Needling the Enemy
Day 41 of Writing
SF has long had improbable science in it, especially in the movies. Audible explosions in space. Ignoring momentum in rescues. I always admired the authors who did the research (or were scientists themselves) and based their technology on actual science that obeyed the known laws of physics.
I like the old rule in writing SF where you get one improbable science plot element but you ground everything else in reality. Science fiction should not make the science completely fictional. It needs to be based on actual science, otherwise you are just writing fantasy.
As has become cliche in spy stories, I include a lot of gadgets. As the story progresses, many spy type gadgets will be introduced. They are all at the beta test stage in the story, so they do not always work as anticipated. This creates additional challenges for my characters.
The one thing almost every spy has is a gun. I wanted the guns in my story to be a little different.
This story has a lot of violence in it, but I wanted the violence to happen to my characters rather than them subjecting others to violence. I also knew that I did not want the usual coming in with guns blazing and leaving a pile of dead bodies. If you are an actual spy, that is the last thing you want to do. You need to be covert and not do something that winds up in the papers and with the police investigating.
I decided to go with a non-lethal version of needleguns, which have been used in science fiction before. My first introduction to them was in William Gibson’s groundbreaking 1984 debut novel Neuromancer. They were also used in another great classic science fiction novel from 1992, Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash.
In David Gerrold’s 1983 A Matter for Men (The first of The War Against the Chtorr series), the AM-280 needle rifle shot in bursts. It was extremely lethal. Sorry that series was never made into a movie. Asimov used a needlegun back in 1957. The earliest reference I could find was a surprisingly sophisticated version in the 1928 Beyond the Stars by Ray Cummings.
They should not be confused with needle guns developed in the 1800s that used needles as the firing pin. Guns that shot flechette needles go back to the 14th century, and were used before the development of bullets. Air dropped flechettes were used in World War I. Needleguns were experimented with in the Vietnam War but never implemented. They also work better underwater than an actual gun.
The question you probably have is what makes my needlegun better? Great question. The needles used in my story have special aerodynamic enhancing grooves that improve their accuracy. Golf balls with grooves instead of dimples fly through the air more efficiently. The exact type of grooves I chose to use are classified.
The needles are made of a material that quickly dissolves in the body, releasing a drug that knocks the target out within seconds. This works well, but sometimes seconds can be a long time. Everyone is different, so how long it takes for the drug to work varies from person to person.
There have been needleguns with laser sighting in stories. My laser sighting has heat tracking assist, so you basically just have to point and the gun will help you quickly lock on the heat signature of a living body. Haptic feedback makes the gun vibrate when you are locked onto a person. Heat tracking assist is especially useful when you have to shoot several people quickly, as on automatic the gun will fire each time the laser site locks onto a hot body as you sweep the gun across a field of targets.
The guns are biometrically linked to the owner. Anyone else who tries to use them will trigger the small explosive charge inside.
The guns look like regular guns. They are based on the KelTec PF9 9mm semi-automatic pistol, which is very light, small, and easy to carry as a concealed weapon. The needlegun can be fired in silent mode or with an accompanying gunshot sound.
For someone like me who loves science and loves doing research, developing all of the technologies for the story has been one of the most fun parts. There is so much exciting going on now in the sciences. My two favs, astrophysics and materials science, especially with nanomaterials, are seeing so many new developments so fast it is impossible to keep up with them.
What’s Up with Us
The hard hit Bay Area is seeing their curve start to flatten. Social distancing works. It is supposed to be a stop-gap while you ramp up testing. Wide-spread testing has been promised, but mindbogglingly still not here yet.
The Federal Government continues to completely fail us. California was sent 170 ventilators that did not work. The Governor turned to Silicon Valley engineers to get them quickly repaired. Of the 19,025 ventilators in the stockpile, at least 2,425 do not work.
It has become a common joke about how hard it is to remember what day it is, as they all seem the same. I am finding this true even with Belle working a regular work week (albeit from home). Every day seems like every other. There is a grueling sameness.
Belle tried to play an April Fools joke on me. She said she had to work until 9 pm. I did not react, as I was so used to that from her previous job at Wescom, where she was expected to work many late nights without compensation in order to keep her job. So glad she quit that awful place.
She loves working for Cedars Sinai. In contrast to where she previously worked, they are professional, ethical, and know what they are doing. There are super smart people that she gets to work with, and she feels like she is making a bit of a difference helping the hospital be better prepared for the anticipated onslaught of patients.