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Araygun is ascience-fictiondirected-energy weapon usually with destructive effect.[1] They have various names:ray gun,death ray,beam gun,blaster,laser gun,laser pistol,phaser,zap gun, etc. In most stories a raygun emits a ray usually lethal if it hits a human target, often destructive if it hits mechanical objects, with properties and other effects unspecified or varying.
Real-world analogues aredirected-energy weapons orelectrolasers: electroshock weapons which send current along an electrically conductive laser-induced plasma channel.[citation needed]
A very early example of a raygun is theHeat-Ray featured inH. G. Wells' novelThe War of the Worlds (1898).[2][3] Science fiction during the 1920s describeddeath rays. Early science fiction often described or depicted raygun beams making bright light and loud noise likelightning or largeelectric arcs.
According toThe Encyclopedia of Science Fiction,[4] the word "ray gun" was first used byVictor Rousseau Emanuel in 1917, in a passage fromThe Messiah of the Cylinder:[5]
All is not going well, Arnold: the ray-rods are emptying fast, and our attack upon the lower level of the wing has failed. Sanson has placed a ray-gun there. All depends on the air-scouts, and we must hold our positions until the battle-planes arrive.
The variant "ray projector" was used byJohn W. Campbell inThe Black Star Passes in 1930.[1] Related terms "disintegrator ray" dates to 1898 inGarrett P. Serviss'Edison's Conquest of Mars; "blaster" dates to 1925 inNictzin Dyalhis' story "When the Green Star Waned"; and "needle ray" and "needler" date to 1934 inE. E. Smith'sThe Skylark of Valeron.[6]
Ray guns were so common on magazine covers during theGolden Age of Science Fiction that Campbell'sAstounding was unusual for not depicting them.[7] The term "ray gun" had already become cliché by the 1940s, in part due to association with the comic strips (and laterfilm serials)Buck Rogers andFlash Gordon.[citation needed]Soon after the invention oflasers during 1960, such devices became briefly fashionable as a directed-energy weapon for science fiction stories. For instance, characters of theLost in Space TV series (1965–1968) and of theStar Trekpilot episode "The Cage" (1964) carried handheld laser weapons.[8]
By the late 1960s and 1970s, as the laser's limits as a weapon became evident, rayguns were dubbed "phasers" (forStar Trek), "blasters" (Star Wars), "pulse rifles", "plasma rifles", and so forth.[citation needed]
Ray guns as described byscience fiction do not have the disadvantages that have, so far, madedirected-energy weapons largely impractical as weapons in real life, needing asuspension of disbelief by a technologically educated audience:
Some of the effects are what would be expected from a powerful directed-energy beam if it could be generated in reality:
But sometimes not:
Ultimately, rayguns have whatever properties are required for their dramatic purpose. They bear little resemblance to real-world directed-energy weapons, even if they are given the names of existing technologies such as lasers,masers, orparticle beams.[2] This can be compared with real-typefirearms as commonly depicted byaction movies, as tending infallibly to hit whatever they are aimed at (when wielded by the heroes) and seldom depleting their ammunition.[9]
Michio Kaku dedicated the third chapter of his 2008 bookPhysics of the Impossible to the problem of ray guns and similar directed-energy weapons.[10] He concluded that handheld weapons of the kind featured in a typical science fiction setting were a "Class I impossibility", meaning that they were not scientifically viable at the time of the book's publication but could become viable within the space of a century or two assuming that certain advances in material science and nanotechnology were made.[11] Attempts to create a basic ray gun-type weapon today, Kaku claimed, would require either a portable power pack on the order of a "minature hydrogen bomb, which might destroy you as well as the target" or a cabled connection to a stationary pack, while any currently available lasing material would be insufficiently stable for handheld use.[12] Kaku further stated that extremely powerful rayguns such as theDeath Star's primary weapon in theStar Wars franchise could theoretically function either as a nuclear-fired X-ray laser or as agamma ray burster, but said Death Star-type ordnance represented a "Class II impossibility" that would require thousands or even millions of years to be realistically developed.[13]Ethan Siegel, when assessingStar Trek's "plasma rifle" and "phaser" ray guns in his 2017 bookTreknology, drew parallels to directed-energy weapons that were in United States use as of 2017 and toelectroshock weapons (includingelectrolasers) respectively, and said that the greatest current obstacle to making phasers a reality was ensuring that an eventual weapon could conduct its energy without being dependent on an atmospheric medium or on physical contact with the intended target.[14]
Rayguns by their various names have various sizes and forms:pistol-like; two-handed (often called arifle); mounted on a vehicle;artillery-sized mounted on aspaceship or space base orasteroid orplanet.
Rayguns have a great variety of shapes and sizes, according to the imagination of the story writers or movieprop makers. Most pistol rayguns have a conventionalgrip andtrigger but some (e.g.Star Trek: The Next Generationphasers) do not. Sometimes the end of the barrel expands into a shield, as if to protect the user from back-flash from the emitted beam.
The "rays" the guns use vary. They are sometimes equated to real life technologies such as:
Alternately, the weapon mechanics can be purely fictional. Fictional ray types include:
The following is a list of notable rayguns.
