Poul Anderson Appreciation: SF Props: Blasters And Stun Guns

Thursday, 10 May 2018

SF Props: Blasters And Stun Guns

Poul Anderson's "The Master Key" includes a long chase and fight sequence. I cannot find much in it to post about. However, our hero in this sequence uses both a stun gun and a blaster. Dan Dare used to use a paralyzing pistol. See image.

In an Author's Note to a novel in his Psychotechnic History, Poul Anderson wrote:

"A blaster gun could be built today, though it would be a large, clumsy machine.(The gun in the story depends on a nearly perfect dielectric, something on which the Bell Laboratories are now working.)"
-Poul Anderson, Virgin Planet (London, 1966), "Author's Note," pp. 150-156 AT pp. 155-151.

This Note also presents a rationale for another sf prop: FTL, but that is another post.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...: Kaor, Paul!

I was actually thinking of how Anderson had written somewhere that a blaster could be made, altho it would be too large and clumsy for satisfactory use. And I suppose tasers are crude types of stun guns.

Your quote from Anderson's "Author's Note" was pub. in 1966. So I wonder if a blaster of convenient size and weight could be made today. Possibly, but the chief drawback now might be its cost.

Sean; 10 May 2018 at 18:00