Looks like we’ve started a tradition. In the last On Writing post I was asked this:
A New Writing Question:
Hi Larry. Here is a new writing question. What would be the best approach for writing about futuristic weapons (say 200-300 years in the future)? How does one figure out what those weapons would look like, act like, sound like, etc.? I look at authors like David Weber and can only shake my head at how they figure out weapon calibers, etc.
Are there certain limitations and factors to consider that would hold no matter when a weapon is designed?
Let’s limit it to “average” army weapons (e.g. pistols, assualt rifles, sniper rifles etc.).
Thanks,
Scott
That’s an awesome question, but I’m no expert. I’m not really a sci-fi writer (yet), but I do know a bunch about guns. And as the philosopher Ron Perlman warns us in Fallout, “and war never changes.” (because war has always consisted of hitting giant radioactive scorpions with sledgehammers), regardless of tech, some small arm’s features are universal.
There were already some very smart responses in the comments. From Tim P:
The last 200-300 years have seen major changes to firearms, it would be very hard to work out what the next 200-300 years will hold. It’s possible we’ll just have fancier versions of what’s used Today, or we might have entirely switched to something completely new. Probably the most important part is to make sure the ergonomics of the weapon make sense. Some of the Star Trek phasers (I think NG) are examples of doing this wrong. They where shaped in such a way that it would have been almost impossible to point them with any precision. Obviously more relevant to TV and movies that books though, but it still applies if you’re going to describe the usage of the weapon in detail.
I totally agree on the phasers. Really, space marines will never go into combat with dust busters. I don’t care if your pistol can be set with power levels from tickle to disintegrate to hand grenade (as the plot requires), you still need to aim the damn things. And since I didn’t see any sort of targeting system built into their comfy looking space-jammies, I’m guessing they did a lot of point shooting instruction at Star Fleet Academy.
There are a few universals. You need to aim it somehow. Hitting stuff is helpful. Ergonomics are nice too. I love sci-fi where guns in the future will have no stocks but are really large. If the show is really forward thinking, they’ll put lots of glowing lights on the weapon, because A. it looks cool. and B. you never have to wait for the enemy to spot you.
Another potential fault would be to make the limitations of your sci-fi super weapon such that modern weapons would be better. Sure your super-laser will vaporise people with a single shot, but it’s super fragile, only has one shot before it needs to sit for five minutes to recharge, and costs a fortune; why not just give your soldiers AK-47s? Obviously this is a hard mistake to make, but I have seen it occasionally
Once again, Tim nails it. I remember one series I read as a kid where they were using small arms (some sort of plasma weapon, if I recall correctly) but the barrels would get super hot and melt, and needed to be ejected and replaced every few shots… Okay, I don’t care if your pistol makes the other dude explode, if he’s got a couple of friends with rocks, you’re screwed. That is not a step up. Realistically, if there was a weapon system like that, and it was super powerful and line of sight capable of smoking a tank, then you would run one in a squad, with several other guys shooting guns that didn’t need significant parts replaced every few seconds.
You all may know him as the opening quote guy from Monster Hunter International, but Dillis Freeman is also a smart gun guy and writer. He also gave some great advice:
Beyond physics and the tradeoffs inherent in any man portable system, there are two questions I’ve found helpful when “designing” weapons: 1) what is the purpose of the weapon and 2) what kind of society/character designed it? In some circumstances, they are related. Is the society one where function, cost and simplicity the main goal? In that case, you might end up with something like an AK: cheap, shoddy to some, yet very reliable. The weapon’s purpose is to be sufficiently cheap to arm mass numbers, yet effective enough that it will do its job. Is the society one where harming another “excessively” or “unnecessarily” frowned upon? You could have a 22nd Century Hague convention which limited the nature of ammuniton. Or perhaps all weapons will require safety interlocks to insure only certain people could use them. Such a society would also lean heavily towards less than lethal weapons (which shows how purpose and societal background are related).
You see that now in the modern world. Many nations are currently trying to develop alternative “less-lethal” methods of fighting. The main reason being societal, because you know, killing your enemies is messy and gets on the news. I’ve seen glue sprayers, all manner of OC, sound wave thingies, paralysis agents, or even really bad music at loud volumes. Meanwhile non-cuddly countries are trying to figure out how to modernize AKs or plastic AR-18s with air bursting grenades.
As with everything, research is key. The one thing you don’t want to do is to violate physics and common sense without very good reason. Anything projectile launcher will have recoil commensurate with the physics involved unless it’s a self-propelled round or has some handwavium going on (nothing like reading about recoilless rail guns or small arms throwing objects at relativistic speeds without ill effect on the shooter to reveal that the author either misunderstood what was happening or left out a step like “inertial dampening” when describing the scene. If the rest of the technology doesn’t reflect that such things exist, then the former answer is more likely than the latter).
Way over my little accountant brain. (but I learned my accounting on the street!). Just remember, the mack-daddy of all sci-fi said There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. Energy isn’t free, recoil sucks, and somebody has to carry the damn thing.
In all honesty, it’s important to remember that the more things change, the more they remain the same. As others have stated, we’ve reached a certain pinnacle of small arms. Most development now is evolutionary rather revolutionary, and the really revolutionary stuff (i.e. directed energy weapons) has some significant drawbacks. If Han Solo hadn’t had a very compact power source and highly effective energy projection and heat dispersal capabilities, along with some mechanism for handling considerable recoil (even energy weaons will display recoil), then he would have been carrying something a lot closer to a Glock than a blaster.
Star Wars is the ultimate example of Rule of Cool. None of the technology in Star Wars makes a lick of sense, but we love it anyway, because it is awesome. Hell, the ultimate force in the universe is a space monk with a lightning sword who fights dudes wearing bulky armor that doesn’t actually do anything, shooting guns from the hip that fire beams of energy at sixty miles an hour. That’s a neat trick, blocking blaster shots. But if you were trying to write something realistic, let me introduce you to the FN M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon, Mr. Jedi. BRRRRAAAAAPPPPP.
Ultimately, though, it’s your story. It can be interesting to start with what you want your character to have (a Smith & Glock 2.5mm coil gun firing lexan slugs with dial a yield anti-matter cores) and then say “why is this guy carrying that weapon and what kind of society and tech will support it”? By the way, here is an excellent site that goes into some of the issues surrounding sci fi weapons. http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3l.html
Dillis gives some excellent advice there. Remember when I talked about regular guns, the characters are still more important. Though everyone knows the S&G 2.5mm is inferior to the 3mm CorreiaTech Combat Wombat.
Right now we’re using projectile weapons because they work and we haven’t found anything better. At different points in time, something new and exciting has come along, like flechettes in the ‘70s, or caseless ammo in the ‘80s, but those inventions had drawbacks so they didn’t replace our regular projectiles. Once something new comes along that works better, and is affordable, then we’ll switch. If you can figure out what that is and you’ve got the engineering degree to make it happen, you’ll make a lot more money selling the design to ATK than you will writing novels.
One thing that I’ve talked with length about with Nightcrawler (because he’s really way more of a sci-fi guy than I am) is the effects of armor. Armor tech for individual soldiers is advancing at a much faster pace than small arms. Really, if you were armed with WW2 small arms, you’re not lagging that far behind. (I’d even go so far to say that our modern primary advantage over a group of 1945 GIs would be Aimpoints). Heck, today we’re battling enemies using a gun from 1947 with our design from 1963, and they’re hanging in there okay. But look at the difference armor has made. Materials science has come a long way in recent years, and we’re now routinely surviving hits that would have killed our ancestors.
I expect this to continue. I think armor will get better, faster, than the small arms for the near future. There is some stuff out there right now that people are working on that will blow your minds. So when we get to the point that it gets too difficult to drop somebody wearing head to toe, mechanically augmented, squishy, light weight, nearly magical armor, then we’re going to see some changes to small arms. Nightcrawler’s personal feeling is that means bigger, deeper penetrating bullets, which would be an ironic reversal of firearm’s evolution over the last century.
So I suppose if I were writing sci-fi, and I wanted to invent a weapon to go along with my world, I’d just make sure it fit. It needs to be manageable. Now if your characters are genetic mutants or wearing power armor, make it huge and stick a chainsaw on it. But if they’re still human, it needs to be manageable by a human. It isn’t going to be big, unwieldy, and stupid looking.
Shit, never mind.
I do know one thing. If you set a book a couple hundred years in the future, even if it takes place on another planet, and you gave somebody a Kalashnikov, I wouldn’t bat an eye.
Jerry Pournelle has addressed this in some of his SF. IIRC, in his CoDominium universe, soldiers are still armed with rifles, but intermediate power assault rifles have been discarded in favor of full power battle rifles due to the development of “Nemourlon” body armor which can defeat rounds like 7.62×39 or 5.56×45.
Interestingly, he wrote this a couple of decades before the introduction of stuff like our current body armor with SAPI plates, etc.
I agree that the most likely near term solution to the effectiveness of modern armor will be the return of full size battle rifles.
The guy’s gotta get out of his supersuit sometime… Or else that’s gonna be one smelly supersuit. heh.
Or someone will drop a rock, a wall or a whole buildng on him. Or run him over with a truck or waste him with an IED. Or snipe his weak spots and let him bleed out.
That’s gonna be a pretty short, short story.
Simon R. Green addresses this in his Deathstalker books. He’s got energy weapons that are only good for a few shots before they need to recharge, and the government has actually EFFECTIVELY outlawed projectile weapons–and so the aristocracy has become proficient in swordsmanship. It’s like he said “I want swordplay in this, because that would be AWESOME AND TOTALLY COOL, dude, but, shit, it’s in the future, so how do I handicap my weapons so my characters need to use swords too?”
Aha! I’d forgotten the tidbit about the shields. (Let’s face it, these books are absolute monsters. And I’ve only read the first one.) And that makes way more sense than “effective outlawing of projectile weapons,” because we all know how well THAT works in real life.
totally ripped off from Dune.
Except that Dune has that pesky little catch where lasers intersecting even a personal (man size) defence shield will trigger a nuclear explosion and engender feedback which destroys the laser platform.
You want Kalashnikovs in the future? You should check out the War World novels that were set in the CoDominium universe.
Best infantry weapon ever? John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War. However, the real genius wasn’t the weapon- it was the “Brain Pal”
Man, I loved that series.
Uh, on modern guns in a future setting… wasn’t that pretty much the entire Arms Locker aboard Serenity in “Firefly/Serenity”? Like River playing with a Desert Eagle. (Was it even gold-plated, too? I don’t remember, but it seems like it was.) And then there’s the proto-Abomination in the form of “Vera”…
Ditto moose, thank God that thing and the XM8 died on the birthing table. Of course, it was after we dumped a couple of dumptrucks full of money into a burn pit to try and make them live….
I like how you thought out your designs and stuff for your book and layed out the how’s and why’s. Cool stuff.
On the other hand, the XM25 is apparently alive and kicking, and the South Koreans have their own version of the ACIW (with a bolt action grenade launcher instead of an auto) so perhaps the idea will survive and eventually prosper in some form.
My favorite future/sci-fi guns include the:
1. The Lawgiver pistol from the Judge Dredd (multiple firing modes!) comics/movies.
2. The snarky, trash-talking sentient pistol from the Death’s Head book series by David Gunn.
3. The Mortia Rifles from the Starship Trooper movies.
-Scott
I’ll add a couple of my favorites:
1) The X-Ray laser rifle from “The Mote in God’s Eye”. There’s no cover from a xaser.
2) The Standard FORCE Assult rifle in “Fall of Hyperion”. Lasers, particle beams, projectiles, and gernades in one handy package.
3) Also from the Hyperion books- the Deathwand. No beams or bullets. Just point, click, and the target falls over dead with a scrambled brain.
My favorite ridiculous gun in any fiction is the main character’s ludicrous gun from the manga series Blame!. It’s call Graviton Beam Emitter. It’s a square phaser looking weapon that has 4 settings. Lowest setting hits an armor piercing round that’s about the size of a very small needle. Highest setting is planet busting energy blast. It’s not meant to be use by human.
This is actually a standard issue weapon for the system security within this universe…
My favorite ridiculous gun in any fiction is the wave-motion cannon whose bore is the bow of the great starship Yamato, called Argo in the American version, from STARBLAZERS. Now, that is a gun!
That was cool, but it was like Voltron’s sword: as soon as they unlimber it, the show was over. Makes you wonder why they ever bothered with anything else!
Because while it’s charging up, the ship is otherwise utterly defenceless. You keep it for hard targets that cannot punch back; in other words, fire suppression and air supremacy (or its equivalent in a 3D space battle) must first be achieved.
Don’t forget possible cyberization of the soldiers themselves. Imagine direct connections between the gunsight and the brain’s visual cortex. Or some means of augmenting the soldier’s strength with implants- which would allow heavier and more powerful weapons. Then, combine the two with an aiming program where the soldier just picks his target and the implants do the rest- really, really quickly.
For an example, just watch Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex sometime.
This is my biggest complaint with the Halo series. It’s 500 years in the future and they are still using weapons that are outdated today. The M5AB assault rifle is an M4 without the benefit of attachments, the Scorpion is slower than an M1 Abrams, and the alien weapons are pathetic (plasma does not shoot in globs of slow moving, ineffective energy).
Oh and my 3mm CorreiaTech Combat Wombat keeps jamming, any suggestions? 😛
Yeah, get rid of that Irridium plated sissy pistol and get a Smith & Glock.
Correia Tech’s really gone down hill ever since they got bought out by Highpoint & Koch.
You must be limp wristing it. 🙂
Of course, there’s always the Callahan Fullbore Autolock, or its distant cousin…
ABOMINATION–When the MF’er Has to be Sent Back to Hell, Right Frackin’ Now!
Both coming soon (well, inside a couple years barring delays) from Diamondback Systems, a CorreiaTech development-partner.
Re: #3 – advanced materials are apparently already dealing with heat issues in projectile weapons, if rumors about the M60E are true. There will always be required maintenance, but sealed systems and advanced materials may reduce both fragility and required maintenance.
Re: #4 – I think you’re extrapolating too much from the modern military with which you’re familiar. Troops in the past were trusted with – and required to carry – loaded weapons both on and off duty without a load of regulations and ROE. Of course, the penalties for misusing weapons were draconian enough to be deterrent.
You can probably pump enough energy into a plasmoid to go a few meters. How big is your space station, and how far do you really expect to shoot? Ten or fifteen meters is probably plenty for close in work.
Lasers share a similar problem with the plasma gun–air is bad for the beam. It will take kilowatts to get a weapon with a few hundred meters of effective range.
Thanks for all of these ideas, warnings and reminders! I’m in the process of working out more details for a reptilian race and along with “what makes it go bang/ how does it kill the enemy” I’m also trying to figure out biomechanics. The reptiles had almost become bi-pedal, then returned to being preferential quadrupeds who can still walk/run on their hind legs if really, really necessary. That requires some interesting hardware modification for slings/holsters/ armor/ sighting mechanisms. I can see I’m going to have to go back and mull some things over a bit more. Muchas gracias, seriously! 🙂
Ah, great idea! I’ve been concentrating on the light infantry aspect thus far, but I will certainly see if “walking tank” style weapons will fit into “my” world. And if not, why and what other options they might use. Thank you for the suggestion.
Think that the game was “Battlelords of the 23rd Century and Dillis is totally right it was really neat.
The game was pretty good but never caught on all that heavy. I believer its still in publication.
The food for thought in it was dang well done in many ways. And flawed in others.
Here is an interesting link about new bullet designs I thought that you might find interesting.
http://www.barking-moonbat.com/index.php/weblog/high_tech_hunting_bullet/
Thanks for taking my writing questions on your site; the responses have been very helpful.
Scott Deering
scott_deering@hotmail.com
Hey Correia, I was thinking about how you said a weapon should fit into it’s society context and I realized that referring to a hypervelocity weapon by it’s size like the 2.5 smith and glock doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Since the energy of these weapons depends on how much you put into them, a 2.5 mm projectile could be accelerated to the point it’s equal to a matter/antimatter reaction or just enough to give it enough velocity make it outside the barrel.
As such, wouldn’t it make more sense to focus on power output like 2.5 megajoules?
Necromancer comment! Oh crap, it’s Hood!
This article from the Star Wars wiki has some hilarious details:
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Slugthrower
The problem with blasters is that they’re very guilty of sucking compared to modern weapons, like AK-47s.
One excerpt says:
“Slugthrowers. I hate ’em. But they’re easy to maintain. Day or two in the jungle and your blaster’ll never fire again. A good slug rifle, keep ’em wiped and oiled, they last forever.”
Apparently, the Imperial military never plans on fighting in inhospitable environments.
And I’m pretty sure bullets go faster than the blasters. If you can see the projectile coming at that speed, well… pointless. Which reminds me-In Star Wars and Warhammer 40k, despite the latter’s fantastic futuretech lasers and plasma weapons, kinetic weapons are still used as sniper weapons. I like Dan Abnett, but I did not understand why they’d use a laser sniper rifle. I know it has a lot of range, but wouldn’t it be easily detectable?
[…] (author of Monster Hunter International, Monster Hunter Vendetta, Monster Hunter Alpha, and so on) post I happened across from a year or so ago. It was basically some writing advice about SF weapons that I’d somehow […]
A good example of a future weapon that seems likely is the assault rifle from mass effect it’s ammo is a block of metal that it shears off in gun to the right size to reach the target propelled by a mass changing energy field. To me that seems like a logical weapon based on the technology they have available.
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I, the Fluffy (It’s a nickname from my best friend) have decided to add in a suggestion about actually drawing those guns for art and stuff. Look at real guns, and possibly a few well-designed ones from videogames. Don’t rip off the design, but just look at how a person is supposed to hold it, (Correia’s advice about shooting guns also works, so you can get a feel for it) how they’re supposed to sight it, anything else you can think of that makes it feel believable.
There were also gyrojets in the sixties. But some of you probably haven’t heard of that, so you know how that went.
One possibility could be that a magical enemy has the ability to neutralize energy weapons but not firearms. Another possibility could be that firearms are found to be superior to energy weapons.
David Weber’s “Hell Hath No Fury” Series – magic weapons vs modern small arms.
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