06/28/23 – Taking Good Care

Spacetrawler, audio version For the blind or visually impaired, June 28, 2023.

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2023-06-28-spacetrawler3b

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No one should wield a weapon so powerful.

25 Comments

      1. russell

        I think that the collar gun is made on the same design as the never miss gun. Hopefully no one will think about that.

        Always thought that the leader was smarter than this.

  1. Totematika

    No idea, what went down here in the last 2 days, but I’m curious to see what alternative weapons the good guys will use to keep in check the bad ones with illegal guns.

    I would probably go for personal force fields to make everyone invincible (I’m sure Choan could make em en mass), then we could focus on the social tentions, ideological dilemmas and an occasional exiatential crisis not caused by people.

    Keep it up Chris!

    1. TB

      Maybe use Deus Ex Machinas, like cosmic aliens who come in from other dimensions and disarm everybody in a battle arbitrarily.

      Some SF tropes make this work. Gort, the robot policeman in “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” or the Law Machines in Phil Foglio’s “Buck Godot.” The “Justice Field” in “Red Dwarf.”

      I’ll be fascinated to see how Chris deals with this as time goes on. A skilled SF writer, he’s always careful to make sure everything works logically and plugs loopholes in the plot. He might just have to hit the wall on his own.

      Also curious to see how Choan works with it.

  2. Nemo

    I assume they won’t be trying to enforce this ban on dark planets like Earth. Which I guess leaves our primitive impact weapons among the most powerful in the galaxy.

  3. Stephen

    For a gun with similar power to Choan’s read about the Lazy Gun – which can do pretty much anything you ask of it, and is intelligent to boot – in Iain M Banks’ excellent novel “Against a Dark Background”.

  4. Rob C.

    This destroy all weapons thing going backfire when time comes.

    You can’t enforce a rule, when you don’t have them. Unless there going be exception for armies. Worse dictator gets in control free people aren’t free anymore.

    1. Michael K Vroom

      All things considered, there are too many sci-fi possibilities that render most guns and gun-like weaponry like that largely ineffective. Inertial dampeners, protective shields, deflector arrays, and far too many other potential options that the likes of Choan could far too easily mass produce and make as readily available as the translator chips make for guns to be a largely ineffective weapon. I recall Dune had a similar aspect, with protective inertial fields making knives and slower fighting styles that maximized impact and other methods of striking the opponent more effective, since even a child could be made effectively bullet-proof with relative ease.

      The mistake that is too often made by people protesting the removal of guns in settings like this, is the belief that legal guns are the best solution to illegal guns. It makes far more sense, in my opinion, for them to simply make the legal ones illegal, and the illegal ones obsolete.

      1. RUSSELL

        You misquoted.

        Sounds like a great idea with the best of intentions. What could possibly go wrong?

        There’s 20 or 30 of them. If this doesn’t end badly I’ll be disappointed.

  5. minando

    I think the more predator-y aliens will love the new law, having their natural weapons to rely on and all. Who needs guns if you can rip someone apart, perforate him with stings, etc…

  6. tlhonmey

    So… You’re going to replace the “lazy” writing style of “oh no! Suddenly the bad guy has a gun!” with “somehow the majorly powerful crime syndicates and other galactic bad guys (a few of which have taken on the G.O.B. in stand-up fights) are suddenly going to not bother with guns and let the G.O.B. be the only ones to have them.”

    Well, if your goal is to avoid “lazy” writing, you’ve certainly set yourself a serious challenge. Guns disappearing is the easy part. Just what the people of nefarious intent will replace them with is a rather more interesting question that will need a lot of imagination. I wonder how long it’ll take the pirates to start simply using slightly modified escape pods as guided missiles… And which species will be the new “muscle” for organized crime that nobody can stand up to…

    You’ve definitely got your work cut out for you if you want it to be believable.

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