Blaster madness
I love the breadth and depth of Asimov’s books, how he seems to take a lot of things into account and create a world with a lot of verisimilitude, even though it’s definitely very fantastic (Arthur C. Clark has the same power, or I suppose all the great sci-fi authors). However, one thing has been bothering for a couple of weeks now since I finished reading “Foundation and Empire“, namely the blaster pistols! In a world that seems to be well thought out, blasters are completely insane and impractical things that nobody in their right mind would use as the main, or even the only, weapon. The following contains a pretty nasty spoiler, so read at your own risk.
Bayta, face frozen white, lifted her blaster and shot, with an echoing clap of noise. From the waist upward, Mis was not, and a ragged hole was in the wall behind. From numb fingers, Bayta’s blaster dropped to the floor.
I know there is some more elaborate description of the blasters in one of the previous books, but I haven’t the energy to look it up now. However, even from this short passage one can see that here we have a hand-held weapon that apparently pulverizes not only flesh, but also stone and metal. Who in their right mind would use such a weapon for anything other than terrorism? I can understand it if it pulverized flesh/bone, in which case it would be pretty useful for the criminal elements, as there would be no body left. Even then, however, whoever was using the blaster would be exposed to very horrific images of half people, decapitation, etc. One would think that in the future we would move to the less gory, not more so than our current projectile weapons! For law enforcement to use such weapons seems very unlikely, since any evidence found on the body would be destroyed along with it.
Then there is the matter of destroying stone and metal. Why in the world would a space-faring society have hand-held guns readily available and it seems like exclusive used by everybody that would create big holes in inanimate matter? One such shot and everybody on the spaceship, or at least in the shooter’s vicinity, is likely going to be dead. In the passage above, that blaster probably took out a chunk of the Imperial Library, which means precious books lost forever. I wouldn’t even want to think what would happen if a blaster fight between criminals and police broke out anywhere on Trantor. The damage would probably be more extensive than many acts of terrorism.
In summary, I feel like the blaster is completely insane and I don’t understand why Isaac Asimov would include something so stupid in his books.
