Show off your fictional technology (comics and novels)

[Maxouco]

A ''Sword gun'' pew pew pew!

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[Oriflamme]

Helicopters and drones swarm aren't dieselpunk staples. They are products of a later age. Besides, in a world with airships, anti-aircraft probably means something like an 88mm flak cannon or bigger.

[abigaillmartin]

Okay but I was just reading about Dieselpunk yesterday because I may make a sequel of Elsie set in the 1930s when they are all old or a AU where it’s in the noir film genre where Elsie is a PI in the 1940s.

Is that the right time frame or is it in the 1920s and 30s?

[misfitcrew04]

Dieselpunk generally is set in the early 1900s, like WW1 and WW2 era technology that somehow kept the aesthetic even as it progressed into the future. A lot of dieselpunk stories will be set in the 1910s-1940s, while are set in the future with more advanced tech but with dieselpunk aesthetics.

Once you get to the 1950s though, thats more atompunk or raypunk, like Fallout

[Oriflamme]

I think dieselpunk generally takes inspiration from the 1900s to 1945 with anything after that falling into atompunk. However, a huge part of dieselpunk is not only technological inspiration, but the society that produced said technology. Steampunk is about the promise of science and technology to change the world, Dieselpunk is a lot more about the destructive power of science and technology, where men turn into machines with hearts of iron. Major dieselpunk works are often intertwined with the societal changes of the world wars and are heavily tied to the militarism of the period.

[kyupol]

I wonder if someone from the military will see this thread and get ideas...

[jwabeasley]

I wonder if someone from the military will see this thread and get ideas...

I have plenty already!

[kyupol]

What's the best one in this thread so far?

[jwabeasley]

I don't want to give my professional military breakdown of all these cool ideas! Pretty much all of the military tech mentioned so far is either completely impractical and expensive or it's dependent on magical science far enough removed from reality to not be feasible.

In comics it's most important that the technology looks cool, and in written fiction that it sounds cool. In the real world military it's that it fulfills an essential mission need, is robust and practical, and relatively inexpensive. All of which is boring!

If you were going to pick one technology to have, those magic micro-drones that can heal would be the most useful technology so far. I don't see why you couldn't have a magically self-healing drone tank surrounded by a cloud of self-replicating repair drones that can recover from any damage no matter how severe - there'd be no permanent kill, it'd be like a zombie tank, and the only limitation would be the energy input.

[kyupol]

Yay for micro healing drones the size of bugs

Magical science? We have physicists and mystics agreeing these days so... Spirit releasing sword is supposedly possible 1000 years in the future... Says someone who told me they've astrally projected into the future lol. But who knows, truth can be stranger than fiction.

"The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence."
-Nikola Tesla

[jwabeasley]

Sure, modern science mostly exists by taking broad swathes of common human experience, declaring that it doesn't exist, and then browbeating everyone else into agreeing with them. It wasn't that long ago that "Plate Tectonics" or "Meteorites" were labeled as pseudoscience that serious people didn't believe in.

Something that frequently frustrates me is how effectively science is able to ascribe previously commonly held scientific theories that have been proven wrong to "superstition," "magic," or "religion." No, that was Science(tm), and it was wrong, and it frequently hurt a lot of people when the error was compounded by the arrogance of Science's prophets.

It's probably obvious by the kind of comic I'm making where I sit.

That said, even a spirit releasing sword isn't particularly useful from a serious military perspective. Sure, you can instant death me in melee. But I can instant death lots of people from 20km+ away with artillery and reliable intelligence. Give the Russians a thousand such swords and they won't be any more effective against the Ukrainians.

I will admit that a doctrinally correct "Fire Mission" with modern artillery would be pretty boring in media though.

...Man I gotta do the second page of that Akala comic. The contest has me distracted, forgive me.

[kyupol]

Maybe the instakill spirit sword is more of a humane execution method or used for assassination? You don't want the victim screaming too loud or suffering pain when they die. I knew a guy who went to prison in the Philippines for killing someone. Not gonna describe the gory details he described... all I'm gonna say is "side faucet". Noisy. Messy.

Fire mission? Not only that would be boring in media. Even a real fight would be. It would be over in seconds without those ufc rules where you can't hit. Human body is fragile. Not designed for combat.

Almost forgot that Akala fancomic. Soldiers trained in sleep would save on housing, feeding, etc. But... actual combat effectiveness and fitness would be questionable. Soldiers need PT.

There's a way around that though... not gonna spoil it but you're welcome to guess...

[jwabeasley]

Oh, there's tons of value in the spirit releasing sword. Just not in open warfare. At least, not since the 12th century.

As to the conflict... we'll just have to see the rest of the comic!