Weapons Technology in the Technic Civilization Stories by Johan Ortiz

Flandry with blaster and stunner 

Blasters and stunners and needlers, oh my!

 

The Technic civilization stories are not hard military sf in the style of for example David Drake. Nonetheless, Poul Anderson took some care regarding the kinds of weaponry his heroes and their foes would use. There are auto-guided missiles, most carrying nuclear warheads. There are energy weapons, so called “Blasters” which are not lasers – note how Technic “blaster cannon” are contrasted with more primitive Merseian lasers in a one-sided confrontation in THE DAY OF BURNING. Ships and men are protected by armour, which delay damage from blasters by virtue of having to be burned through first, but also by “force screens” which deflect or absorb incoming energy, such as blasters and lasers. Laser weapons seem to be considered obsolete, since they are only used by the (at the time) backward Merseians. Possibly they require more power than blasters for any given level of energy on target, making them impractical as hand held weapons.

Moving on to personal weapons, beside the mainstay blasters, there are “stunners”, which seem to be some sort of non-lethal energy weapon. There are slug throwers – we can assume this is the future name for old school projectile weapons in an age where a “gun” naturally refers to a blaster. And finally, there are “Needle guns”. Although the more usual seems to be carrying only two guns, blaster and stunner, the formidable Chee Lan likes to carry around a panoply of the four previously mentioned types of guns, as she did when exploring old ruins on the planet Dathyna in SATAN’S WORLD.  Chee Lan’s arsenal is interesting, as it indicates that different types of gun have their distinct purposes, or at least strengths and weaknesses important enough to warrant the carrying of four different weapons in some situations. Let us explore these four types in turn.

Blasters

Beginning with the ubiquitous “blasters”, we can infer from the descriptions of their use that they are some form of directed energy weapons, and most probably neutral particle beam weapons. Such a weapon creates charged particles or ions by stripping atoms, to be used as projectiles, of some of their electrons. Once possessing a charge to be able to be affected by magnetism, these ions can be accelerated in much the same way as metallic slug in a magnetic rail gun. In the case of atomic or subatomic particles, relativistic speeds could be attained, up to near light speed.

A charged particle beam would soon scatter because homogenously charged ions would repel each other. For this reason, to create a beam of uncharged (neutral) particles, electrons are reattached to the ions just prior to leaving the projector, restoring them to proper atoms. Using uncharged particles has another advantage – a charged particle beam could easily be dispersed in the same manner as its component particles where accelerated in the first place – with magnetism. A magnetic screen would however be useless against a neutral particle beam. Since blaster beams are not described as scattering even in space combat between starships with ranges of hundreds or thousands of kilometres from gun to target, we can reasonably conclude that blaster beams, (if particle beams at all) are indeed neutral particle beams.

Such a beam would be mostly invisible in space, except where it collided with the occasional atom of gas or particle of dust, causing a light flickering here and there. In an atmosphere, the particle beam would flash brightly as the particles collide with atoms in the air and gradually lose power. This is consistent with the brightly white beams described by Poul Anderson, for example in THE MAN WHO COUNTS. Such a particle beam would be a devastating weapon, inflicting damage through kinetic force, heat and ionization. If we imagine the mass of one hit as being one millionth of a gram, at half the speed of light that would mean roughly 17-18 times the power of a .45 ACP round. While the weight of ammunition would be negligible, power requirements would not and would constitute the limiting factor in determining how many times a blaster could be fired before needing a reload. In theory, and surprisingly, a simple AA battery has enough power for two such shots, given an (admittedly unlikely) 100% efficiency. It is not then unimaginable, given a few hundred years of technology development, to have a magazine-sized power pack (with an integral small amount of heavy metal to be fired) capable of firing two or three dozen blaster shots.

We note that blasters can be set to a “needle beam”, i.e. a very narrow beam, in order to more likely cause incapacitating injuries rather than death. This is entirely feasible, indeed one important difficulty with a particle beam weapons is making the beam wide enough to cause significant damage. A short needle pulse could pass through a target causing minimal damage, as in fact has happened in laboratories such as CERN, where in at least one incident a scientist accidently had a particle beam fired straight through his head. Being the width of a single molecule, it caused no discernible damage at all!

As an interesting aside, the atoms used as projectiles could be of many kinds, but heavier ones would be more devastating at any given speed and would lose speed at a slower rate than light ones. If using poisonous heavy metals such as mercury, lead or perhaps plutonium, the victim of the blaster would not only be pierced and burned – he would be poisoned! Fortunately, the Technics seems too civilized for this, since Adzel in particular is shot repeatedly with blasters and is never poisoned.

Stunners

Moving on to stunner guns, it is much less obvious how they are supposed to work. At first glance I suspected they might have been electro laser “lightning guns”, where a short pulse laser ionizes atoms in its path to plasma, creating a conductive channel, through which an electric discharge is sent, presumably knocking out the target, much in the same way as a police taser. Such a weapon would probably have a short range, given that the electric discharge need to find less resistance in the plasma channel than any other route to grounding. Note that an electro laser could easily be made lethal, simply by ramping up the electric charge. It could also be used eminently well to fry electronics.

Curiously I found both support and evidence against this theory in the same passage in A CIRCUS OF HELLS:

A purple light ray flashed, guiding the soundless hammer-blow of a supersonic beam.

So indeed, the stunner is a two-component weapon and has a guiding beam, just like what we would expect from an electro-laser – but the discharge of such a weapon would look like a bolt of lightning, rather than a “purple light ray”. Also, the actual stunner beam is explicitly described as a “supersonic beam”, not an electric bolt. This is also the only way stunner weapons are described in other stories, such as SATAN’S WORLD – as firing “supersonic beams”. When googling for that phrase, one finds mainly references to “supersonic molecular beams”:

…supersonic molecular beam, which is generated by a free jet expansion source. Gas expands isentropically with molecular velocities greater than the speed of sound. The translational and vibrational energies of the beam can be independently controlled, and hence the energies of molecules that impinge on the surface.

If this is what Poul Anderson had in mind, we’re dealing with a jet of gas moving at very high, (indeed, supersonic) speed. A narcotic effect cannot be entirely ruled out, although it would require exposed skin and compatible biochemistry for the weapon to work. Still, the effect being immediate, one would guess the victim is rendered unconscious through concussion, rather than by any narcotic effect from the gas. This notion is reinforced by the descriptive “hammer-blow” delivered by the beam. I cannot say if the propagation and/or direction of a supersonic jet of gas would be aided by creating an ionized conduit for it, as would an electric current. It does not seem entirely implausible that it would tough. The range of the weapon would still be rather short. In order to reliably stun a target, the “hammer-blow” would have to be aimed at the head, pretty violent and potentially lethal, as blunt force often is. While this might be a reasonable explanation how a "supersonic beam" could be used to stun a target, it is not consistent with how stunner effects are described in the stories.

There is however another possibility. According to www.vocabulary.com

Originally, the word supersonic meant "having to do with sound waves beyond human hearing," but by 1934 it described movement exceeding the speed of sound, with ultrasonic taking on the old meaning.

It is possible that Poul Anderson was using the term “supersonic” in the old sense, what we today would call ultrasonic. Ultrasound have long been studied for use as a non-lethal weapon, and could potentially affect a target's nervous system, cause violent muscle contractions and/or affect the inner ear and balance system. This does sound a lot like the described effect of a stunner, although the point of the guiding purple light ray then becomes more obscure.

Projectile weapons

Slug throwers are not often used in the stories, and this seems logical when blasters would appear to be the better weapon in every way, excepting only the issue of visibility. The blindingly white particle beam of a blaster would immediately give away the position of the one firing it, whereas a traditional chemical energy projectile weapon would not. But this would seem of more importance for a sniper’s gun than for a handgun, and a high-power laser – silent, invisible, without bullet drop and with instant effect on targets within visual range – would seem like a far better choice for that purpose. There might however be one situation in which the archaic slug thrower would be the superior choice, namely against a target protected by an energy screen. These devices seem to dissipate directed energy beams such as blasters and lasers, but a solid projectile might conceivably pass right through it. Otherwise it is hard to imagine why Chee Lan would burden herself with one.

As for Chee Lan’s fourth gun, the “needle gun”, it is not clear what kind of weapon is intended. Historically, a “needle gun” was a precursor to the bolt action rifle, in which a needle would pierce a paper cartridge to hit a primer inside the cartridge, at the base of the bullet. This is obviously not what Poul Anderson had in mind. As previously noted, a blaster can be set to “needle beam”, thus not necessitating a special kind of gun to fire one. The needler must be some other type of weapon.
Most sci-fi references to needle guns seem to refer to a rail gun type of weapon magnetically firing a small needle-shaped projectile. It is hard to see what such a weapon system would have going for it compared to a blaster, except, again, stealth. If the needle is fired at supersonic speed, then the weapon will be rather loud, producing a sonic bang (comparable to the cracking of a whip) with every shot, but there will be no visible white beam. The range will be short, as a lightweight needle will quickly lose momentum in air. However, such a needle could well be carrying a drug or poison, and in fact we have a reference supporting that notion. In THE PLAGUE OF MASTERS Flandry ponders the use of a “a cyanide needler with a compressed air cartridge”. It would seem then that Technic needlers are not magnetic coil guns after all, but rather compressed air tranquilizer guns firing drug-carrying needle projectiles. Such a weapon could be used as a substitute to a conventional stun gun or if using lethal poison, as an assassins tool.