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Jeni:

Just because there was a minor disagreement, I see no point in deleting or letting this topic stop. I think people have got some fantastically interesting ideas, and there's been some good discussion going. Onwards! :)

There’s always the fallback of: 1)the sci-fi weapons have been disabled someone (bonus if someone finds an antique gun and it blows up in their face!)

and 2)The combatants have been dumped in a room/ on a planet, with nothing but themselves and what they find around them…shipwreck, mutiny, what have you.

I assume they’re fairly familiar devices? from Hollywood, anyway. I try not to assume any idea is my own ;)

This might be kind of repeating and/or difficult to use, but maybe the more stereotypically ‘advanced’ distance weapons (like guns) can’t work on the planet because of its screwy physics/environment, and only direct contact will actually hit the enemy. Maybe it could be the physical characteristics of the inhabitants themselves- aliens with tentacles and no opposable thumbs cannot pull a trigger.

I can only think of two good reasons that there would be hand-to-hand combat in a scify setting. First, body armor is so well developed that a single man or small squad cannot carry powerful enough ranged weapons to penetrate it, but they have hand weapons, martial arts techniques, etc. that can. Second, which really plays into the first, the socity is not warlike enough to have spent time and energy to find better ways to kill each other. Or a reason that one book used, though not directly, is that inside a spaceship you don’t want to use anything that would penetrate the hull during a boarding action.

Sci-fi doesn’t automatically equal high-tech. Hand-to-hand combat in a low-tech sci-fi setting is perfectly justifiable, and there’s also competitive martial arts. Even in a high-tech setting, it’s plausible to find some old-fashioned-style combat enthusiasts and practitioners who’d keep hand-to-hand combat alive for the sport of it.

Sports are rather underrepresented in general sci-fi, now that I think about it.

But yeah. Environmental destruction directly leading to death would be a pretty good motivator to use combat methods that minimize collateral damage. Dying from depressurization and suffocation because someone breached the hull would be a rather horrible way to go.

Lightsabers.

Sports are rather underrepresented in general sci-fi, now that I think about it.

Because nerds.

Some crazy totalitarian government banned the production/use of guns and ammo a while ago, perhaps, so everybody uses hand-to-hand combat now. And then when guns are reintroduced, people aren’t familiar with them anymore, so they still use hand-to-hand while readjusting to the new firearms.

Although in this case, unless guns are crazy expensive and rare, hand-to-hand would still be the quickly fading old way that simply doesn’t measure up to the new way.

Or simply as a backup in case you run into close-quarters combat. I’m thinking of omniblades in Mass Effect 3, and I’m desperately hoping vanguards get to use them, because as fun as it is to charge into someone and shotgun them in the face, charging into them and cutting them open with a single strike is just as effective, if not more.

Come to think of it, that’s kind of the reason knives and whatnot still are widely used, isn’t it? Someone with a knife can do a lot of damage very quickly, possibly more quickly/efficiently than somebody with a gun.

Alternately, I just thought of this one—EMP technology becomes commonplace. There’s a massive arms race as militaries race to harden their equipment against the latest advances in EMP technology, while the people using EMPs try to improve them to get around the advancements in armor/weaponry. If you’ve got guns with electronics in them (“smart” bullets, targeting assistance, and the like), this would be a big incentive to use hand-to-hand combat, because last time I checked, an EMP doesn’t stop a punch in the face or a sword in your belly.

But… but… Taku. That would be so boring and normal! :D

A good point, though. Guns are very common now, yet hand-to-hand combat still happens constantly simply because most people still don’t have firearms, regardless of how common they are, for a variety of reasons. Starting with who on Earth carries around a gun in civilian life, anyway? Not very many people, that’s who.

Has anyone mentioned the very real possibility that, like today’s society, weapons just aren’t carried around 24/7?

That’s such an exceedingly good point it hadn’t occurred to anyone yet ;) Otherwise I was just assuming that the question had to do with the ‘organized’/battlefield level of combat.

But it also just sparks up so many interesting ideas to me—not that I’m likely to do anything with them.

We have the second amendment in America, so I think that the idea that owning guns is a right is somthing that we don’t think about not having. Even if some places make you jump through hoops to get them, you can still get them.

bq. Doesn’t sound at all crazy or totalitarian to me.

Can we keep the ************** politics out of this, _please_?

bq. Well excuse me for having a different point of view.

I don't care about whether or not you're pro or anti-gun, I simply don't want politics in this thread, it's a perfectly valid request.

bq. It’s not politics, we don’t all have your precious fifty-nineteenth amendment, so expand your mind a little.

You're the one who bought it up, man. : P We're talking about world-building here, there's no reason or need to bring up RL gun-rights.

bq. No. I didn’t. The idea of banning guns = crazy, totalitarian government. Why should it be?

Perhaps you're just reading to much in? Just sayin'. . .

bq. Do you want me to repeat that it’s nothing to do with politics again? Why should I care if you or your country is pro-gun? You’re making it about politics by shutting out my point of view.

Okay, fine, I used the word because I couldn't think of a better one. And no, all I asked was that we keep a discussion about modern gunrights out of it and in Serious Discussion where it belongs.

bq. I come from a different country that is not pro-gun ownership.

Okay, then. And FYI I'm extremely pro-gun and I don't carry a gun with me and I don't know of anyone who does. We're not a bunch of gun-waving nuts.

Now, can we go back to the topic at hand?

bq. That has nothing to do with it other than other countries have different laws and therefore people have different points of views.

Really? Other countries have different points of view? Well . . . screw me.

bq. I may have snapped at you earlier, but I thought you were being quite rude to me.

Likewise.

Please continue with the interesting discussion and feel free to completely ignore any uncivilised debate between myself and Clibanarius.

I know I can’t prevent disagreements or arguments, but I think everyone would appreciate it if you guys could keep it to whispers or wall posts if you want to continue your conversation. Thanks.

To get back on topic, I really liked Taku’s point that even today, in the age of the nuclear bomb, knives (and even fists) are still potent weapons. I don’t read all that much science fiction, but if you were doing an advanced society that used some kind of magic or other power, it might be that distance weapons would have no effect and you’d have to get in close. I don’t know if somebody already said that.

I really liked Taku’s point that even today, in the age of the nuclear bomb, knives (and even fists) are still potent weapons.

This is true – also, video game principle. You always have a weapon that needs no ammo as back-up. People are incredibly adaptable and will use most things as a weapon if the need arises.

I really liked Taku’s point that even today, in the age of the nuclear bomb, knives (and even fists) are still potent weapons

Same here.

I’ve seen the gun-control thing in a lot of sci-fi, but I think it’s not being handled well. I’m not very much in favour of the “perfect pacifist” type of fictional civilization, and as such, I have one planet in my new verse where violent crimes are strongly acted against (e.g. murderers are given brutal public executions).
The twist?
Everyone has repressed aggression. Illegal cage fighting clubs spring up all over the place like mushrooms. You also get underground racing (now with added hidden weapons in your car!), dog fights, cock fights, bear fights and all kinds of nasty things there.

The person who first mentioned the risk of a hull breaching also had a very good point.

Also – maybe the civilization is very focused on physical fitness, meaning that they prefer beating someone up (to prove that they can, without breaking a sweat) to shooting someone (“any asshole can pull a gun on somebody! Boy, you need a role model!“). If they absolutely have to break out the revolvers and shotguns and Vera’s, they do so gladly, but their first instinct is putting on some knuckledusters.

In regards to Kyllorac’s comment, one should note that while many weapons are designed to be lethal, we still have lovely things like tasers and such which do their job but, unless you picked you’re target wrong or they’re very unlucky, will not result in a body count. In the future, one would assume they’d have a ranged taser-type weapon that just delivered a shock from a few meters away (without the shocking bit actually connecting back to the weapon) which would have all the perks of being non lethal and would have no effect on the environment. There’s no reason to assume that in the distant future people are just aiming to kill each other—one would think they’d just get more efficient at subduing others, since a living person is usually more useful than a dead one. Of course, existing in a world that does not have very reliable, ranged taser-type weapons would still need you to get up close and personal just to deliver the shock, so yet another reason for hand to hand.