So, I was watching 'Serenity' the other day.  It's one of those movies which I'm sure I've seen every single part of at least once, but never in consecutive order, so I thought I'd rectify that.  Solid decision, solid movie (although the accents do get a bit old) but it highlighted an issue that's been nagging away at me for a decade or two now.

Namely, what is it with all the lame-arse guns in sci-fi?

There's a sequence (kinda spoilers here, but this movie came out in 2005, so you've had your chance) where the good guys' spaceship has to run the gauntlet through a bunch of the bad guys' spaceships.  And it's a good sequence—lots of explosions and lasers and bangs and flashes and near-misses and non-misses and seat-of-the-pants, old-school, honest-to-goodness, do-some-of-that-pilot-shit-Mav stuff.

Which is great and all, and makes for satisfactory Netflixing.  But at the same time, it raises a pretty fundamental question.  If these people can build an interstellar spaceship, why can't they build a gun that actually hits stuff?  

I mean, seriously—all these state-of-the-art energy-pulse weapons or lasers or death-rays or whatever the hell they are, can generally be thwarted by the tried and true, but not particularly high-tech tactic of—wait for it—turning.  Dodging.  Basically, getting out of the way.

Seriously?

Take the blasters in Star Wars.  Same thing.  I mean, you can actually see the blasts coming for you.  What kind of crap weapons technology is that?  Even the gunslingers in the old West had that problem sorted—if they fired a Colt revolver, you quite literally weren't dodging that bullet.

A bit of science here (my apologies)—laser stands for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.  But let's forget all that stimulated emission stuff (after all, this is a PG ridiculocity).  The key word here is 'light'.  Lasers are light.  And guess what speed light travels at?  A pretty bloody fast speed, that's what.

The average human reaction speed is 0.25 seconds.  Light travels 75,000 kilometres in that time.  So, unless you (or your spaceship) are what is technically known as 'a bloody long way' away from someone who is shooting at you with a laser, then I suspect you are what is technically known (at least here in Australia) as 'rooted'.

Now, I have to admit that some of the weapons from sci-fi aren't too shabby.  After all, the Death Star's superlaser can take out a planet (thankfully for the Empire, planets aren't known for their ability to dodge—that's still one slow-arse gun).  The BFG from Doom/Quake is pretty cool, if somewhat impractical.  And the proton packs, from Ghostbusters?  I don't even really know what exactly they do (besides exploding giant marshmallow-men) but I still want one.

Light sabres?  Don't get me started.