The Best Fictional Laser Weapons, According to Laser Wars Readers
I asked. You answered.
Every science fiction hero gets the laser weapon they deserve.
In Star Wars, Han Solo’s blaster is as janky and well-worn as the Millennium Falcon. The phasers in Star Trek are sleek instruments of focused destruction — a perfect match for the franchise’s utopian vision of the future. Even the Peacekeeper pulse pistol carried by astronaut John Crichton in Farscape, one of my personal favorites, reflects the militaristic corner of the galaxy a wormhole dropped him into. Lasers weapons aren’t just science fiction’s sidearm of choice — they’re a Rorschach test for visions of the future.
I recently asked Laser Wars readers in an email survey to weigh in on their favorite fictional laser weapons. The initial results are in, and they’re just as interesting as I expected.
Below are the top picks. You can nominate your favorite by taking the survey here:
Sidearms and Personal Weapons
These are the directed energy weapons mercenaries and starship crews carry into battle. Somehow, nobody nominated Buck Rogers’ XZ-38 Disintegrator Pistol, the most iconic ray gun in history of science fiction
Blasters, Star Wars
The most iconic sidearm in a galaxy far, far away is a fixture of pop culture for a good reason: it looks like it was built for a fight. Part of this was a deliberate choice: Han Solo's iconic DL-44 blaster, for example, was built on the real-world Mauser C96 "Broomhandle" pistol, while the standard issue Imperial E-11 blaster rifle carried by Imperial Stormtroopers is based on the British Sterling Mk 4 submachine gun. In a universe where laser weapons are as common as swords once were, the blaster remains the working man's weapon of choice — more reliable than “hokey religions and ancient weapons,” as Solo tells Luke Skywalker.
Starfleet Phasers, Star Trek
Where Star Wars blasters are crude and kinetic, Starfleet phasers are sleek and precise instruments of a civilization that has moved beyond war as a default. Gene Roddenberry clearly understood that even post-scarcity utopias need a trigger to pull. The only cooler man-portable directed energy weapon in the United Federation of Planets’ arsenal is the isomagnetic disintegrator that Worf trots out during Star Trek: Insurrection, which is best characterized as a “space bazooka.”
Ma'Tok Staff Weapon, Stargate
The Goa'uld staff weapon is the AK-47 of fictional laser weapons: ungainly, overpowered, and everywhere. It was designed less for precision than for intimidation — which, according to the show's own characters, actually makes it lousy compared to Stargate Command’s standard-issue FN P90 personal defense weapon. Still, it’s an excellent tool for maintaining a fear and superstition-based galactic empire.
Repulsors, Iron Man
Originally designed as a flight stabilizer, billionaire genius playboy philanthropist Tony Stark's palm-mounted repulsor beams occupy an interesting middle ground between directed energy weapon and propulsion system. It’s worth noting that repulsor rays aren’t really lasers in the sense of generating thermal effects, but are instead portrayed as beams of concussive force.
Laser Wristwatch, GoldenEye
Q Branch's laser wristwatch represents the logical endpoint of miniaturized directed energy: a weapon capable of cutting through steel so that’s compact it fits on your wrist. It is also proof that the real bottleneck for laser weapons has always been the power source. And while the laser wristwatch isn’t portrayed as an offensive capability in the GoldenEye movie, it is hilariously effective in close-quarters in the iconic GoldenEye video game for Nintendo 64.
Qualta Blade, Farscape
My personal pick. Luxan warrior Ka D'Argo's combination broadsword-pulse rifle is the rare fictional laser weapon with genuine personality, a hand-me-down melee weapon from an alien warrior culture that doubles as a ranged weapon for stand-off engagement. Like most fictional directed energy weapons, the Qualta blade makes no sense — and that’s what makes it awesome.
Infinity Ray, Invincible
Space Racer’s Infinity Ray is the kind of weapon that shows up when a story needs something more final than a gun but less on-the-nose than, say, a nuclear bomb. An unstoppable beam of pure destructive energy, the Amazon series earns credit for treating the weapon’s fictional physics with more seriousness than most superhero properties bother to.
Strategic Systems and Superweapons
Not every fictional laser weapon fits in a holster. These are the planet-killers and orbital platforms that make the beloved laser pistol look quaint.
The Death Star, Star Wars
The Death Star is the fictional directed energy weapon against which all others are measured: a moon-sized battle station capable of destroying an entire planet with a single focused superlaser shot.1 It is also the favorite choice of Laser Wars survey respondents, which probably says something about the ambitions of the directed energy industry.
Diamond Satellite, Diamonds Are Forever
Ernst Stavro Blofeld's orbital laser in the 1971 James Bond film predated Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative by more than a decade, which either makes it prescient science fiction or evidence that the villain community had better intelligence than the Pentagon. The concept of a space-based laser weapon remains very much alive today, if somewhat less glamorous in practice.
Death Blossom, The Last Starfighter
The Death Blossom is the fictional equivalent of a 360-degree area suppression weapon: a last-resort omnidirectional energy burst capable of wiping out an entire enemy fleet in one shot. It also has the best name of any fictional laser weapon ever conceived, and I will not be taking questions.
Meteor Defense System, Ringworld
Larry Niven’s Ringworld is beloved by hard sci-fi readers for its technical rigor, and the Meteor Defense System is a prime example: a planetary-scale laser array designed to vaporize incoming debris. Only a Laser Wars reader would nominate a weapon whose primary target is asteroids.
Molecular Slicer Beam, Babylon 5
Babylon 5 takes its fictional technology seriously, and the Shadow vessels’ molecular slicer beam is no exception. The weapon that doesn’t just destroy targets but cuts through them at the molecular level, a rare fictional directed energy weapon that gestures at something physically plausible even if the execution remains firmly in the realm of science fiction.
Graser, Honorverse
David Weber’s Honor Harrington series is a military sci-fi mainstay, and the graser (short for gamma-ray laser) is its signature weapon. Weber postulates a physically plausible mechanism for focusing gamma radiation into a coherent beam, which is exactly the kind of technically grounded speculation that makes Honorverse required reading for a certain type of defense professional.
Absurdist Picks
Some laser weapons earn their place in the cultural imagination through pure farce. These picks exist at the intersection of directed energy and the absurd — which, depending on your view of the Pentagon's acquisition process, may not be so different from the real thing.
Sharks With Frickin’ Laser Beams Attached to Their Heads, Austin Powers: Goldmember
Dr. Evil’s preferred weapons platform is a masterclass in military acquisition gone wrong: biologically unstable, impossible to aim, and dependent on a delivery vehicle with a notoriously poor command-and-control architecture. The Pentagon has wasted money on worse.
Marvin the Martian’s Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator, Looney Tunes
The Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator deserves a place in the directed energy hall of fame for one reason: it remains the only fictional laser weapon whose primary mission objective was to improve the view. Marvin the Martian wanted to destroy Earth because it was obstructing his sight line to Venus, which may be the most relatable motivation in the history of WMDs.
Disintegrator Ray, The Pink Panther Strikes Again
In the 1976 film, the deranged Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus constructs a doomsday device capable of completely disintegrating matter and demonstrates it on United Nations headquarters in New York City. That threat of a global holocaust is deployed in service of assassinating the bumbling Inspector Clouseau makes it the most disproportionate use of directed energy in cinematic history.
Airborne Laser Weapons
Several readers, with what I can only describe as hard-earned earned cynicism, nominated the US military’s airborne laser weapons program as their favorite fictional laser weapon. The US has been attempting to mount functional (and operationally suitable) laser weapons on aircraft since the early 1970s — the Airborne Laser Laboratory, the Boeing 747-based YAL-1, the Advanced Tactical Laser, the HELLADS, the AHEL, the SHiELD program — and the history is a nearly unbroken chronicle of ambition followed by cancellation.
The Air Force appears to be gearing up to try again — I’ll keep you posted if this effort finally takes off.
One Laser Wars reader recently told me that the Death Star superlaser is “the Platonic ideal of coherent beam combining.” I’ll let you all guess who it was.