Fantasy Blades

Not very efficient weapon, the bat'leth.

Little girl, big aluminum sword.

At least this one is possible.
(Drawing by Colin)

I enjoy a good fantasy as much as the next guy. More, actually, since my living comes from making such things up. But, unless I am flat-out doing trampoline-fu -- a term that needs no explanation for anybody who has ever seen a Run Run Shaw kung-fu movie -- then I try to get the fight stuff in most of my work to be something that is remotely possible. I might not be able to do it, but somebody more adept than I could, and Lord knows there are plenty of those folks running around.

Which brings us to fantasy weapons.

Leave off the rayguns, needlers, and spetsdöds for this round; let's start this with the edged ones.

Fantasy knives and swords abound, and like fantasy fights, they exist because they look cool, not because they would actually work. Remember that great sword in the Conan movies? You know there were real ones, i.e., steel blades, that Ahnahl used for close-ups, but that that when it came to that waving around and hacking and hewing and all, he used one made of aluminum. Why? Because it was hard to wield the steel one -- it was too heavy. Trying to stop the thing for the fancy cuts and slinging it hither and yon for more than a few seconds was courting bursitis.

And we are talking about a two-hundred-and-thirty-pound bodybuilder (slimmed down from his biggest competition weight) and seven-time Mr. Olympia, who tossed around Volvos and freight cars every day to get in shape. If the thing was too heavy for Schwarzenegger to control without burning up his shoulders, how well you figure the rest of us mortals could manage it?

But it looked cool, that sword.

Heavy has its uses, especially against armor. Battle axes are great weapons, if you connect on the first swing. Miss? You are apt to be twirling like a dreidel on Hanukkah, and getting poked by a sword or spear every revolution ...

Note the woman in the middle picture. That's Keira Knightley, who's as cute as a ladybug, but if anybody here believes she could hold a steel sword that size that way, much less wave it around to any good effect, raise your hand.

Yeah, that's what I thought.

Now, the bat'leth. It's a Star Trek critter, the Klingon weapon of choice, and like the aliens on Trek -- put a funny nose and forehead on somebody, presto, alien! -- designed for looks and not reality. You can buy the things, go here, and there are websites and videos in how to use them, usually put up by guys in Klingon make-up.

Tlhap vetlh, elbow-sucker!

Certainly you can hurt somebody with one. Some yahoo in Colorado Springs robbed a couple of 7-Elevens using what looks like a scaled-down model of one. Both the clerks recognized it immediately, being Trek fans, of course. Assuming they were dealing with a dishonorable Klingon, they gave up the money fast.

But as a hand-to-hand weapon, a bat'leth is not much. It's bulky, heavy, and the width is going to cause it to torque in your hands if you hit something hard with the concave edge. If you are strong enough to keep your grip on the beast as it tries to twist free, especially during the one-handed blocks or cuts, you don't need it -- you can crush their skulls with your bare hands.

Looks cool, though.

I put up the third picture, the line-drawing, because it is connected to reality. A katana is a weapon designed to be used in combat, and the arts that grew up surrounding such blades came from the battlefield. Kendo became a game, and iaido a Way, but the iaijutsu of a couple hundred years back was real, using a weapon that anybody could learn to use.

I once had a guy who edited something I wrote. He wasn't an editor. He had the literary depth of a postage stamp. He put barbs on a spear I had a character use. I explained why this was a bad idea, but he shrugged it off. It looked cool, and why did it bother me? He was an idiot for a number of reasons, this least among them. It's telling that last time I heard about him, he had jumped bail, on the run from the law, and reportedly was hiding out in Mexico ...