline helmet.
Those exposed to higher concentrations of the lamp have to be laid in sunlight and UV lamps for probably several days.
If they didn't know how the cure worked, we can assume people would eventually wake up on their own just from regular sunlight and other lights in whatever hospital they're in.
At a higher level, possibly with the help of other technology, the lamp can be turned into a ray weapon (they love their rays in the 1920s and 30s) with a red bean will turn living objects into glass statue that glow red from the inside. No known cure or treatment for this version yet.
It hasn't been revealed the exact nature of this lamp yet but I'll keep you posted.
Edit: almost forgot -- evidence of its use is that any non-vitriline glass nearby will become opaque. Short exposure makes it "foggy" like it's just dirty, longer, intense exposure makes the glass almost completely opaque.
I've been messing around with Blender on-and-off for a while but this is the first thing I've done that feels somewhat complete: an old marksmen's las-rifle.
I forget where I read it, but somebody once wrote something to the effect of: "I'm going to start learning Blender" is the artist's equivalent of "I'm going to start hitting the gym." I think about that a lot...
