Rayguns and the Hypocrisy of Humanity

Rayguns (Ray Guns/Blasters/Phasers/etc) have a long tradition in Science Fiction prose, radio, movies and TV. They go back as far as 1898 and Wells’ War of the Worlds (that was a heat ray specifically, but it counts) and have a firm place as the weapons of the future. Any future just about.

The question is why.

Now there is an easy answer: We can’t replicate the technology yet (not really but we’re getting there) and that makes them a great choice for setting something in the future. Tossing in tech we don’t have will do that.

My problem with that answer is I think it misses a much bigger point. The easy answer is obviously correct as far as it goes but I do think it casts a long shadow that makes the other answer vanish from sight.

We’re hypocrites. Humanity often is a bundle of contradiction and hypocrisy and I think one of the ways this can be seen is in the raygun.

Wells’ use, I would argue was at least partly inspired by World War I. Now the time shift is big there but he’d written about the war before and really War of the Worlds early in his start in Science Fiction which was, itself,  still a nascent genre.

The big serials of the 30s, like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers used them as well, and I would argue, were influenced by the same thing. Post WWII you got a lot of Science Fiction as allegory about the war and most had rayguns. The 60s and 70s further established them, so by then it’s just normal and might be odder writing a future without them.

So why hypocrisy?

Think of it in terms of wars. Writers had been through, or lost family and friends to, war. Weapons are, notoriously, gruesome. Swords and axes and even arrows are messy. Big blunt damage is horrible. Bullets at least create distance for the person wielding the weapon, but still have horrible effects, and visuals for all involved.

But a raygun, well let’s break them down into a few categories: Disintegration beams, pain beams, pinpoint laser beams, death rays.

Disintegration rays are super clean. You don’t have to look at the damage you’ve done to another human being. They just go away.

Pain beams (heat rays, sonic beams pain causing rays etc) don’t kill or maim, they just cause, well, pain. And a lot of it. So you can hurt someone but there’s no physical sign of it.

Pinpoint laser beams burn people, they put holes in folks but they also cauterize the wound as they go, far reducing the visual damage you have to look at causing another person pain.

Death rays are clean in that while they don’t remove the body in question there is, once again, no visual issue. It is the same body, untouched, just dead now.

See the pattern? Rayguns aren’t a reaction to violence in the real world – they’re a reaction to the person causing the violence. If you cut someone’s arm off that’s bloody, it’s disturbing, it is in your face and terrible. But if you shoot someone with a disintegration ray? Well, you killed them and that’s not good (unless it is) but there’s nothing for you to see to remind you of what you did.

Rayguns of all sort are designed to not bother the aggressor. You could argue they get by censors really well but there were always cop shows and they had bullets and shot people. No, rayguns protect the person shooting them from feeling as bad about what they’ve done. They remove the visual violence, the carnage and repercussions from the visual field in the favor of the person with the gun.

Which is worse: Watching someone with a gaping chest wound bleed out on the ground in front of you, whimpering, shitting themselves, and crying or watching someone’s skin go clear, seeing their skeleton flash and a halo of light around them as they scream exactly once, and then drop to the ground in silence forever?

One of those is far more likely to give you nightmares.

Now I am not advocating for more gruesome wounds in our media. I am just saying we need to be honest here, and accept that we want the violence, we want the weapons of war and to hurt each other – we just also want to feel good about it and not have any discomfort while causing it.

At some point we have to reckon with that issue.

Until then I suppose we can simplify it, and keep turning a blind eye to the actual issue by remembering that  “Pew pew pew” is a better noise than “bang bang!” Then again, it could be time to truly reckon with our constructed present-futurepast and look at what we’re doing and why.