# Sci Fi tools/weapons with useful designs. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 1, 2017, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-tools-weapons-with-useful-designs/781111 "2017-03-01T16:15:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2017, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-tools-weapons-with-useful-designs/781111/21 "2017-03-05T01:27:09Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I think I mentioned this in the other thread, as a counterpoint to the bat’leth, but the Mimbari ceremonial melee weapon was basically just a quarterstaff. Good old Big Stick. Except that they applied their Old One-level technology to improve it: Not making it a Laser Stick or a Stasis Stick or Psi Stick or anything silly like that: Just making it fold up to fit conveniently in a pocket. And doubles as a handy medical scanner. Just look into the hole at the end and give it a good shake… 😃 From the same show, Babylon 5’s data crystals are a handy method of transporting data around, working as an analogue to thumb drives a few years before thumb drives became a thing. I believe Star Trek had little technicolor rectangles they could use the exact same way back in the 60s. I also appreciated the relatively practical design of the human starfighters on the show, the Starfury. Basically a cockpit with weapons under it, and the engines at the end of the wings. The ships maneuvered by firing their engines in various directions, allowing the Starfury to go forward, backward, up, down, sideways, and any number of combination by having the engines fire in coordination with each other. More than a couple of dogfights would feature a Starfury doing a 180 so they could fire at a pursuer while accelerating away. In later seasons, they introduced a forklift version. Fewer engines, no weapons, and a set of robot arms to move stuff around in space. ---
**Author:** ![Kamino\_Neko](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kamino_neko/32/34_2.png) [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2017, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-tools-weapons-with-useful-designs/781111/22 "2017-03-05T01:54:50Z")
> [@Raguleader](#): > > From the same show, Babylon 5’s data crystals are a handy method of transporting data around, working as an analogue to thumb drives a few years before thumb drives became a thing. I believe Star Trek had little technicolor rectangles they could use the exact same way back in the 60s. They were replaced with isolinear chips and rods by the TNG/DS9/VOY era, which are even more USB-ish. (Actually, closer to SD cards, now that I think about it.) ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2017, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-tools-weapons-with-useful-designs/781111/23 "2017-03-05T17:19:47Z")
The versatility of the Star Trek phaser makes it a nice tool as well as a weapon. Absurd as it is, the Universal Translator is a joy (especially to the scriptwriter.) The force field from Haldeman’s Forever War could be very useful: it limits the top speed of objects. Sort of like being in a big bowl of honey. Bullets slow to a crawl…and so do people. You fight with swords. Slowly. (It would provide safety in, say, an industrial shop. Less concern for flying scraps or splinters of metal.) The genetically engineered/specialized dragons in Jack Vance’s The Dragon Masters were a nifty premise-concept. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2017, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-tools-weapons-with-useful-designs/781111/24 "2017-03-05T18:00:33Z")
Dune had shields that worked somewhat similarly. Specifically, anything moving above a certain relatively slow speed would get deflected. So you were immune to bullets and most other projectiles, but still vulnerable to slow moving darts or relatively slow blades or grapple attacks. I can’t recall how it played out in the books (read them a couple of decades ago in high school), but in the movie, a lot of fights ended up being grapples with both parties trying to work a blade in on each other. They don’t address the potential uses of shields as industrial protection equipment; I get the impression they were rather expensive and only the most important people could afford them. The transporters, as used on Star Trek, Stargate, and similar shows, have some very obvious uses as quick and effective means to move things large distances very quickly, even if they are limited in circumstances where they can be used (the Star Trek transporters are vulnerable to EM interference, and one style of Stargate transporters requires a clear line of sight or a matched set of transporters, with the other style also being vulnerable to interference). Besides being able to get your main characters in and out of scenes without needing a shuttle, such technology would be hugely useful for transporting and transferring cargo and such. Another fun one, from Old Man’s War, is SmartBlood™, a nanobot replacement for human blood which carries out all of the normal duties of blood (and doing so rather better), as well as having multiple other handy uses (though it needs to be paired with a BrainPal™ neural computer to be useful for anything). One character figures out that you can trigger your SmartBlood™ to self-ignite, which when combined with biting your own tongue, means you can now spit fire at anyone within a foot or two of you. Aside from the fun potential of being able to spit napalm at people you dislike, SmartBlood™ lets you go up to twenty minutes without needing to draw breath, and can clot instantly when needed, which comes in handy for the super soldiers it was designed for. The BrainPal™ meanwhile has wireless networking capability, allowing users to have private conversations from anywhere as long as they have a network connection between them, as well as being able to control compatible equipment. Main downside presented for the BrainPal™ in the books was that it was possible to jam the wireless signals, which could be bad if you planned to use some piece of wirelessly controlled equipment in the next few moments or needed to communicate with someone outside of shouting distance. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2017, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-tools-weapons-with-useful-designs/781111/25 "2017-03-05T18:58:21Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > The force field from Haldeman’s Forever War could be very useful: it limits the top speed of objects. Sort of like being in a big bowl of honey. Bullets slow to a crawl…and so do people. You fight with swords. Slowly. I don’t recall the force field. Please bring me up to date. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2017, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-tools-weapons-with-useful-designs/781111/26 "2017-03-05T23:54:48Z")
Niven’s story _Flatlander_ had a wine glass with a tiny teleportation receiver in the base, hidden from view by light distortion caused by the glass. Result: a never-empty glass of wine. The protagonist suspected that technology had lured a number of people into alcoholism. _War of Omission_ had an interesting device called a TISSER; a Time/Space Separation device. It was a handheld box with three adjustable antennas sticking out of the front; when activated, it excised a cubical segment of spacetime as defined by the antennas from existence. Not only did everything in that volume, but everyone forgot that whatever or whoever was in that volume \*ever \*existed. \*Light of Other Days \*had slow glass; a type of glass though which light travels very slowly. So for example people buy “ten year thick” panes of glass that were left in a gorgeous location for that long, so they have ten years of gorgeous scenery to look at. And streetlights are replaced with 12-hour panes of slow glass that radiate daylight at night. The wormhole sword from\* Implied Spaces;\* a sword that instead of a normal edge, has an “edge” composed of thousands of microscopic wormholes that just sucked in anything they hit. The betydelse from the Matador series;a high-speed input-output device that used video, voice commands, and two separate command languages - one for each hand - to allow for very fast multichannel communication with computer systems. It takes a lot of training to use and the people who can use it can usually manage it for only short periods. The Exponential Field from _Superiority._ > [@](#): > > It seems very difficult to explain the operation of the Field to the layman. According to the technical description, it “produces an exponential condition of space, so that a finite distance in normal, linear space may become infinite in pseudo-space.” Norden gave an analogy which some of us found useful. It was as if one took a flat disk of rubber - representing a region of normal space - and then pulled its center out to infinity. The circumference of the disk would be unaltered - but its “diameter” would be infinite. That was the sort of thing the generator of the Field did to the space around it. > > As an example, suppose that a ship carrying the generator was surrounded by a ring of hostile machines. If it switched on the Field, each of the enemy ships would think that it - and the ships on the far side of the circle - had suddenly receded into nothingness. Yet the circumference of the circle would be the same as before: only the journey to the center would be of infinite duration, for as one proceeded, distances would appear to become greater and greater as the “scale” of space altered. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2017, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-tools-weapons-with-useful-designs/781111/27 "2017-03-06T00:25:55Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > I don’t recall the force field. Please bring me up to date. That’s pretty much it: in Haldeman’s Forever War, there were force-fields that slowed things down. Darn good book! It was a rebuttal, of sorts, to Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2017, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-tools-weapons-with-useful-designs/781111/28 "2017-03-06T14:49:13Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > That’s pretty much it: in Haldeman’s Forever War, there were force-fields that slowed things down. > > Darn good book! It was a rebuttal, of sorts, to Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. As an aside, if you’re in for that thing, check out Old Man’s War. Sort of a combination Deconstruction/Love Letter to Starship Troopers as well. First book sets the stage, second and third book do a pretty solid job of chasing down the moral and political implications. Later books basically proceed from there with a fairly standard plot of everyone having to deal with the rather messy universe that ensues from this setup. ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2017, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-tools-weapons-with-useful-designs/781111/29 "2017-03-06T19:49:52Z")
Another Niven invention, possibly superior to almost other weapon ever invented. The [tasp](http://larryniven.wikia.com/wiki/Tasp). Non-contact stimulation of brain pleasure centers. Stop an attacker in mid-stride with an utterly disabling burst of physical pleasure. Use it repeatedly to condition a victim. Use it for longer still to enslave them, by making them psychologically dependent on periodic hits and refusing them if they don’t behave. A nasty weapon of dubious ethicality, like all the best weapons are. Completely physically non-harmful (in all demonstrated examples), but utterly effective as a disabling weapon. (Handwave the difficulty of the weapon being able to stimulate the pleasure centers of every known brain type in every known species in Known Space. That’s quite a stretch, but suspend disbelief if you can.) ---
**Author:** ![Pushkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ee59a6/32.png) [@Pushkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pushkin)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2017, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-tools-weapons-with-useful-designs/781111/30 "2017-03-06T20:04:07Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Also, time stops entirely for whatever is inside the shell I remember something similar in a Peter Hamilton novel, a little pod you can step in that effectively stops time for you. One character goes on holidays using them, steps inside, comes out decades later to see what’s going on and works up enough money to get back inside. Another character is so terrified by the ongoing events that he asks to be placed in one till everything blows over. > [@Raguleader](#): > > They don’t address the potential uses of shields as industrial protection equipment; I get the impression they were rather expensive and only the most important people could afford them They address the interaction between these shields and their contemporary energy weaponry in Dune. If you shoot at a shield, both it and the weapon blow up with tremendous force. When the Atreides arrive on Arrakis, I think it was their mentat who worries about someone out in the desert trying that on them. > [@AncientHumanoid](#): > > Babel Fish. Yes, it was designed. Proof that God doesn’t exist Is that not the thing that, by removing all barriers to communication, starts more and bloodier wars than anything else in history? ---
**Author:** ![TYphoonSignal8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e99b99/32.png) [@TYphoonSignal8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TYphoonSignal8)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2017, 7:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-tools-weapons-with-useful-designs/781111/31 "2017-03-07T07:27:15Z")
Does “tools” include vehicles? 1. \*Aliens \*cargo exoskeleton. Or, perhaps easier to use by reason of its size, the exoskeleton from _Edge of Tomorrow_. 2. the one-man rocket from Robert Heinlein’s “\*If This Goes on - \*”, nimble enough for “polo” (rocket polo?) and which is sent out to its doom at sea as a distraction. 3. the beautiful luxury car from William Gibson’s _Count Zero_ which carts Marly Krushkhova and Virek’s assistant Paco about. ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2017, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-tools-weapons-with-useful-designs/781111/32 "2017-03-07T08:21:14Z")
I always liked the Metal Gear RAY’s from Metal Gear Solid 2, the only bipedal mechs that really made sense. They were meant to operate from the sea/waterways and acted like fast patrol boats with submersible capabilities, then could jump from the water into bipedal mode and support ground operations. It was pretty slow while moving on the ground but it never really seemed like it was meant to move long distances using it’s legs. Plus their primary weapon system was a large waterjet and could pierce metal very easily from a couple of hundred feet away, not that long-ranged but it also had 20mm cannons and various missile launchers to combat anything it couldn’t reach physically. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-tools-weapons-with-useful-designs/781111.md?page=1)