Frakir from the second half of the Amber books was hella cool.
If you liked that weapon, look for the series of Niven inspired books called the Man-Kzin Wars, In one of them, it details the tnuctipun and the fact that the soft weapon’s mass conversion beam can be set to much lower settings, thereby precluding destruction of the shooter. I, for one, would LOVE to have one.
I gotta take the Dracon beam from Animorphs. It was basically a matter annihilator, with settings ranging from 2, to burn the skin, to 9, to burn through six feet of titanium-lead alloy. Very painful.
The Powered Armor Suits from the novel Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein. Very impressive.
Why they left them out of the movie , I’ll never know. 
How exactly did Xena: Warrior Princess become science fiction? I’ve seen quite a few episodes. It’s not.
I don’t know some of this other sci-fi you are talking about, but the bat’leth (bat-LECH) is two-handed crescent blade about a meter from tip to tip. In the hands of a master (there are Klingons who spend their entire lives mastering the art), it is very deadly.
The phaser is a compressed nadion beam which pulls apart the nuclei of whatever it hits. Wide range, narrow aperture, stun, disrupt, vaporize, it’s very versatile and very powerful. Starfleet even came up with one that beams the phaser beam to right in front of its target. Most species have their own version.
That’s all.
I wasn’t too fond of the Battletech RPG, but it did have one of my favorite weapons-- the gyrojet rifle. The gyrojet fired caseless, self-propelled rounds with a chunk of plastic explosive inside. On impact, they exploded in tiny balls of plasma and vaporized pretty much anything. If that wasn’t nasty enough, the rifle was recoiless and had a full auto setting, meaning with one gyrojet you could mow down a line of troops in battle armor.
Flechette pistols are also pretty neat-- they were in Battletech, but I think they might have been in Dan Simmons’s books too. Basically, a flechette pistol blows a plastic block through a mesh screen, creating a cloud of fast-moving, razor sharp fragments that turn your target to hamburger. Using a flechette pistol on someone not wearing armor is basically overkill. I like overkill. 
Spoffy
The only reason I’ve liked Star Wars for so long, and even bought the truly abysmal Dark Forces, fully aware of the dreadfulness of the game, is that the laser-bolts shot by the SW blasters and rifles and what-have-you are second to none. Lines of red. Not too short. Not too long. Not too thick. Not too thin. YOWZA. Phasers are rubbish.
And lightsabres. There was an unbelievably bad David Hasselhoff movie called STARCRASH, which featured ripped-off lightsabres made of kinda flickery, plasma-ball electricity. Lightsabres themselves, however, have been scientifically proved to actually BE the cat’s pyjamas.
If Highlander counts, then by all means, it’s swords. The bazookoids from Red Dwarf (heat-seeking self-propelling globs of glow-goo) are amusing but unwieldy. Anybody remember the fist-sized personal-guided-missile that tried to calmly take out Kyle MacLachlan in DUNE? That was pretty cool. And those things from DUNE that go off when you shout. And the dataspike on Robocop’s hand. And Wolverine’s claws.
And… the grenade launcher from Quake 2. Just the right combination of lob and kaboom.
Read a novel ages ago, involving the hunting of the last surviving pair of these biologically-engineered assassins–they operated in pairs, had the usual superhuman reflexes and strength, and were also telepathically linked. Their signature weapon was called something like the “cohe wand”–sort of a lightsaber, only in whip/lariat form. Practiced hand could fling the darkly energy whip around cornerds and snake it through stairs to decapitate foes, etc.
The Predator’s shoulder-mounted plasma ball launching doohickey was nice. The “Cobra Assault Cannon–state of the art bang bang!” from Robocop also left an impression. As one of the ill-fated hoodlums noted, “I liiike it!” Also the amusing Swiss Army Knife-approach to firearms in The Fifth Element, with darts, net launcher, flamethrower, rockets, etc etc all built into one handy little package.
Gyrojet prototypes were actually made in the late 50s, I believe–I used to have a couple ancient Guns & Ammo magazines (or the sort) that I’d appropriated from storage from my maternal-side grandfather that covered them. The articles were positive they’d catch on big-time in the military, but hasn’t quite worked out that way. Probably reliability and expense issues, I imagine. Extremely cool concept, though, especially when you’re a ten year old boy at the time.
My goodness, the web is nice. Remembering that got me curious, first link back out of Google for “gyrojet”:
Wow . . . and here I thought it was something the Battletech guys came up with. Neat.
Spoffy
The Bozar from Fallout II. You pull the trigger and deliver death. Plus, it looked cool as hell.
The concussion rifle from Jedi Knight. You can tell how cool a weapon is by the sound it makes… and the concussion rifle goes “BWAH!!”
The Noisy Cricket from Men In Black. 'Nuff said.
Railguns. Any kind of railgun, from any science fiction series. Railguns, railguns, railguns. They remind me of ejaculating penises, launching their sperm outward at superfast speeds… RAILGUNS!!! RA-A-A-A-A-AILGU-U-U-U-U-UNS!!!
It occurs to me that in Terminator 2, young John Connor is placed in titular command of the terminator, who is compelled to obey. He actually exclaims, “My own personal terminator!” Further, the machine is only too willing to kill, and has to be ordered not to do so. If that’s not a science fiction personal weapon, I’m a monkey’s uncle. I’ll have half a dozen. And the Quake 2 grenade launcher, please.
ps: if the gun from Robocop is the same one that took out the SUX 6000 car with one shot, I must say I agree.
Unless I missed it, I can’t believe no one mentioned the rifles from The Fifth Element. Those things were wicked. Actually, if I could have a “weapon,” I’d take the fifth element herself!
A Battletech gyrojet rifle would rock, so would the Mechs.
On the same front, any of the mechs from RoboTech would kick ass.
Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention…
Those heavy Autorifles from Aliens.
And railguns!!!
Ahhh… railguns. I actually have a question about railguns - it’s probably GQ material, but it’s not really worth opening a new thread (and besides, I never open my own threads. Stage fright).
Anyway, in most science-fiction literature and movies I’ve seen, railguns, flechette guns and other EMP-projectile weapons are described as being recoilless. Now, this seems to make some sort of intuitive sense (I mean, nothing pushing back, right?); but on the other hand, wouldn’t Isaac Newton object? Something goes forward, something goes back… right?
Anyone know?
Not 100% recoilless, but the recoil is minute compared to that of, say, a shotgun or a .45…
RAILGUNS!!! ::squeals::
What SF is depicting railguns as being recoilless (or nearly so)? High-velocity ones would have a LOT of recoil, and are depicted that way (both Reason and the small personal weapon mentioned in the beginning of Snow Crash had a lot of recoil).
Flechette guns could conceivably have lower recoil than modern firearms, if the flechettes were sharp enough and small enough they would not have to be fired at such high speeds to be lethal.
EMP weapons that are firing an electromagnetic pulse (as opposed to a projectile that emits one when it hits) should not have recoil. Some plasma weapon designs would have low recoil too, since they are firing a minute amount of plasma (just at really high velocities).
But anything that fires a projectile SHOULD have recoil, UNLESS the projectile propels itself after leaving the weapon, i.e. gyrojet pistols, and even then it will have a small amount of recoil. You also have the situation when the weapon is an openended tube (like bazookas).
How about the programmable heat-seeking bullets from the otherwise forgettable Tom Selleck movie Runaway? Not much use in a battlefield situation, but when you know who your target is, talk about fire and forget!
–sublight.
“a real warrior would have asked about the little red button.”
I seem to recall, and of course I have no cite for this, that there was a rail-gun built for use against enemy satellites or incoming missiles or something. IIRC, the story went that when they tested it, the ball they were firing disintegrated down to molecular levels upon impact and the gun itself, bedded in many feet of concrete and steel, had ripped itself free of its moorings. i.e.: massive recoil. This was something I heard once years ago in college, so I question both it’s validity and my memory of it, so YMMV.
Good catch on your quote, Sublight.
Another BattleTech weapon: the vibrablade (vibrasword ?). IIRC, it vibrated to a white-hot glow or some such thing, and would allow foot-troops the ability to cut through armor.
The Star Wars lightsaber. A great personal weapon, with plenty of other uses.
The Star Trek hand phaser. Multiple settings, so if I didn’t want to kill someone, I could just stun them. Bump your fucking shopping cart into me one more time and you’re out for an hour, bitch!
Anyone read Sten, by Allan Cole and Chris Bunch? Sten had a cutom made knife that he could fit in a sheath in his arm. By curling his fingers a certain way, the knife would drop into his hand. It was made from an alien crystal, with a handle that fit his hand perfectly. The crystal was stronger than steel, but nonmetalic, obviously. Oh yeah. It also had an edge about a dozen molecules thick. Sucker could cut diamonds by resting the knife’s weight on them.
The Sten series also had something called Antimatter Squared, which, besides allowing FTL travel, could also be packaged into magnetic pellets and fired from an assault rifle, with each bullet having the explosive effect of a hand grenade.
I second the vote for the gun from Runaway, as well as the remote controlled mines that were used on the highway. I’d LOVE to have a couple of those puppies…
If I ever decided to kill myself (Not gonna happen, but anyway), then the tasp would definitely be the way to go.
There was an old movie, from the late eighties, where the bad guy had a “flashlight” gun: It would strobe light in such a way that if you saw it, you’d freeze in place for an hour or so, paralized and unconsious. When you came too, it was like no time had passed for you at all.
Robocop’s guns (The pistol and the BFG at the end of the movie) are both cool.
The Terminator’s “Plasma rifle. 40 watt range.”
Sounds like Judge Dredd’s pistol. Seems like the writers were Logan’s Run fans, huh? 
Fuck it. It’s sort of sci fi: I want the Sword Of Omens. Thunder, thunder, THUNDER, THUNDERCATS, HOOOO!!!