See, the major stumbling block to energy weapons with hard tech, as I seem to recall, is power generation.
Most folks in Fenspace who try to work up weapons seem to go for a direct build of whatever project they're working on.
All it will take is one person getting demonstrable results from, say, Doctor Grey's approach to the catgirling machine with weapons production to turn the
"slapstick effect" squarely on its ear.
That is, using handwavium on the tools to build the weapons, not the weapons themselves. Say our genius creates a "fabber." The handwavium effect is
that he can use materials a current hardtech fabber cannot. He takes some time and effort to create a Shirow Homage "Seburo" machine gun that would
be problematic as hardtech just from a materials point of view. He "fabs" the parts with his handwaved device, and assembles the weapon by hand
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''
-- James Nicoll
Most folks in Fenspace who try to work up weapons seem to go for a direct build of whatever project they're working on.
All it will take is one person getting demonstrable results from, say, Doctor Grey's approach to the catgirling machine with weapons production to turn the
"slapstick effect" squarely on its ear.
That is, using handwavium on the tools to build the weapons, not the weapons themselves. Say our genius creates a "fabber." The handwavium effect is
that he can use materials a current hardtech fabber cannot. He takes some time and effort to create a Shirow Homage "Seburo" machine gun that would
be problematic as hardtech just from a materials point of view. He "fabs" the parts with his handwaved device, and assembles the weapon by hand
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''
-- James Nicoll